I fought the law and the law won.
Grooveshark, announcing the April 30th shutdown of their streaming music service:
We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service.
That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation.
They go on to concede that hundreds of other services provide the same ability to listen to music without violating the ownership of music. And they’ve lost everything, from patents to the site itself.
Side note: Grooveshark was to Gainesville, Florida a bit as SoundCloud is to Berlin, Germany – a streaming startup that became a flagship of the scene. Drawing from the nearby University of Florida, the site was somewhat innovative when it launched, but anyone familiar with the legal requirements of streaming would be aware their clock was ticking.
To be honest, I don’t think this is a choice about freedom or free music, but about the rule of law. I suspect there’s not a person among us who hasn’t violated intellectual property in the form of unlicensed media. But to actually build an entire commercial service outside of that law and profit on these violations defies any notion of the ability of creators to choose what happens to their work. And that legal framework means that there is some discussion between rights holders and services about what happens next.
Meanwhile, it seems that with the ability to use the likes of Spotify – or, heck, even Tidal – few will mourn Grooveshark.
I mourn the loss of my playlist information. I had found lots of more obscure stuff on there that I couldn’t find on any other service. Wish I had copied it down to eventually track down elsewhere.
Two good points here.
First is that some of the less-up-and-up P2P music services do (did) offer something the big players don’t: deep catalog stuff. B-Side collections, live shows, radio performances… because collectors are out there and make it available. There’s just little-to-no money in it for streaming businesses to create or maintain that stuff no matter how long the proverbial tail is. I still remember the feeling (when using Soulseek all those years ago) of “Holy shit! This exists!?!”. Repeatedly. I remember browsing someone’s drive that had no less than 500 well-organized folders representing that many live Miles Davis performances. Not going to happen on Beats or Spotify.
Second point @dalasv:disqus raised is the transient nature of your data when it’s hosted (and/or owned) by someone else. There’s just no saying what happens to it all when a company changes ownership or closes. A shame that s/he lost all of that information. Almost worse, and more troubling: dalas’ data isn’t gone at all. The record companies own it now (according to the Grooveshark announcement) and will use and/or sell it to the highest bidder. Or license it to lots of bidders. And the person who generated the data is the one who loses. Humbug.
This 100 times. Grooveshark had some things that just isn’t going to be on Spotify or Youtube or Rdio or whatever the hip new stream service is. What you get is at the mercy of what the labels allow. It’s super sucky all around.
These guys admitted that they uploaded themselves thousands of copyrighted material despite the right owners ( both labels and independent artists ) told them to take it down. They would take down and upload it again in the same hour. They’re not the victims here…
..And they did MUCH worse actually. If you have followed the “Digital Music News” affair, you would know what kind of thugs they are. They basically asked the website to give them the IP of someone who posted a comment about GroovShark uploading the copyrighted material. The website refused , and GrroveShark sued the website to force them. They falied of course, but it did cost a lot of money for the guy who owns the blog to defend himself.
If those are not Mafia tactics, I don’t know what they are.
I mourn the loss of my playlist information. I had found lots of more obscure stuff on there that I couldn’t find on any other service. Wish I had copied it down to eventually track down elsewhere.
Two good points here.
First is that some of the less-up-and-up P2P music services do (did) offer something the big players don’t: deep catalog stuff. B-Side collections, live shows, radio performances… because collectors are out there and make it available. There’s just little-to-no money in it for streaming businesses to create or maintain that stuff no matter how long the proverbial tail is. I still remember the feeling (when using Soulseek all those years ago) of “Holy shit! This exists!?!”. Repeatedly. I remember browsing someone’s drive that had no less than 500 well-organized folders representing that many live Miles Davis performances. Not going to happen on Beats or Spotify.
Second point @dalasv:disqus raised is the transient nature of your data when it’s hosted (and/or owned) by someone else. There’s just no saying what happens to it all when a company changes ownership or closes. A shame that s/he lost all of that information. Almost worse, and more troubling: dalas’ data isn’t gone at all. The record companies own it now (according to the Grooveshark announcement) and will use and/or sell it to the highest bidder. Or license it to lots of bidders. And the person who generated the data is the one who loses. Humbug.
This 100 times. Grooveshark had some things that just isn’t going to be on Spotify or Youtube or Rdio or whatever the hip new stream service is. What you get is at the mercy of what the labels allow. It’s super sucky all around.
These guys admitted that they uploaded themselves thousands of copyrighted material despite the right owners ( both labels and independent artists ) told them to take it down. They would take down and upload it again in the same hour. They’re not the victims here…
..And they did MUCH worse actually. If you have followed the “Digital Music News” affair, you would know what kind of thugs they are. They basically asked the website to give them the IP of someone who posted a comment about GroovShark uploading the copyrighted material. The website refused , and GrroveShark sued the website to force them. They falied of course, but it did cost a lot of money for the guy who owns the blog to defend himself.
