The following is a letter delivered to Digital Music News from an individual claiming to be an ex-Grooveshark employee. It has not been edited.
______________________________________________________
Hey paul —
I’m one of the guys who went down in flames at grooveshark. You probably know my name and I’m in the legal papers but I’m not gonna provide anything more than that. So I’m gonna keep this pretty brief but wouldn’t waste my time writing this if I didn’t think you’d publish it for all the entire industry to see. And that’s going out to you UMG.
After you read this you’re gonna see just how pathetic and arbitrary this whole thing was and why I’m doing what I’m doing. I really just had to laugh when you called out the RIAA for not being able to shut gs down. Yeah that old fart making $1.6 mil has no fucking idea what he’s up against — which exaplains why we’re still live right now. See the RIAA is busy suing grooveshark.io while I’ve already got grooveshark.li live for 10 days. So when they get to that I already have the next one ready to go — see how this works? Always one step ahead, because when you shut down li I aleady have 12 more in my back pocket. And that’s just the layer you can see.
“artists never see any of that — EVER.”
So you’re probably asking why I’m doing this for no money, just the fame hah. Well it’s simple really — you see gs really could have been a big allie to the entire industry and artists but about 3 guys decided that we should be killed while Spotify and rdio and Youtube lived. We had Beluga which was one of the best and innovative tools for artists that they could access independently, or through a label, not to mention Youtube was paying a fraction of us and offering no analytics and sometimes NOTHING. Same thing with Pandora, Spotify and pretty much everyone else who claims that they are helping artists (hint they’re not). See half your readers vilify gs but really it’s a smear campaign. And somehow Youtube and Spotify doesn’t get touched but we look like criminals.
“…the labels ONLY care about getting $1.6 million salaries…”
We’re the bad guys, but WHY ?? — well that’s simple: the labels ONLY care about getting $1.6 million salaries and screwing everyone else who gets in the way of that. And now that you got that Sony contract you can no one gets paid except for a few guys at the top. They even fired the lawyer at UMG in the middle of our case because he wanted more money — so less for them, see? But really they decided that gs was the bad guy because we didn’t want to pay the $20 million to line their pockets. And they didn’t think we could do an I.P.O. So we were USELESS to them even though we were helping 1000s of artists every day. And trust me it’s money THEY keep artists never see any of that — EVER.
They killed gs for that reason and that reason alone. Even though we were the audio equivalent of Youtube and one of the biggest sites on the planet for music — and giving something back to artists with Chevy, Mercedes, Netflix, not to mention artists working with us. You see it’s all who wants to play ball with Doug Morris and Lucian Grainge, and if you won’t pay $20 mil you’re on the shit list — even though we had tons of indie local artists that had nothing to do with any of that but now get NO benefit whatsoever now. We wanted to help out but only if it was actually helping someone not just 3 guys at the top.
“So you happy now music industry?”
It’s sad, but they didn’t just pull the plug on gs they also pulled the plug on beluga. Not to mention all the analytics and petabytes of data. Which includes playlists from 100,000s of users from all over the world. All flushed down the toilet. And trust me the major labels didn’t even want to see that in the end. cuz it’s not about that for them.
So I hope you have a better understanding of how corrupt and FIFA this whole music industry is. They shut down a perfectly good site for some bullshit that Sam did 7 years ago when he was 22 and now regrests. And the whole time making us look like criminals. So because we don’t have goldman paying $20 million to line the pockets? They just dug up some dirty emails and shut it down after running us dry. So you happy now music industry? You just fucked yourselves over and made a problem that will be 10 times as bad that you can NEVER control. And artists LOSE again.
and just so I can be 100% clear: GROOVESHARK WILL NEVER DIE! I’m gonna make sure of that
oh by the way don’t even try to trace back where this came from you’re wasting your time.
Sincerely yours
gs_forever
(somewhere in Europe)
<blockquote cite="half your readers vilify gs but really it’s a smear campaign where somehow Youtube and Spotify doesn’t get touched but we look like criminals.”>
Umm, what? This guy has obviously never visited this site before.
uh on here everyday. Enought to know there’s always a bunch of people rushing to Spotify’s defense and people saying they’re the good guys —
Spotify and YouTube are constantly being vilified, by both readers and Paul. Cool manifesto, tho. You don’t sound crazy at all.
I’m not crazy, I just don’t believe in all that “Intellectual Property” crap. It’s nothing but 0’s and 1’s, you know.
So you don’t lose anything when I steal it.
You should post all your GS coding, then. You know, since everything should be free and available.
Just steal it, I hereby officially give you my permission.
ok guys, the gs_forever above is a fucking fraud, you definitely DON’T have my permissiont o steal my site!! GROOVESHARK WILL NEVER DIE!
To the imposter – stealing people’s identities is criminal, I can sue you for that.
So you can steal our music but we can’t steal your site? Doesn’t seem very open and anti-IP of you.
Sounds like you’re just a piece of shit with a tiny dick.
anonymous stfu…. you obviously know nothing about grooveshark. this employee is 100% right. all the industries cared about was the money. they didnt realize that grooveshark was helping every artist all day 24/7. if anything the music industries should be sued for shutting down an amazing site everybody loved and was perfectly legal. try to take a look at other music sites; such as soundcloud. they jus steal shit off of youtube every single day and try to make it their own. no music site even compares to grooveshark and the industries just caused one of the biggest problems in history of earths existence
“the industries just caused one of the biggest problems in history of earths existence”
lol
wtf is so funny about the truth??
If I read the original news story right, Grooveshark had to hand over all the coding and rights. It’s not even theirs to steal anymore. Losers.
LOL
GS was operating under the assumption that they were immune from prosecution for copyright infringement because of DMCA safe harbor rules. They were prosecuted because they weren’t. There was no preferential treatment given to record labels.
GS would still be in existence today if they weren’t caught breaking the law. It’s that simple.
they didnt break any law. its just a scheme to get more money into the industries pockets. they never infringed their copyrights or any of this other bullshit that was said they did. IT NEVER HAPPENED. i cant believe people actually believe this crap that grooveshark was illegal because it wasnt. again, all the industries care about is the money. other sites were also doing shit but the industries never came onto them but they come onto grooveshark. its honestly hypocritical and its unfair
You got one supporter here. Didnt know much about grooveshark or spotify until today. Keep doing what you do
Cool story, bro
I do not see the real ‘bad’ guys being punished… Type in everyday, simple words for your children’s homework research and watch how many porn sites pop open and continue to appear as you try to close each. Waiting for the explanation of how sharing ones love of music with others is harmful? GS is a wonderful globally-connected site that allowed everyday folks a chance to share their music collection with others. A great way to meet folks with the same music interest and to learn about artists that one may not have known about or been exposed to. Many struggling artists (new and not so new) shared their music on GS for everyone to enjoy. I purchased music (mostly CD’s) as a result of discovering new artists on GS. With obtained permissions, GS should be able to exercise their freedom of speech…
If you can honestly sit there and type “somehow Youtube and Spotify doesn’t get touched” with regard to this site, you’re seriously retarded. This place’s address might as well be fuckspotify.com.
