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Grooveshark

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Grooveshark was invented by Jesse Henczel, and is a web-based music streaming service owned and operated by Escape Media Group in the United States.[2] Users could upload digital audio files, which could then be streamed and organized in playlists.[3] The Grooveshark website had a search engine, music streaming features, and a music recommendation system.[4]

Grooveshark
Type of site
Music
OwnerEscape Media Group Inc.
Created bySam Tarantino
Josh Greenberg
Andrés Barreto
CommercialYes (freemium)
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedMarch 30, 2006; 18 years ago (2006-03-30)[1]
Closed on April 30, 2015; 9 years ago (2015-04-30)
Current statusDefunct

The company won a major lawsuit filed by Universal Music Group concerning use of Universal's pre-1972 recordings. Grooveshark was also sued for copyright violations by EMI Music Publishing, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group.[5] Concerns about copyrights led Apple and Facebook to remove Grooveshark's applications from the iOS App Store and Facebook platform respectively.[6] However, Grooveshark was available in alternative app stores, such as Cydia, Google Play and BlackBerry World.[7][8][9][10] It was also a default application on Ubuntu Touch.[11]

On April 30, 2015, Grooveshark abruptly shut down as part of a settlement between the service and Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group.

History

Pre-release (2006–2009)

Grooveshark was a service of Escape Media Group Inc. (EMG), based in Gainesville, Florida[12] with additional offices located in New York City.[13] It was founded in March 2006 by three undergraduates at the University of Florida:[14] Andrés Barreto, Josh Greenberg and Sam Tarantino[15][16] (who became CEO). During its first two years, Grooveshark functioned as a paid downloadable music service,[17] with its content sourced from its proprietary peer-to-peer (P2P) network, which required users to install its “Sharkbyte” application. Grooveshark stated that it paid users who uploaded a transacted song a portion of the accounting costs for the song. Grooveshark positioned itself as a legal competitor to other popular P2P networks such as LimeWire, although questions about its legality arose from the beginning.[18]

Grooveshark entered beta in September 2007.[19] In the beta, users bought and sold tracks among themselves for 99 cents.[20] Around 70 cents went to the record label, 25 cents to the user selling the track, and 4 cents to Grooveshark. Grooveshark's model had been approved by various small record labels, but not by any of the major record companies.[20]

Flash web player (2008–2012)

On April 15, 2008, the service launched its web service, enabling users to click and play songs on the site without having to download an application.[14] The new web service was a Flash media player called "Grooveshark Lite",[21] and added a feature for autoplaying recommended songs.[22] The service rose in popularity, with founders Greenberg and Tarantino named 2008 finalists for Bloomberg Businessweek's list of "America's Best Young Entrepreneurs".[23]

As of 2009, Grooveshark had secured almost $1 million in seed funding.[24] Also in 2009, Grooveshark launched its artist platform called Grooveshark Artists,[25] which served as an analytics service for artists whose music was streamed on the site.[26] On October 27, 2009, Grooveshark revised its interface, which featured skipping to any point in a song,[27] left-hand navigation, customizable site themes, and drag-and-drop editing of playlists.[28] On December 2, 2010, the site's interface was rewritten for HTML5. Its music player continued to use Adobe Flash.[29] Another update occurred in October 2011.[30]

On January 18, 2012 Grooveshark removed service in Germany, stating that it closed due to the costs of licensing.[31] On November 21, 2011, Grooveshark was a Mashable Awards 2011 Finalist in the Best Music Service or App category.[32] On December 19, 2011, Grooveshark co-founders Sam Tarantino and Josh Greenberg were listed among the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Music.[33]

HTML5 web player (2012–2015)

On August 28, 2012 Google Play restored Grooveshark's app.[34] On September 5, 2012 Grooveshark presented its full HTML5 player, effectively nullifying Google's and Apple's decisions to make the service unavailable to mobile apps.[35] On November 12, 2013, Executive Eddy Vasquez was murdered.[36] In 2013, Cydia repositories iHackStore, BigBoss Repo, c0caine, and all others brought back the Grooveshark app for the iPhone with the ability to download songs and import them directly to the music app within the Grooveshark app.[37] From July 2014, Grooveshark announced that it would accept Bitcoin as a form of payment via Stripe.[38]

Shutdown (2015)

On April 30, 2015, it was announced that, as part of a settlement of the copyright infringement lawsuits between the service and Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group, Grooveshark would be shut down immediately. Furthermore, the ownership of the Grooveshark service, website, and all of its associated intellectual property would be transferred to the labels. The Grooveshark website was replaced with a message announcing the closure, and pointed users towards licensed music streaming services. The move came after it was disclosed that the company could have been liable for up to $736 million in damages if it were determined that the website's infringement of copyrights was willful.[39][40]