If those are not Mafia tactics, I don’t know what they are.
I mourn the loss of my playlist information. I had found lots of more obscure stuff on there that I couldn’t find on any other service. Wish I had copied it down to eventually track down elsewhere.
Two good points here.
First is that some of the less-up-and-up P2P music services do (did) offer something the big players don’t: deep catalog stuff. B-Side collections, live shows, radio performances… because collectors are out there and make it available. There’s just little-to-no money in it for streaming businesses to create or maintain that stuff no matter how long the proverbial tail is. I still remember the feeling (when using Soulseek all those years ago) of “Holy shit! This exists!?!”. Repeatedly. I remember browsing someone’s drive that had no less than 500 well-organized folders representing that many live Miles Davis performances. Not going to happen on Beats or Spotify.
Second point @dalasv:disqus raised is the transient nature of your data when it’s hosted (and/or owned) by someone else. There’s just no saying what happens to it all when a company changes ownership or closes. A shame that s/he lost all of that information. Almost worse, and more troubling: dalas’ data isn’t gone at all. The record companies own it now (according to the Grooveshark announcement) and will use and/or sell it to the highest bidder. Or license it to lots of bidders. And the person who generated the data is the one who loses. Humbug.
This 100 times. Grooveshark had some things that just isn’t going to be on Spotify or Youtube or Rdio or whatever the hip new stream service is. What you get is at the mercy of what the labels allow. It’s super sucky all around.
These guys admitted that they uploaded themselves thousands of copyrighted material despite the right owners ( both labels and independent artists ) told them to take it down. They would take down and upload it again in the same hour. They’re not the victims here…
..And they did MUCH worse actually. If you have followed the “Digital Music News” affair, you would know what kind of thugs they are. They basically asked the website to give them the IP of someone who posted a comment about GroovShark uploading the copyrighted material. The website refused , and GrroveShark sued the website to force them. They falied of course, but it did cost a lot of money for the guy who owns the blog to defend himself.
If those are not Mafia tactics, I don’t know what they are.
Looks like it’s getting harder to be an internet thug these days…
Looks like it’s getting harder to be an internet thug these days…
Looks like it’s getting harder to be an internet thug these days…
I have read somewhere that grroveshark playlist may be retrieved from browser’s local storage if you have visited grooveshark site recently.
I have read somewhere that grroveshark playlist may be retrieved from browser’s local storage if you have visited grooveshark site recently.
I have read somewhere that grroveshark playlist may be retrieved from browser’s local storage if you have visited grooveshark site recently.
A falling tree makes more noise than a forest that grows. Dogmazic is near to be released ! If you don’t know Dogmazic, it’s a french (but internationalized) site with cc music and more ! (55 000 tracks, 4500 artistes, 500 netlabels). Some news on our diaspora : https://diasp.org/people/c3227c60bd1801328d8500259069449e or twitter account : https://twitter.com/Dogmazic
A falling tree makes more noise than a forest that grows. Dogmazic is near to be released ! If you don’t know Dogmazic, it’s a french (but internationalized) site with cc music and more ! (55 000 tracks, 4500 artistes, 500 netlabels). Some news on our diaspora : https://diasp.org/people/c3227c60bd1801328d8500259069449e or twitter account : https://twitter.com/Dogmazic
A falling tree makes more noise than a forest that grows. Dogmazic is near to be released ! If you don’t know Dogmazic, it’s a french (but internationalized) site with cc music and more ! (55 000 tracks, 4500 artistes, 500 netlabels). Some news on our diaspora : https://diasp.org/people/c3227c60bd1801328d8500259069449e or twitter account : https://twitter.com/Dogmazic
Keep it down, but soulseek is still up and running. If it ain’t on soulseek, it’s probably not on the internet.
Keep it down, but soulseek is still up and running. If it ain’t on soulseek, it’s probably not on the internet.
Keep it down, but soulseek is still up and running. If it ain’t on soulseek, it’s probably not on the internet.
The right way to share music and actually get the artists paid properly has not been invented yet… Sad for the playlist lost too, but it’s true they did some pretty bad things since their site came up, so I guess it was coming to them.
The right way to share music and actually get the artists paid properly has not been invented yet… Sad for the playlist lost too, but it’s true they did some pretty bad things since their site came up, so I guess it was coming to them.
The right way to share music and actually get the artists paid properly has not been invented yet… Sad for the playlist lost too, but it’s true they did some pretty bad things since their site came up, so I guess it was coming to them.