I was an occasional user of Grooveshark, and whenever I used the service (which had a brilliant UI, by the way) I found myself wondering how they could still be operating, given that they weren't licensed by the major labels. It felt like Napster in a web app, only more centralized (and thus, easier to take down, one would think).
Well, the answer seems to be that they have been fighting the major labels in the court this whole time (~5 years). Unlike maybe everyone else who has faced up against the major labels, Grooveshark forced them to fight. When the labels didn't give them a licensing deal, and told them to stop operating, Grooveshark responded, "Make us."
They created their tech, built a loyal following, grew their business, all the while fighting this lawsuit. In the end, the only thing that stopped them from pursuing their vision was a judges' order. This settlement seems to be a judge-mediated settlement of only the damages portion of the trial after liability had been established. It seems that the judge ruled against Grooveshark by summary judgement in September, which means they have known for more than 7 months that this was inevitable. They shut down their service 2 days ago.
People have called Grooveshark "shady", and many people believe that their business model was "illegal". Both adjectives may be accurate descriptions. I think the best adjective to describe these guys, however, is "gutsy".
Second:
The front-end system that Grooveshark built, which is the best that I have used for music playback and discovery, is now jointly owned by the major labels. They cannot possibly be short-sighted enough just to throw that away. Will we see Grooveshark resurrected as a label-owed alternative to Spotify, et al? Will they try to maintain any portion of the Grooveshark organization, especially the engineering team? Again, they would be foolish not to try, although maybe I'm giving them too much credit.
> The front-end system that Grooveshark built [...] is now jointly owned by the major labels. They cannot possibly be short-sighted enough just to throw that away.
Uhhh. I'm honestly confused. Is this sarcasm? Because if there's one thing that major labels have demonstrated, it's a willingness to be short-sighted.
I hope that you're logically consistent and also consider other people who make their money by trampling on rights to be gutsy. for instance, gangsters, fraudsters, spammers... all have a similar business model in that they make money by ignoring the legal framework of their chosen business. certainly does take guts!
How good was their business model? They survived for 10 years, including financing what I'm sure were expensive legal battles, but how much of that was from revenue and how much from equity/debt financing?
It's really unfortunate that they were taken down. Sure, there exist paid services like Spotify, but when there's only licensable content you miss out on all weird obscure stuff that Grooveshark had, like video game soundtracks, chiptunes, and international music not licensed abroad.
If only every one of these large record labels could just instantly go out of business, simultaneously. That would be wonderful...
I'd be perfectly happy to pay for music streaming like I pay for Netflix: unlimited access for a flat monthly fee. However, I'm not willing to pay for a monthly service from every individual record label I want to listen to, and still miss out on content I want.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's very likely that a paid service which behaves in a more legitimate way than Grooveshark can really have all of the content in one place, because of all of the agreements necessary.
For some reason I don't mind Netflix having only a subset of TV shows and movies, but I would mind a music service that doesn't have a nearly-complete catalog of everything I might want. I don't want to have to care what label owns the tracks. Perhaps I'm just spoiled by having Grooveshark for so long.
I'm curious to know what will happen with all the user data on their systems. There was a site floating around which allowed you to access your playlist information just by entering your account email. I assume that was old public data.
And with services like this, is there any threat to users who access 'illegal' material?
I find it interesting that by virtue of point 5, they are not allowed to open source anything related to Grooveshark. Unless I'm interpreting it wrong.
Can anyone comment on the potential implications for Apple iTunes, Google Play Music, and Amazon Prime Music? Each of these services allow users to upload content from their personal libraries. As far as I know, these services make no technological effort to assert the users' ownership of the content. Rather, I assume their Terms of Service mandate content ownership prior to uploading. Do their TOSs protect them from the complaint levied by the Plaintiffs in the Groovershark case stating that Groovershark was: "liable for direct and secondary infringement of certain of the Plaintiffs' copyrighted works;". Was Grooveshark's TOS materially different than that of the services mentioned above?
If I were to illegally upload a copyrighted work to Prime, iTunes, or Play; would I expose the parent companies to any liability or is the legal onus entirely on me as the user infringing on the TOS?
