Grooveshark Bites It
by Walter Price
I will not use this article to ramble about streaming services and corporate blah blah this or waka waka that. I just read this open letter posted by former streaming company Grooveshark that had me feeling a bit sad for a company or service if you will I’d never heard of until minutes ago.
Apparently these people didn’t get legal permissions, rights or hey that’s cool from copyright holders when launching their probably nifty outfit. That’s bad, okay. So bad in fact, according to this article I just dialed up, that these clowns probably not really clowns got hit with a £11 Billion (€15 Billion / $17 Billion) lawsuit by said owners of the rights. Holy cow Batman types.
Anyway, Grooveshark has shuttered its doors for what seems to be for good. But their letter is weepy and heartbreaking. Read it:
Dear music fans,
Today we are shutting down Grooveshark.
We started out nearly ten years ago with the goal of helping fans share and discover music. But despite best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service.
That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation.
As part of a settlement agreement with the major record companies, we have agreed to cease operations immediately, wipe clean all the data on our servers and hand over ownership of this website, our mobile apps and intellectual property, including our patents and copyrights.
At that time of our launch, few music services provided the experience we wanted to offer and think you deserve. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case. There are now hundreds of fan friendly, affordable services available for you to choose from, including Spotify, Deezer, Google Play, Beats Music, Rhapsody and Rdio, among many others.
If you love music and respect the artists, songwriters and everyone else who makes great music possible, use a licensed service that compensates artists and other rights holders. You can find out more about the many great services available where you live here: http://whymusicmatters.com/find-music.
It has been a privilege getting to know so many of you and enjoying great music together. Thank you for being such passionate fans.
Yours in music,
Your friends at Grooveshark
April 30, 2015
Moral of the story…no matter your stance on something do the right things before you get in a whole lotta crap and lose it all.
The End