Also, so you’re going to illegally post artists’ music, with no pay, to spite labels? Yea, makes sense….
I was going to say the same thing about Spotify and YouTube… 🙂
Why is this guy acting like he’s the music industry’s Edward Snowden?
I think he’s fake, invented by the RIAA to make Grooveshark look ridiculous.
The folks at Grooveshark really did care about the music and the musicians, no matter what the bitter technophobes say. And this employee is pretty much telling it like it is. The music industry is just a cog in the repugnant, corrupt corporate plutocracy that must be toppled. Over the last few decades, a few rich assholes steadily transformed humanity’s greatest expressive/communicative art form into a culturally bankrupt cash cow to fund yachts and underage sex parties. Musicians don’t need it, fans don’t need it, and technologists will enable music to change the world again, by disseminating it freely so artists can thrive in a culture of truly independent and innovative entrepreneurship.
You had me up until :
and technologists will enable music to change the world again, by disseminating it freely so artists can thrive in a culture of truly independent and innovative entrepreneurship.
Maybe if technologists did a little less “liberating”, actual innovative entrepreneurship would take hold and artists would be surviving much better.
So the music industry has not fostered brilliant music?
I don’t want my music disseminated “freely”. I can already do that. I always could. I want to make a living from it, as I always have, but that is becoming less and less possible. If I cannot, then music would be relegated to a part-time hobby, and I would not be able to put the time and energy in required to even aspire to good music.
Also, nazis really care about jews.
GrooveShark is one of a kind, sure there are other similar, but nothing as great. I can’t count how many bands and artists I’ve discovered and purchase them through music from single songs I’ve found on group sharp or shared with me by another friend on Grooveshark. Also I have shared many of these bands with many friends that I’ve also purchased their albums and has made some big differences especially with some of the smaller artists are upcoming artists. Sure this does not do a whole lot of help for the huge artists they’re already on the radio and television and played in stores and malls and skating rinks xcetera but I’m pretty sure those artists are not hurting for money I popularity or fame anyway I know I wouldn’t complain if I had 30 million dollars instead of 32 million dollars or whatever it may be but if I had only sold 20 albums and then was able to sell 200 because people discovered me on Grooveshark then that would be a huge difference so Grooveshark is amazing for ninety-nine percent of artists because only 1% are those big artists and as I stated before if they’re that big then they don’t need another million when they are already worth millions but the small artist need every record sale and Grooveshark helps with that so much and not only that but people that just like to listen to music on Grooveshark it is one of the greatest music tools / sites /apps ever been created so pat on the back to the creator of Grooveshark and its employees thank you for all that you have done.
“The folks at Grooveshark really did care about the music and the musicians, no matter what the bitter technophobes say.”
————————
lol
It’s true, though. Why would we steal it if we didn’t care about it?
This presumably isn’t the same employee who blew the whistle on Grooveshark’s dirty practices, e.g. employees being ordered to upload music files, and who Grooveshark then attempted to identify by sueing DMN.
I’m not sure whether *this* employee is an idiot or just a cnut. He says, in all seriousness, that ‘about 3 guys decided that we should be killed while Spotify and rdio and Youtube lived’ – like there is no difference between Spotify and Rdio and Grooveshark. Whereas in reality Spotify and Rdio have been licenced and legitimate from the get-go, however much people may grumble at the low rates of royalties. But here’s the thing: a large reason why the royalties are so low is that legitimate services are always undercut by the cnuts like Grooveshark.
As for YouTube, it was originally no better than Grooveshark, but under legal pressure has semi-cleaned up its act with the ContentID system. But here’s the other thing: as revealed in court documents, Grooveshark had its own version of the ContentID system, but used it not to give rights-holders the opportunity of payment, but to help Grooveshark itself evade the DMCA, by keeping a batch of illegal copies hidden in reserve, and ready to be activated as soon as the latest ‘public’ copy was removed by a takedown notice. Maybe your ‘correspondent’ can tell us whether that system was ever abandoned?
“like there is no difference between Spotify and Rdio and Grooveshark. Whereas in reality Spotify and Rdio have been licenced and legitimate from the get-go, however much people may grumble at the low rates of royalties.”
Aren’t you the same DavidB that tried to suggest that Pandora and Spotify – which are licensed, royalty-paying services – are “pirates” over in the in the Frank Black thread?
I did comment on the Frank Black thread, but I didn’t say what you claim, or anything like it. Do you have a reading disability? If not, maybe you could read what I say in this thread and reply to it, instead of throwing insults around. Incidentally, I did not refer to Pandora at all.
…and Pandora is not a licensed service in the same sense as Spotify or Rdio. It operates under a statutory licence which gives artists and labels no choice in the matter. I would describe it as ‘legal’ but not ‘legitimate’.
DavidB
“…and Pandora is not a licensed service in the same sense as Spotify or Rdio. It operates under a statutory licence which gives artists and labels no choice in the matter.”
I get the difference between statutory and non-statutory licenses (that’s why I can’t make a playlist on Pandora, eh?…..) But they are BOTH licenses. All of these services are licensed – and NOT pirates.
And nobody really gives a fuck what you might think is “legitimate” or not. In the Frank Black thread, you actually said that Spotify is “stealing” Frank Black’s product. Your opinions and their basis are obviously to be disgarded.
All of these services are licensed and legal. Deal with it.
Oh, I see your logic… if it’s “legal” then it’s good? Are you serious, being intentionally evil, or are you just retarded? If the later is true, then bless your heart, and I hope you find help.
Sarcasm and inciting statements aside for the moment, please let me take your argument to the extreme and show its fallacy: if the government legalizes killing another human being for sport, does that somehow mean it is not murder? Likewise the government cannot define theft. IT can enforce some theory of theft, test it in society to see if it has an expedient outcome, etc., but Something is either theft or it is not, regardless of what the government says it is.
“Oh, I see your logic… if it’s “legal” then it’s good? Are you serious, being intentionally evil, or are you just retarded?
Actually, it’s you that is apparently deficient in reading comprehension skills and quite possibly retarded.