Shortly after the shutdown, a new Grooveshark-branded website surfaced under a different top-level domain, offering a basic MP3 search engine that claimed to use the site's previous library of music, and promising to restore much of its original functionality. Although the site's anonymous creator claimed to have had a prior "connection" to the site and promised future development, it was later found that the "new" Grooveshark was simply a re-branded version of an existing MP3 search engine.[41][42] After the labels were granted a temporary restraining order, the clone's domain name was seized, although the site quickly re-appeared on a new domain.[43] Tools have been created for retrieving Grooveshark playlists, such as playlist.fish, Audiosplitter and StreamSquid.[44][45][46][47]

On July 19, 2015, Grooveshark co-founder Josh Greenberg died in his home at the age of 28 of undetermined causes.[48][49]

Features

Grooveshark was a rich Internet application that originally ran in Adobe Flash. In December 2010, Grooveshark redesigned its site to provide an HTML5 interface.[50] Grooveshark displayed songs, playlists, and users. Grooveshark had a Java Web Start application that scanned user folders for MP3s, uploading and adding them to the user's online library. The ID3 information of the uploaded song was linked to the user, and the file would be uploaded to Grooveshark, which then would offer on-demand music playback. All content on the service was user-sourced.[51] In 2010 Time's on-line supplement had listed Grooveshark among its 50 Best Websites.[52]

Grooveshark streamed over 1 billion sound files per month, contained over 15 million songs, and had 20 million users.[53] Users could search and find music by song, artist, album, browsing friends’ recent activity, and even through other users’ playlists. The service allowed users to create and edit playlists. Registered users could save playlists to an account, subscribe to other users’ playlists, and share them through e-mail, social media, StumbleUpon, Reddit, or an embeddable widget. Users could listen to radio stations of particular genres or populate their own station via their list of songs. The site would use the song list to stream similar music, and this stream selection would update using user ratings of songs. Grooveshark featured a “Community” section, where users could view the activity of friends by “following” them. Users could also connect other social media accounts.

Users could obtain basic accounts without fees.[54] Grooveshark offered two subscription services that gave users increased features, no banner ads, and playability on mobile devices.[55][56]

Critical reception

In 2013, Entertainment Weekly compared a number of music services and granted Grooveshark a "B", rating, "Users upload libraries onto cloud servers, which means fewer catalog holes. But there's only an Android app, and the Web interface can get sluggish."[57]

CEO Sam Tarantino stated that the company strictly follows the takedown procedures of the US's Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, stating that usually Grooveshark expeditiously removes content.[58][59] However, representatives of the music labels argued that songs that are taken down due to infringement claims often reappear almost immediately.[60] Due to copyright concerns and pressure from record labels, many third party companies distanced themselves from Grooveshark. Apple pulled the Grooveshark app for iOS from App Store on August 16, 2010, shortly after its release in response to a complaint from Universal.[9] On April 1, 2011, the Grooveshark application was pulled from the Android Market.[61] In May 2012, Facebook removed Grooveshark "due to a copyright infringement complaint".[10] At the end of April 2013 Google Search started censoring the term "grooveshark" from its autocomplete feature.[62] In 2012, the British Phonographic Industry engaged Phonographic Performance Limited regarding Grooveshark's licensing, and as of November 2013, was attempting to have all United Kingdom ISPs block the website.[63]

Universal Music Group

 
Robert Fripp claimed Grooveshark continued to distribute his music, after repeated takedown notices and other complaints.[64][65] His exchange was included in Universal's suit, filed in November 2011, against Grooveshark.[60][66]

Universal Music Group filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Grooveshark on January 6, 2010, alleging that Grooveshark maintained on its servers illegal copies of Universal's pre-1972 catalog.[67] In July 2012, New York State Supreme Court Judge Barbara Kapnick ruled that pre-1972 recordings were covered by the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act[68][69] In April 2013, the New York State Supreme Court of Appeals reversed the decision, saying that pre-1972 licenses are not covered by the DMCA.[70]

In November 2011, Universal Music Group brought an additional lawsuit against Grooveshark for more than $15 billion.[71] UMG cited internal documents revealing that Grooveshark employees uploaded thousands of illegal copies of UMG-owned recordings.[66] Six individuals were named as personally having uploaded between 1,000 and 40,000 songs each; other employees had uploaded 43,000 songs, according to page eight of the complaint. For each of the 113,777 alleged uploadings, a penalty of US$150,000 was requested by Universal, amounting to an estimated US$17.1 billion.[71][72] Grooveshark denied all the complaints, complaining there was a "gross mischaracterisation" of the documents obtained during the lawsuit's discovery phase.[72] In September 2014, the case was decided in favor of the record companies, with damages not yet determined.[73]

Another major label, EMI, had also signed a license agreement for streaming music with Grooveshark in 2009 after settling a previous copyright lawsuit.[74] However, on January 5, 2012, EMI sued Grooveshark over non-payment of royalties[75] stating in their complaint that Grooveshark failed to provide "a single accounting statement".[76] As a result, EMI dropped its licensing agreement with Grooveshark.[77] Much of EMI is now owned by Universal Music Group.

