Grooveshark Ceases Operations

The streaming service Grooveshark announced on its website tonight that it will be shutting down permanently owing to the company’s failure to obtain licenses for the vast majority of music on the site.

As Exclaim reports, Grooveshark faced a $17 Billion lawsuit that was organized by a coalition of major labels in 2011. Earlier this month, a judge ruled that Grooveshark had willfully violated the copyright on thousands of songs, and could potentially owe multiple millions of dollars in damages. Grooveshark’s shut down is effective immediately.

In the official announcement on the Grooveshark website, the company wrote:

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

 Read our article on Tidal and the Elusive Promise of Streaming Music.

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