The “logic” presented above wasn’t ANYTHING like “if it’s ‘legal’ then it’s good.”
The poster made the point – quite clearly – that if it is “legal (i.e. “licensed) then it is….
…wait for it….
…. then it is “licensed.
Licensed services are, um, well, licensed. Sometimes through different licensing methods, but all licensed, nonetheless.
Can you understand that?
“If the government legalizes killing another human being for sport, does that somehow mean it is not murder?
Well, to engage this unbelievably stupid example, if the government legalizes killing another human being for sport – and calls that particular act something other than ‘murder’ – then yes, that does mean it is not murder?
This is just incredibly dumb:
“Likewise the government cannot define theft.”
Just for shits-n-giggles, please tell us who “defines” theft?
Moron.
y’know, I like music. I used grooveshark, and now I use spotify. No biggy, I just like music
yep.
and just what kind of pointless, unintelligent comment was that?
yep
“helping 1000s of artists every day”
Wish there were some elaboration on that, or some explanation as to how they were helping artists.
I just don’t see it.
I just wish we could say no to their help.
Right to say no is 1hat the permissionless innovation culture doesn’t get. So anti-market. Don’t let the digital libertarianism bullshit fool you. No different from the other IP sealers..
And if I hear “technophobe” one more time I’m gonna push an idiot through a window. NOT an argument against the Web or streaming. That’s awesome. Just pay for the work you’re using to build your company. Simple.
I think you’re onto something here. I like streaming too, I just wish I could feel better about the fairness of the economics overall.
…I would guess by “helping” , he means giving artists “exposure”, because we all know that exposure = paying consumers evetually, right? …RIGHT? All that’s missing here is GS offering free beer, since we now know that exposure and free beer is now a legitimate currency for artists to pay bills and put food on the table!
Techno-utopians can be so draconian (face palm)
I uploaded my music to GS and managed to get a fair number of fans and got my music played on some of the radio stations there. Now that is all gone.
Anonymity proves nothing.
“Yeah that old fart making $1.6 mil has no fucking”
Sorry, you lost me there…
This poor kid is the perfect example of why Grooveshark failed. They had the chance to be Spotify. This guy doesn’t know enough about his own beloved company to know why that didn’t happen. There were a lot of people at Grooveshark that really cared about music and artists. Naive for sure, but you can grow out of that, just like Youtube.
Grooveshark could have made a much bigger and very practical difference, but instead 3 guys at Grooveshark chose ego and ideology.
If you honestly think this is a Grooveshark employee and not the same idiot behind Grooveshark.io who was outed as a fraud, check your fundamentals.
Might be the same person behind grooveshark.io, Might be a friend of the person behind grooveshark.io. A few people here could even tell you his name.
Any startup that can’t account to rights holders on a per play basis is going to find it hard to garner any support within the industry.
I’ve heard the argument for the value of analytics a couple of times in the past few days… I wonder how much stock labels put into it, when they tend to see their jobs as foreknowing that information. For instance, if a label signs an act with a specific demographic in mind, what good is it to them to have analytics confirm that teenage girls love Taylor Swift? How often are the analytics surprising? And what did Beluga offer that companies like Next Big Sound or Pollstar don’t already offer? What really is the argument for the value of Grooveshark’s analytics?
Where YouTube gets it right is that they collect a lot of stuff you can’t find anywhere else, that’s not currently in print or being promoted. You can’t go to YouTube for a new blockbuster film, but you can go to it for an obscure Christmas tv special from the ’80s. If Grooveshark focused on the fringes & on artist-uploads, rather than offering stuff like UMG’s current catalog, they probably would’ve fared better, legally. That’s the only reason I ever went to Grooveshark, anyhow… to find stuff that wasn’t anywhere else. It boils down to… you either pay for a full catalog, or you trim the catalog down to stuff rights holders don’t really care about (which undermines the analytics efforts). You can’t have your cake & eat it, too.
This whole campaign is silly.
BTW, like all the pirate apologists, your ‘correspondent’ likes to pretend that the pirates like Grooveshark are just against those wicked ‘major labels’. So while we have him on the line, can he explain why highly-respected independent artists like Robert Fripp and Zoe Keating have bitterly complained against the practical impossibility of getting their work removed from Grooveshark?
“Robert Fripp and Zoe Keating have bitterly complained against the practical impossibility of getting their work removed from Grooveshark”
They simply don’t understand why they need Grooveshark. Just like the Syrians don’t understand why they need Islamic State.
Information will set them free.
Instead of writing a boring letter that serves no purpose but to suck his own dick, why doesn’t this guy just take up yoga?
I think it serves a purpose:
Until today, Grooveshark had a somewhat greyish image: Yes, they stole a lot of money from a lot of musicians, but they also managed to strike deals with some pretty important partners.
Then this total moron comes along and proves they’re just simple criminals.
“it’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission”
This is what happens after you beg forgiveness and aren’t forgiven.
+1 🙂
djg you just earned all of my respect just by saying that
You are awesome and keep up the fight with these a@%hats!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some of us will continue to follow!! 🙂 One day more people will wake the hell up and realize how much this money monopoly is insane. I am tired of all these people demanding an insane amount of money they do not deserve. I am beyond sick of people that get paid millions of dollars to either play a song, or run a corporation, play in sports, or politics, medicine etc.. when so many who work even harder than that are out on the streets homeless. It is invisible money anyway!!! Keep going Grooveshark, there are some of us that woke up a long time ago!!! 🙂
yup…. im sickened by this too……. im with you 100% on that right there
+1 🙂
YOU ARE THE BAD GUYS.
You rationalize your behavior as some sort of heroic move against “the man” of the music industry. Have you considered the massive collateral damage? Your actions are no targeted strike, but a bomb blast to destroy large and small, guilty and innocent. Not all record labels are evil. Not all musicians are rich. In fact, most musicians who manage to make a living work like mad for crumbs.
Because of your actions, musicians are suffering.
You are destroying our livelihood. Why? Why? Only a tiny minority of musicians live the largely fictional rockstar lives portrayed in music videos. The rest of us were always struggling just to keep the lights on and food on the table for ourselves and our families. Now that modest income has been decimated.
WHERE IS YOUR CONSCIENCE?
Please look yourself in the mirror and consider the full repercussions of your actions.
I’m too stupid to make my own money, so I have to steal yours.
Deal with it.
Well, that was not me.
(I also want to steal your money, though.)
Liberate the music from the filthy capitalists who wish to put paywalls around our listening.