Independent labels

Grooveshark had licensing deals with a number of independent record labels,[78] such as Sun Records.[79][80]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Grooveshark.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info – DomainTools". WHOIS. Retrieved 2016-08-05.
  2. ^ Lindvall, Helienne (9 September 2011). "Behind the music: Why Grooveshark takes a bite out of artists' earnings". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
  3. ^ "On-Demand Digital Music Service Grooveshark Selects Juniper Networks EX Series Switching Platforms to Build Scalable Cloud-Based Infrastructure and Improve User Experience". Yahoo! Finance. 14 June 2010. Archived from the original on 28 September 2010. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  4. ^ Shames, Jade (13 May 2011). "Is Grooveshark the Future of Digital Streaming?: The Secrets of the Popular Streaming Site You're Probably Listening to Right Now". LA Weekly. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
  5. ^ Musil, Steve. "Grooveshark now feels lawsuit wrath of all major music labels: EMI, which had a licensing agreement with the music streaming service, alleged in a breach of contract lawsuit that it had not been paid any royalties". CNET. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
  6. ^ "Facebook Breaks Up With Grooveshark (Updated Again) | Evolver.fm". evolver.fm. Retrieved 2018-01-28.
  7. ^ Bishop, Bryan (28 August 2012). "Official Grooveshark app for Android returns to Play Store". The Verge. Retrieved 2 May 2015. Streaming music service Grooveshark has been under a legal assault from major record labels for quite some time now, but that won't be an impediment for Android users any longer: the official Grooveshark app is once again available in the Google Play Store. As noted by the Wall Street Journal, the return of the app comes less than two months after a judge in New York ruled against Universal's argument that the safe-harbor provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) didn't apply to recordings originating before 1972.
  8. ^ "App For Grooveshark, Keeping The Groove on BlackBerry 10". BerryReview. 24 October 2013. Retrieved 2 May 2015. This morning was an update for App for Grooveshark. a great Built for BlackBerry certified app.
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  22. ^ Riley, Duncan (26 August 2008). "Grooveshark Autoplay: Pandora for the rest of us". Inquisitr. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
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  37. ^ Wauters, Robin. "Rejected By Apple, Grooveshark Releases App For Jailbroken iPhones On Cydia". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2018-01-28.
  38. ^ Hong, Kaylene. July 15th 2014 TheNextWeb. "Grooveshark now lets you pay for its music streaming service with Bitcoin"
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  45. ^ Sarah, Viva (16 July 2015). "StreamSquid saves your Grooveshark playlists – Magazine". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
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  56. ^ "What is Grooveshark Anywhere?". Archived from the original on 2012-11-27. Retrieved 2011-10-17.
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  62. ^ Movie Studios Win ISP Blockade Against EZTV and YIFY-Torrents
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  66. ^ a b Lawsuit claims Grooveshark workers posted 100,000 pirated songs. Greg Sandoval, CNET, November 21, 2011
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  68. ^ "You say you want a revolution? Music industry in turmoil again.", "FoxNews.com", 18 July 2012. Retrieved on 12-11-12.
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  70. ^ Alex Pham, Billboard (23 Apr 2013). "Universal Music Group Wins Appeal Against Grooveshark". Holywood Reporter. Retrieved 13 Dec 2013.
  71. ^ a b McMillan, Graeme (21 November 2011). "Universal Music sues music streaming service for 100,000 illegal uploads". Time Magazine. Retrieved 30 May 2011.
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  74. ^ Van Buskirk, Eliot (2009-10-13). "EMI Drops Suit Against Grooveshark, Licenses It Instead". Wired. Retrieved 2011-11-01.
  75. ^ "Digital music service Grooveshark sued by EMI". Reuters. 2012-01-06. Retrieved 2012-01-05. Jonathan Stempel, Reuters
  76. ^ McMillan, Graeme (6 January 2012). "Now Grooveshark is being sued by EMI Music". Time Magazine. Retrieved 30 May 2011.
  77. ^ Sandoval, Greg (3 April 2012). "EMI, Grooveshark's only major label, tears up contract". Cnet. Retrieved 9 July 2013.
  78. ^ Sanders, Rick. "In Grooveshark's Defense: Red Flags and Financial Benefit (Part 7 in our Online Music Services Series)". Aaron Sanders PLCC. Retrieved 9 July 2013.
  79. ^ "Grooveshark Signs Licensing Deal With Sun Records". Retrieved 2011-11-01.
  80. ^ "Grooveshark Labels List". Archived from the original on 2007-10-13. Retrieved 2011-10-17.
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