Grooveshark

~ obituary ~

Grooveshark was launched in 2007 by Sam Tarantino, Andrés Barreto, and Josh Greenberg, three undergraduate students at the University of Florida. The premise was clean: a website where you could stream any song, free, without registering, with a clean modern interface. The catalogue was huge. Nearly every popular song of the previous five decades was findable. The site felt, in 2008-2010, like the future of music.

The catalogue was, almost entirely, unlicensed. Songs were uploaded by users (Grooveshark called this "user-generated content," a description the courts later dismissed), while major labels and indie labels alike sued the company repeatedly through 2010-2014. Grooveshark fought, lost, and was finally shut down on April 30, 2015 as part of a settlement with the major labels. The site was replaced overnight with an apology letter and links to legitimate streaming services.

~ the record ~

~ what grooveshark felt like ~

The Grooveshark experience in 2010 was, the music streaming experience years ahead of when streaming legitimately existed:

• No login required. Type a URL. Search a song. Press play. The song streams. There was no friction.
• Catalogue completeness. Almost every song you could think of was there. Mainstream pop, deep cuts from your favourite indie band, a Romanian folk song you heard once in 2003, all findable. Spotify's catalogue in 2010 was much smaller and locked behind regional restrictions. iTunes was paid downloads. Grooveshark's "free and complete" combination was simply unmatched.
• The interface was good. Playlists, queues, search, and playback all felt designed by people who used the product. The UI was, by the standards of 2010 web apps, surprisingly polished.

For the period 2009-2012, Grooveshark was, for many users, the music streaming experience. They did not use Spotify (not yet available in many countries). They did not buy iTunes downloads. They opened Grooveshark, queued up an album, and went about their day.

~ how it actually worked ~

Grooveshark's legal posture was the "user-uploaded" defense. Anyone could upload a song. The platform served the file when other users wanted to stream that song, which is why grooveshark argued, on DMCA grounds, that they were a neutral host; not a music service, and that their job was to remove infringing content when notified.

The argument was technically inventive but legally fragile. Internal documents, leaked during litigation, showed that Grooveshark employees had themselves uploaded thousands of songs from major labels' catalogues. The company's CEO had given direct instructions to employees to seed the catalogue with popular music, while the "user-generated" defense fell apart when those documents reached the courts.

The 2014 ruling in UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Escape Media Group (the company that owned Grooveshark) found that Grooveshark had committed willful copyright infringement. The damages potential was estimated at $700 million to $17 billion under maximum statutory penalties. The company settled for about $50 million plus shutdown.

~ the april 30 shutdown ~

The shutdown announcement was a single page replacing the grooveshark.com URL. The page contained a confession (Grooveshark had infringed copyright at scale), an apology, and links to Spotify, Apple Music, and other legitimate services. The page also asked former Grooveshark users to "support the artists you love by paying for music."

The shutdown was, by most accounts, the major labels' last big public victory in their two-decade war against unlicensed music streaming. The labels had been losing public relations battles since Napster, though the Grooveshark settlement felt, at the time, like a reset.

By 2015, however, the legitimate streaming services were good enough that the demand for an unlicensed alternative had declined. Spotify had launched in the US (2011) and was capable, free with ads, and globally available. Apple Music launched two months after Grooveshark's shutdown. The user demand Grooveshark had served was now legitimately addressable. Grooveshark's death was, in commercial terms, less consequential than it would have been five years earlier.

~ the absence ~

The unlicensed completeness. Spotify's catalogue is large but not complete. Apple Music's catalogue is large but not complete. Many regional, vintage, and obscure releases simply never made it to legitimate streaming. Grooveshark's "user-uploaded" model meant any song someone had ripped from CD was findable. We have not since had a service that complete.

The frictionless experience. Spotify and Apple Music both require accounts. Many countries gate their services by region. Grooveshark required none of this. Type, search, listen. The discoverability was higher because the cost was zero. Modern services have higher production quality but more friction.

The implicit user permission. Grooveshark's casual users were technically infringing copyright. Almost none of them thought they were. The site's "free and complete" feel made the act of streaming feel legal. The end of Grooveshark was, the end of the period when "music online" felt like a free public utility. After 2015 it became a managed commercial service.

~ the eulogies ~

"my entire freshman year of college (2010) was scored by grooveshark. i discovered every band i still listen to. when grooveshark shut down i could not find half those bands on spotify because their licensing had gone elsewhere. some are still missing." - m.k. 33

"i used grooveshark from 2008 to 2015. i had thousands of carefully-curated playlists. when the site shut down i lost them all. spotify did not have an import function. i started over. nine years of listening history erased in a settlement i was not party to.", e.ö. 36

"the grooveshark shutdown announcement asked us to 'support the artists we love by paying for music.' i did not feel guilty. i felt taught a lesson by a corporation. the artists i had discovered through grooveshark, i had since paid for. the model worked. the model was illegal.", a.r. 39