Agree, information wants to be free:
Music, movies, patents, names, credit card numbers, social security numbers, state secrets, child porn, bomb manuals, personal diaries — everything has to be available for everybody.
” — everything has to be available for everybody.”
Everything is available but their is a different cost for each.
Some it’s just losing a bit of self respect after stealing, some you just have to sit thru adverts, some you pay money others you pay money, lose self respect and end up in jail if you get caught.
Can you figure out what costs what?
Because this is actually a former Grooveshark employee. I’m sure he was sufficiently vetted by the folks who own this site to prove that. LOL.
Right? Resnikoff would obviously never do that–as that would require journalism–but the number of problems with this are astronomical.
Grooveshark never had any employees in Europe.
This guy’s writing sounds EXACTLY like the idiot behind Grooveshark.io who was outed as a fraud on Boy Genius Report.
Isn’t it funny how every time some “former employee” from Grooveshark openly comments on DMN, it’s always incredibly scathing and/or unverified?
This kind of overblown drama is the best thing about this site. I can’t tell you if this guy has anything to do with grooveshark.io but he definitely worked at Grooveshark.
Considering I worked there for 4 years, I’m calling bullshit on you. But I dig the assertion nonetheless!
Contact Remi Swierczek and see if you can help.
Streaming is neck deep in the Shirky Principle right now.
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”
Dropping venomous comments w/o a real name is kinda wack. I understand why the gs dudes are anonymous, but what about the rest of you righteous dudes?
Consider our current bandwidth trajectory. What’s to stop artists from hosting/monetizing their own streaming in the near future?
There’s nothing to stop an artist from hosting and charging. Some have and more are. One of the questions that arise is about how many listeners/viewers will go to an individual site vs how many will go to a huge aggregated catalog. Clearly more to the latter. But actual payout from the latter may or may not make it worthwhile for the artist to engage in the former.
I’d add that short term economics aside, it’s imperative for the artist to have a lot of participation/control over their metrics and interaction. Third parties wanna offer that, I see there is a big value over the ones that keep the sales info to themselves.
Last word should be latter, got mixed up. Wishing there was an edit feature here in the DMN comments.
Nothing is stopping them from hosting their own streaming nowadays…. but there are two major factors that may make that course of action less than ideal.
1. Building and maintaining your own streaming site is expensive and time-consuming. Do you really want to be in the website hosting and maintaining business? Relevant new features are introduced to the market constantly; are you going to ignore them and slowly develop an outdated website, or are you going to devote serious resources to keeping your own site up to date?
2. Most consumers don’t want artists to have their own sites – because then interacting with them becomes work for the consumer. This includes both obvious work (having to go to multiple separate sites) and subtle forms of work (the mental work of having to actually find the things you want on an individual site with its own special layout, then constantly remembering the differences (available features, payment, account information, user design issues such as layout) between the various individual sites you use. Most importantly, it introduces unnecessary work for the consumer in an environment in which you really want (or should want) your customers to be able to effortlessly make impulse purchases from you.
The solution, it seems to us, is to have a marketplace (a) that is very clean, sleek, and consumer friendly and (2) that offers everything that the artist would have on an individual site, and that lets the artist own and be in control of everything. Everything you want, from features to control and data, packaged the way your fans want.
Best of both worlds, for you and your fans.
To make an semi-professional statement – I don’t want to waste time again yelling around because rightsholders not getting paid for the use of their works…
BUT:
If you use the content of other people (to your advantage) YOU HAVE TO share a portion of your revenue to the rightsholders (if you are not making any money at all you have to pay anyway for the usage). So: rights holders get money for delivering quality content – you get money for delivering a quality technical environment and usabillity.
You got screwed because you did not pay anything to anybody. At least you are still not willing to. Especially not to those who are responsible (for the most part) people creating an account on your website … ah right Facebook & Twitter users who extensively create copyrights neither get a dime! …. aaaand there is soundcloud! …isn’t that case quite similar?? Infringing copyrights for years to raise money for their own porsches (I know you think I’m not appreciating your glorious idea & effort to get together the platform enough…), while arguing with the worth of Playlists and user data…
However, get down to earth! This is on the same level as Russian-pirate-torrent-sites (of course with a higher extend of usability).
Amen.
…also somewhere in Europe
Initially, I was going to add to the discussion as to who did what, when, where and why, when it occurred to me that the matter of who did what, when, where and why is becoming an increasingly difficult task as pointed out by the writer when it was stated: “oh, by the way don’t even try to trace back where this came from you’re wasting your time…(somewhere in Europe).”
Admittedly, after reading the letter the matter of piracy organizations simply redirecting their sites to either one or more alternate addresses upon meeting their demise after many years of litigation first came to mind.
However, having read a Twitter article posted today by “Torrent Freak” captioned “HOLA VPN SELLS USERS’ BANDWIDTH, FOUNDER CONFIRMS” that thought paled by comparison to the nettlesome matter of a peer-to-peer overlay network that employs peer-to-peer caching to accelerate content distribution and peer-to-peer routing that was originally designed to make the Internet faster for users and cheaper for content distributors which is now being used by the ever increasing masses as “P2P” for IP masking.
Hola is “[o]ne of the most popular free VPN/geo-unblocking solutions on the planet.” A further quote from the article states that “[w]hen a user installs Hola, he becomes a VPN endpoint, and other users of the Hola network may exit through his internet connection and take on his IP. This is what makes it free: Hola does not pay for the bandwidth that its VPN uses at all, and there is no user opt out for this…[t]his means that rather than having their IP addresses cloaked behind a private server, free Hola users are regularly exposing their IP addresses to the world but associated with other people’s traffic – no matter what that might contain.” It is noteworthy that the comments add further insight as to the meaning.
What further grabbed my attention after noting that Hola has 46 million users worldwide is that “Hola founder Ofer Vilenski says that his company offers two tiers of service – the free option (which sees traffic routed between Hola users) and a premium service, which operates like a traditional VPN.” Sound familiar?
I am not a technological wizard, so I may be completely mistaken about this (and please feel free to correct me if I am), but is that not basically how the Spotify model operates? I remember reading in some Spotify literature that if a music file is not available to Spotify in a particular country or territory that Spotify would search for a file that was “available” to be played by the user, presumably, a music file that had been previously purchased and uploaded into a Spotify user’s Spotify music player or playlist? But I digress.
For the sake of brevity, this article as well as the “Torrent Freak” article lends further support to the reasonableness of the ideas I previously suggested as a means to eradicate Internet digital piracy, particularly, the idea of levying a $5.00 surcharge (for example) on an internet subscriber at the internet point of access and thereafter putting those monies in a music industry rights holders fund for distribution to the rights holders and eliminating physical digital music format such as compact discs.