From what I understand those 50 millions will only be paid with assets from grooveshark. If groovershark the company doesn't have assets to cover the 50 million they will not get paid and also can't get paid from the individuals.
There have been large settlements in the past that turned out to be false. They want a high number for shock value, but nobody's actually paying it. (There was something to that effect in the sony docs iirc.) See: Hotfile, Isohunt, etc.
Keep in mind that the founders were also sued personally (it's a common tactic by the labels). The leverage of the settlement was to keep the entirety of the 50M due within the company and not be personally liable as individuals for the amount (for life).
I'm confused, didn't Grooveshark just provided aggregation and a streaming player with playlist management? The music was not hosted by Grooveshark right?
I remember reading that after rights-owners requested certain songs taken down, Grooveshark employees would re-upload them to the service. This made them lose safe-harbor provisions for hosting third-party content.
[+] [-] legutierr|11 years ago|reply
First:
I was an occasional user of Grooveshark, and whenever I used the service (which had a brilliant UI, by the way) I found myself wondering how they could still be operating, given that they weren't licensed by the major labels. It felt like Napster in a web app, only more centralized (and thus, easier to take down, one would think).
Well, the answer seems to be that they have been fighting the major labels in the court this whole time (~5 years). Unlike maybe everyone else who has faced up against the major labels, Grooveshark forced them to fight. When the labels didn't give them a licensing deal, and told them to stop operating, Grooveshark responded, "Make us."
They created their tech, built a loyal following, grew their business, all the while fighting this lawsuit. In the end, the only thing that stopped them from pursuing their vision was a judges' order. This settlement seems to be a judge-mediated settlement of only the damages portion of the trial after liability had been established. It seems that the judge ruled against Grooveshark by summary judgement in September, which means they have known for more than 7 months that this was inevitable. They shut down their service 2 days ago.
People have called Grooveshark "shady", and many people believe that their business model was "illegal". Both adjectives may be accurate descriptions. I think the best adjective to describe these guys, however, is "gutsy".
Second:
The front-end system that Grooveshark built, which is the best that I have used for music playback and discovery, is now jointly owned by the major labels. They cannot possibly be short-sighted enough just to throw that away. Will we see Grooveshark resurrected as a label-owed alternative to Spotify, et al? Will they try to maintain any portion of the Grooveshark organization, especially the engineering team? Again, they would be foolish not to try, although maybe I'm giving them too much credit.
[+] [-] Lazare|11 years ago|reply
Uhhh. I'm honestly confused. Is this sarcasm? Because if there's one thing that major labels have demonstrated, it's a willingness to be short-sighted.
[+] [-] oldmanjay|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsbechtel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Confusion|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FreakyT|11 years ago|reply
If only every one of these large record labels could just instantly go out of business, simultaneously. That would be wonderful...
[+] [-] whichfawkes|11 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, I don't think it's very likely that a paid service which behaves in a more legitimate way than Grooveshark can really have all of the content in one place, because of all of the agreements necessary.
For some reason I don't mind Netflix having only a subset of TV shows and movies, but I would mind a music service that doesn't have a nearly-complete catalog of everything I might want. I don't want to have to care what label owns the tracks. Perhaps I'm just spoiled by having Grooveshark for so long.
[+] [-] Osaka|11 years ago|reply
And with services like this, is there any threat to users who access 'illegal' material?
[+] [-] detaro|11 years ago|reply
EDIT: which they obviously shouldn't be able to do. So they probably scraped it, right.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Vintila|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radley|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acaloiar|11 years ago|reply
If I were to illegally upload a copyrighted work to Prime, iTunes, or Play; would I expose the parent companies to any liability or is the legal onus entirely on me as the user infringing on the TOS?
[+] [-] therobot24|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psykovsky|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ikeboy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radley|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arihant|11 years ago|reply
I'm confused, didn't Grooveshark just provided aggregation and a streaming player with playlist management? The music was not hosted by Grooveshark right?
[+] [-] LiquidFlux|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThrustVectoring|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darylyu|11 years ago|reply