This is not an accurate description of how Spotify leveraged it’s peer-to-peer network. I don’t believe it was ever employed to shirk licensing agreements, only for bandwidth efficiencies. For instance, if I listened to a Jay Z song & that data was cached on my computer, a node on the network near me who requests that song may get pieces of that data from me, because reassembling the song from nodes closest on the network was, at the time, quicker than requesting all the data from a central server. Songs that are unavailable due to licensing would only display in playlists (if you opt in through preferences), but those songs are only playable locally.
However, it’s my understanding that the P2P network is no longer employed, & is no longer needed due to distribution network upgrades.
The “internet surcharge” idea is an old one & has been shot down time & time again because it’s just sort of a dumb idea. People who aren’t listening to music ought not have to pay for it, & that’s actually the majority of the internet. Plus internet access is RIDICULOUSLY expensive & slow, compared to the rest of the world… adding a $5 surcharge on top of that is a horrible idea. And then you have the issue of multiple subscriptions… do I pay the surcharge through my home cable internet access or my cell phone data plan? And then collecting all that money is one thing… but how do you distribute $17 billion dollars per year fairly? Obviously you have to have verified services reporting consumption… you can’t just have audio flying around the internet untracked. It’s just not an idea that stands up to scrutiny.
Ultimately, streaming will be slowly adopted by the mainstream in an opt-in fashion, I believe. No need to levy a tax to pay for a pie-in-the-sky FFA access.
As I have previously written extensively regarding my thoughts as to whether or not Spotify employed its network for the purpose of evading licensing, et cetera, in a previous DMN post captioned: “I’m Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. And These Are the Facts…” by Daniel Ek, dated November, 11, 2014, I will not add any further thoughts in that regard at this time.
As I have previously written extensively regarding my thoughts as to an “internet surcharge”, et cetera, in a previous DMN post captioned: “200 Members of Congress Vow to Block ‘Any New Taxes'” by Paul Resnicoff, dated May 13, 2015, I will not add any further thoughts in that regard at this time.
What I will write about however is the issue of bandwidth as touched upon above. Having done some more research, I have learned that your understanding “that the P2P network is no longer employed” is, for the most part, correct.
I read in a TF post captioned “SPOTIFY STARTS SHUTTING DOWN ITS MASSIVE P2P NETWORK” by Ernesto, dated April 16, 2014 that “[t]he music streaming service has started to phase out P2P technology to rely fully on central servers instead.”
More significantly however, I learned among other things “that of all tracks that were not accessed over the Internet, roughly 80% went through the P2P Network” that “[t]his allowed Spotify to reduced server resources and associated costs, which is a pretty big deal for a startup.”
In an article captioned: “Spotify: P2P music streaming” by then Lead Engineer at Spotify Ricardo Vice Santos dated May 26, 2011, there is a 33 frame slideshow, and slide number 22 asks the question “Why P2P?” The answers to that question are “easier to scale”, “less servers”, “less bandwidth”, “better uptime”, “less costs” and “cool!”
In short, Spotify was organized in 2006. Spotify launched its service in the United States in July 2011. In May 2014, Spotify boasted that it had 40 million active users including 10 million subscribers. Spotify started phasing out its P2P network in April 2014.
As Spotify has clearly advertised the “freemium” part of its two-tier system as a free ad-supported music service to the world for nearly a decade, it is not necessary to linger on that point for long as I am reasonably certain that most, if not all of the subscribers, as well as the world were led to believe that the use of the ad-supported part of the Spotify two-tier system was for all intents and purposes – free.
Assuming that the Spotify P2P network utilized a subscribers limited bandwidth (or, an internet service providers bandwidth in cases of unlimited service), the question that begs to be asked is whether or not those subscribers (or, an internet service provider) were informed or otherwise aware of such usage?
If the Spotify P2P network did utilize the bandwidth for nearly a decade in order to reduce their costs should such usage have been set out clearly in their terms of service so that a consumer could make an informed decision as to whether or not to subscribe to the “free” music service?
If those bandwidth costs were in fact passed on to a subscriber, could Spotify properly advertise its service as a free ad-supported music service in order to attract customers?
There are further thoughts which come to mind such as the question of whether or not there is sufficient cause to launch a class action suit on behalf of those 40 million subscribers (as well as whether or not the internet service providers have sufficient cause to initiate an action), but as I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to technology and I am not a lawyer, those further questions may perhaps be better raised and answered by those more competent to do so.
As before, I highly recommend reading the comments sections of the referenced posts for further insight especially if you are not a “techie” which I aver takes no great stretch of the imagination to reach the conclusion that most, if not all Spotify “freemium” users, as well as the world consumers at large are not. In the comments sections you will find comments from those who are relatively knowledgeable as to how the P2P networks operate and, in particular, the Spotify modus operandi.
A few such comments from the TF post captioned “SPOTIFY STARTS SHUTTING DOWN ITS MASSIVE P2P NETWORK” are as follows:
“I figured something like that. I heard about Spotify being blacklisted at many workplaces. This makes more sense if you consider that it occupied upstream bandwidth without asking, and without offering an opt-out.”
“Spotify don’t have a brilliant track record when it comes to giving people choice. And even just giving the option probably wouldn’t have helped at all. Make it opt-in, and 99.99% of people will never activate it, defeating the purpose of the whole thing. Make it opt-out, and most people at workplaces will still be too lazy or stupid to turn it off, getting it banned anyway.”
“Spotify gets banned from workplaces because P2P is a massive bandwidth hog. By getting rid of P2P, they don’t lose the 9-5 work audience to other services. I was a system admin who loves [S]potify but I banned it in any offices I serviced since it will upload 24/7 by default. Measure the bandwidth from Spotify and you’ll be surprised.”
There was one matter that you did not comment on and that was my comment as to the reasonableness of eliminating physical digital music formats such as compact discs. If digital music is encrypted and its use is limited to the respective digital music service providers player, in such circumstances, it seems reasonable that physical digital music formats such as compact discs would be the most obvious source available to a piracy organization to utilize for upload to start the cycle all over again.
Please HOLA out if you have any questions or further comments, and thank you for your reply.
Bandwidth Piracy: Fact or Fiction?
There have been further developments regarding the “Hola” outbreak over the weekend as reported by Torrent Freak (“TF”) in a June 2, 2015 post captioned: “HOLA VPN ALREADY EXPLOITED BY ‘BAD GUYS’, SECURITY FIRM SAYS.”
Among other things, TF reported that “[y]esterday and after several days of intense pressure, Hola published a response [link omitted] in which it quoted Steve Jobs and admitted that mistakes had been made. Hola said that it would now be making it ‘completely clear’ to its users that their resources are being used elsewhere in exchange for a free product.”
Among other things, the Hola response captioned “The recent event on the Hola network” made reference by way of a link to an article published February 24, 2009 captioned “Skype steals bandwidth – even when you are not using it[.]”
Quoting from a “Technical FAQ” in answer to the question of “[h]ow much bandwidth does Skype use when there are no active calls?”, and based on the average usage of 0-0.5 kilobytes/sec while idle” set out in the technical FAQ, that writer calculated that the idle usage amounted to 43 MB per day or 1.3 GB per month.
Interestingly, the “Hola response” further notes the following:
“So how much bandwidth is this really “costing” you? On average about 6MB per day now, which is like an additional 3 web page loads per day or 15 seconds of a YouTube clip. You can choose this ‘value exchange’ model, or opt out with the Hola premium ($5 per month).”
I recommend reading the comments as well as all of the attached links for further insights into the matter.
I also have a few questions regarding the time frame during which Spotify utilized its P2P network, specifically, from 2006 until April 2014 when Spotify began to phase out its P2P network, which are as follows:
Does anyone know if Spotify ever informed its users that they were incurring these costs?
If so, when and by what means did that notification take place?
If such notification did take place, whether or not Spotify’s users were offered the choice to opt-out?
Also, for greater certainty, is there a monetary value attributable to such bandwidth usage, that is to say, did a Spotify “free ad-supported” user unknowingly incur an actual monetary loss for such bandwidth usage?
LDP3, do you read every EULA that you agree to? I would be very surprised if you said you did. It’s been my experience that no one has time to learn every fanciful tech detail of every application they use, nor do they care.
I’m sure the P2P usage was vaguely described in the TOS. They’ve never been shy about talking about it. Like you mentioned, that Ricardo Vice Santos pres has been floating around since 2011. Ek, himself, has spoken about it openly at events like SXSW as far back as 2010.
Daniel Ek worked for a p2p company before starting Spotify, so it’s no surprise that he felt p2p was the most efficient way to structure the network. And it was for a time. Spotify could not have otherwise achieved its responsiveness.
The Spotify desktop client has been banned at certain workplaces, & justifiably so in some cases, but so have been many other bandwidth intensive apps. The work around was always 1) the web client, & 2) connecting your phone to work’s wifi & streaming via mobile app. Neither of those clients utilized the p2p network. And now neither does the desktop client.
The consumer bandwidth allotment that was used was mostly if not entirely going to have gone unused, anyhow. We’re talking about upload bandwidth here, but the amount of bandwidth used would be less than a single HD Netflix stream. Also, for most of that time, it’s my understanding that most broadband internet service providers did not have clearly marked limits on bandwidth consumption, & used discretion to cap or limit bandwidth. And any time that would happen, it certainly wouldn’t have been because of Spotify.
You’re wrongly persuaded that this is a big deal. And users have to assume some responsibility for using software by reading the EULA. The idea that this should be spelled out to the user outside of the EULA is ridiculous… this is the very thing that the EULA is for. The bandwidth that an app uses is an expense, just like tires are an expense when you buy a car. Provided that the bandwidth is ultimately serving the user (i.e. the p2p network is improving the performance for the user), they are not “guilty” of anything. This is COMPLETELY different than a user’s bandwidth being sold for commercial purposes, something that benefits HOLA but not the users. (I imagine there are also concerns way beyond just bandwidth when it comes to a p2p vpn network, related to privacy & so on.)
Also, a few notes from your commentary in “I’m Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. And These Are the Facts…” related to previous discussion here.
1) Spotify using the p2p network as a way to get around licensing issues is not a thing. The quick technical answer to why is that Spotify has always gotten the first bit of the song from Spotify servers, & only contacts peers after a sufficient amount of playback has been buffered. So an unlicensed song cannot be initially “fetched” by the Spotify software. (This is well documented in Spotify technical presentations.) The article you referenced titled “How to Sync Your Entire iTunes Library to Spotify’s New ‘My Music’ Section” ultimately suggests enabling offline playability to download songs that Spotify doesn’t have a license for to your mobile via wifi (this can only be accomplished between two devices that are logged into the same Spotify premium account on the same wifi network). Spotify’s mobile apps have never utilized the p2p network, & playback of unlicensed songs can only occur as local mp3 playback. And enabling offline playback for another user’s public playlist does not download that user’s local files, only the files with Spotify licenses. These unlicensed, local playback files are never stored anywhere in Spotify’s network, or transferred over Spotify’s network… only over a local wifi network.
2) So far as I know, offline playback of licensed songs through Spotify’s software are counted towards a user’s plays. I would suspect that a premium subscriber (the only users who can download songs for offline playback) using “offline mode” is required to connect once ever 30 days in order for the software to check if his or her subscription is current, & this is when the plays would be reported. This doesn’t cost Spotify anything… they’re still paying out the same total revenue, it only effects the variables in the algorithm Spotify uses to calculate who gets what.
I’m sure you’re operating under a bunch of other bad assumptions or misunderstandings, but those are the glaring ones. You also have a very longwinded way of writing that is super arduous to read & respond to.
A PENNY SAVED, IS A PENNY EARNED
The definition quoted below can be found in the Digital Audio/Video Distribution Agreement between Spotify and Sony Music, dated January 11, 2011. I am reasonably certain that this definition is in pith and substance the same definition found in the prior and other Spotify Digital Audio/Video Distribution Agreements, and I dare say that it is most likely a boilerplate definition.
“Ad Supported” means a transmission of audio that: (i) is made available to members of the general public WITHOUT CHARGE OF ANY KIND, directly OR INDIRECTLY (i.e. not on a subscription basis OR ANY OTHER BUSINESS MODEL), and (ii) in connection with such programming, the sole source of revenues is derived solely from Gross Revenues). [Emphasis mine.]
What this definition makes clear is that an indirect charge to members of the general public such as the indirect costs incurred by a user when Spotify used the data from their Internet plan’s monthly data allowance (whether such be uninformed, unauthorized or otherwise) transforms the so-called Spotify “Ad Supported” business model into a Spotify “any other business model”, in other words, a business model other than an Ad Supported business model – savvy?
Internet usage is the amount of data sent or received (uploaded or downloaded) through an internet connection.
Publicly advertising a service to the general public as a “free ad-supported” service to attract consumers when in fact it is not is disingenuous to say the least. It is either free or it is not and, obviously, it was not.
Surprise! I do read the TOS (here now assuming that an EULA is the same as the TOS), however, not being a lawyer, I am not absolutely certain that I understand everything as a lawyer would, but I do try to understand.
Be that as it may, what I am absolutely certain of is that there is an extremely high probability that a youth such as a 14 or 16 year old as well as many adults are not going to understand what the Terms of Service mean before agreeing to the same even if they did read them. I believe that even some lawyers struggle with the meaning of the Terms of Service, some of which go on for pages and pages especially when you are further referred to Privacy Policies, Community Guidelines, et cetera, et cetera!
You think my way of writing is super arduous to read, try reading the TOS, et cetera, for just about any app or internet service these days – you practically need a law degree to navigate through most of them let alone understand them – gosh forbid you should have ADD or ADHD!
Then there is the matter of the non-tech oriented users who most likely would not understand what a P2P network was or how it operated even if Spotify openly stated that it utilized a P2P network, especially almost a decade ago when such technology was relatively new!
However, I am reasonably certain that IF Spotify had made it clear to the general public that the so-called “Add Supported” service was not actually free to use, that instead of being free it would use up some indeterminate amount of their internet data plans, the cost of which would fall upon them, that many of those potential consumers may have chose not to use the service. In any event, had they had been aware, they could have made the necessary inquiries as to the actual cost so that they could make an informed decision whether or not to use the service. Depending on what the actual cost to the user was per month, perhaps many of them would have simply made the decision to subscribe, but that is only speculation now. What clearly is not speculation however is that the so-called “Ad Supported” service was not in fact – free.
If it had been made clear to the general public that there were costs involved, it is reasonable to conclude Spotify would not have been advertised and promoted it as a “free ad-supported” service as opposed to a subscription service – see the difference?
I also believe that Spotify did not make it clear that this cost would fall upon the so-called “Add Supported” users because the record labels would have known that Spotify was in breach of their contract unless, of course, the record labels were aware, but chose instead to turn a blind eye to the situation as it reduced operating costs.
Now referring to your comments pertaining to “I’m Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. And These Are the Facts….”
1) “Spotify using the p2p network as a way to get around licensing issues is not a thing. The quick technical answer to why is that Spotify has always gotten the first bit of the song from Spotify servers, & only contacts peers after a sufficient amount of playback has been buffered. So an unlicensed song cannot be initially “fetched” by the Spotify software. (This is well documented in Spotify technical presentations.)”
If it was as you say it was when using its P2P network “that Spotify ha[d] always gotten the first bit of the song from Spotify servers, & only contact[ed] peers after a sufficient amount of playback has been buffered”, wouldn’t that technically be considered a sample of a song (with the rest of the song being sourced from peers) rather than a whole song and, if so, Spotify would have been required to obtain licensing from the publisher as well – right?
If in such circumstances it was technically a sample rather than a whole song, I wonder how that would affect royalty payments to publishers/composers/songwriters? Are they still owed royalties?
I also wonder if that would have an affect on the clauses such as that found in the Lady Gaga contract regarding “blanket licenses” where perhaps artists are still owed more royalties?
I also wonder if in such circumstances it was technically a sample rather than a whole song whether or not Spotify was actually licensed those times it utilized its P2P network in the absence of a license from the publishers/composers/songwriters?
Regarding the remainder of your comment in the first paragraph, I believe that was adequately addressed months ago.
Regarding your comment in paragraph 2, one of the primary concerns was whether or not a premium subscriber could share a song or a playlist with either a free ad-supported user or a Spotify app user and others through one of the many listening room apps Spotify offered at the time when offline. Coincidentally, the listening rooms were immediately shutdown when the issue was first raised and if memory serves me, there was a sharp increase in Spotify operating expenses (I am not suggesting that raising the issue caused those events to take place, I am just noting the coincidences). If such were the case, again referring to the possibility that sharing of songs and playlists in the manner described above and before in my previous post to which you refer were in fact possible, the question that begs to be asked is when would such users ever connect with Spotify proper in order to get a count of the plays (if my memory serves me I believe at the time there 1.5 billion playlists).
In any event, it is 1:52 am and in addition to all of the above and before, I rely on HARPER & ROW v. NATION ENTERPRISES, 471 U.S. 539 (1985).
I thank you for your reply.
Jesus christ. You’re just going out of your way to twist things around in the most bizarre ways into some sort of lawsuit because you have some weird agenda against streaming.
Every internet service you have ever used has consumed some piece of your ISP bandwidth allotment or cellular data plan allotment. That’s what makes it the internet. Internet apps can not work without bandwidth. Because the user was benefiting from the p2p network by receiving faster response times, whether or not they knew outside what is described in the EULA (end user licensing agreement) is irrelevant.
Here’s a list of things every single internet app you’ll ever use is going require: upload bandwidth (your computer talking to other computers), download bandwidth (other computers talking back to your computer), local storage (data being stored or cached on your hard drive or flash memory), CPU (your computer processing the data sent & received). If you have a problem with an app using any of that, DISCONNECT FROM THE INTERNET RIGHT NOW. Because all of that is simply how the internet works. Your claim that any of those are “costs” that make an ad supported service not “free” is RE-TARD-ED & suggests that you fundamentally do not understand what the internet is.
And if anyone doesn’t understand the EULA, that’s not Spotify’s problem in the least. If you don’t understand it & are really that concerned about every gig of data consumed through your internet connection, you can either make the effort to learn about technology or just stop downloading internet apps.
Your “sample” argument is even more dumb. A song is nothing until the data is compiled & it’s played back. No one in their right mind would consider a song downloaded from multiple sources a “sample” in those terms. I mean, that’s really fucking stupid. It’s not being used in a new original work, which is the fundamental thing you would have to prove. The data source(s) is/are irrelevant as it pertains to copyright law.
Re: “Sharing” a song. I don’t think that you have any idea how this works. Sharing a song sends a link to access the song, it doesn’t send the actual song. No copyrighted data is sent. If the song isn’t licensed to a particular user, you get the message “This track is currently not available in the United States. If you have the file on your computer you can import it.” A “share” on Spotify is not tantamount to a “share” on a file sharing service. Furthermore, a local or unlicensed track, as I understand it, would not play through a listening stream because 1) the music is not sent as an audio stream, but as a series of song requests, 2) these requests are relative to the user’s location. This would make the feature difficult to use across borders & I assume it was done away with because of lack of adoption. Again, this doesn’t cost Spotify anything, it’s just a playlist being created on the fly. The number of plays are simply variables in an algorithm that determines what everyone receives out of the payout pool.
Honestly… if you spent 5 minutes actually using the service, you could debunk every one of your conspiracy theories. It’s insane to me that you go into such detail criticizing the service and have not used it. Come to think of it, I’m wasting my time responding to you.
I don’t believe you’re qualified to determine what is & isn’t adequately addressed… you’re just twisting things around in ways that would get you laughed out of a courtroom, nevermind a conversation with anyone who knows the slightest bit about internet technology, or just anyone whose spent any amount of time using the service. You have a peculiar way of writing as if you’re a reasonably intelligent guy, but your interpretations of technology are just ridiculous.
You really ought to go ahead & file your class action lawsuit. I’ll make sure I’ve got plenty of popcorn handy.
To the contrary, I believe that digital streaming is the way of the future and ultimately signals the end of digital media formats such as compact discs. I have averred on more than one occasion that physical digital media such as compact discs are the root of online digital piracy. Technology, and in particular encryption technology, will be the means by which to safeguard digital content whilst physical digital formats such as compact discs will only exacerbate the piracy problem.
Your comments that “[e]very internet service you have ever used has consumed some piece of your ISP bandwidth allotment or cellular data plan allotment” et cetera, et cetera, in paragraphs 2 and 3 are misleading in that the issue in that regard is the consumption of a Spotify users data whilst their computers were IDLE rather than when the consumer was using the service.
Moreover, not once did I refer to a cellular data plan allotment in the context of that particular issue, instead, I specifically referred to the Spotify P2P network which obviously used significant amounts of a so-called “free Ad Supported” users data without their knowledge and thus their informed consent for almost a decade whilst advertising and promoting the service as a “free Ad Supported” service which obviously it was not.
Falsely advertising and promoting the service as a “free Ad Supported” service to attract consumers when in fact it was not a free service not only provided an indirect financial benefit to Spotify in the form of reduced operational costs for nearly a decade, but also provided Spotify with an unfair competitive advantage.
Spotify was obviously aware of the value of that data usage in that they not only designed a system which would allow a user to listen to cached songs and playlists whilst offline for periods of up to 30 days and actively encouraged such usage which seems innocent enough per se, but when viewed in the context of, among other things, valuations and IPOs, both past and present, it is highly relevant in that investors and the public should be informed of those hidden savings of operational costs as Spotify began phasing out their P2P network in June 2014 and, as time will tell, its operational costs will significantly increase over time.
As for your further comments, I will simply state at this juncture that your hostility betrays a certain sense of irony.
You know what services consume bandwidth when they’re idle?
Your e-mail app does. Any mobile app that uses push notifications. Any app that “listens” (Siri, et al). Your browser, whenever a site is hardcoded to refresh, or when it’s searching for software updates, your app store app… In fact, almost every mobile app is going to consume data during the idle state in order to alert you of updates. And mobile bandwidth is far more expensive than broadband bandwidth. You are essentially arguing that almost every free app that uses push notifications is not actually free, & furthermore grounds for a class action lawsuit. Surely you realize how absurd that sounds.
The argument that apps should only consume bandwidth when you, yourself, specifically request data has no place on the modern internet. That’s not the way that the internet is, & it’s not the direction the internet is headed. This is why fiber internet support & larger data plans are critical to support new technologies. What you’re arguing, supposing a lawsuit were successful, would cripple technological development & the adoption of sophisticated infrastructures that benefit users in the end. As the capacity of our internet infrastructure increases, we’ll see a lot more apps doing great things by making more use of bandwidth, even when idle.
One thing that strikes me is that your reaction is very, very American. Not just that you’re so quick to consider a lawsuit, but because our internet is traditionally out of step with Scandinavia & Asia. As recently as 2013, we weren’t even in the top 30 internationally in internet speeds. (We’ve since begun making use of fiber & are at #11.) In Sweden, however, where Spotify is from, local municipalities often own the network infrastructure, thereby controlling the capacities of the network, & ISPs merely provide the service. Sweden has long been a top 10 country when it comes to internet speed, & is currently #5. What we should be pushing is for better bandwidth plans, not less bandwidth consumption. Your argument is totally backwards.
Hi jw,
I read through your entire conversation with Lyle David Pierce the 3rd and I had to signup for a user account just to comment (of course it was easier than most sites). I was really glad to read your last comment as it was the point I was think LDP was missing the entire conversation.
Due to the fact that high-speed, wide bandwidth internet is available to most internet users today, Spotify leveraging a small fraction of your bandwidth (it doesn’t cost you any extra) to provide an unpaid (meaning currency LDP, obviously this is what cost refers to in this case) service is more than acceptable.
We can revisit this case IF a series of popular services arises that consumes bandwidth to the point of denial from the users perspective. What would that cost the user? I guess one less service. On second though, this whole discussion is crazy.
Thanks for defending the internet from the likes of LDP, jw.
@LDP thanks for your unique perspective, however most people don’t worry about data usage as it doesn’t cost them extra. And not relating to the argument at hand, but with TOS/EULA, I wish there would be something of an index or summary for the laymen that gives the bottom line(s), i.e., [1] This application may consume data while you are idle. [2] You agree to donate one organ to the IP owner. [3] This is not a EULA or TOS so there is nothing to agree to, please review the TOS or EULA, xD
Looks like everyone is commenting under my name yet I’ve only written one of the responses (the top one). So again thanks for ruining it guys as I’m not about to start answering questions while fighting imposters. Keep fighting amongst yourselves for that meat dangling off the bone, peace
the REAL gs_forever
Pussy.
Dear imposter — like I said, I can sue you for this…
“Dear imposter — like I said, I can sue you for this”
OK, so I’m a fraud. 🙂 But could you please explain how you’re going to sue me? I mean, you being an anonymous thief and all?
And exactly why is it a crime for me to borrow your Intellectual Property — your name — for a moment, when you steal my Intellectual Property — my music — for good?
the REAL gs_forever
Dear “The REAL gs_forever”,
good point XD
I love this forum! It’s hilarious!
when you stoled my identity you ruined your point hah, I may be a ‘criminal’ but so are you.
And GROOVESHARK WILL NEVER DIE!
I JUST A KID, BUT I THINK THAT GROOVESHARK ROCKS!!! 😀 😀 😀 #free #music
I have Mega and Sean Parker hooked up on a three way circle jerk. Afterwards we are jetn off to Russia to be showered.
Myles
Well I’m an artist, and I hope you go to jail. GrooveShark sucks.
actually, grooveshark is a very intelligent music service who HAS helped thousands of artists every single day. you just never truly appreciated what they could have done for you because your thick skull cant absorb anything
Fuck all NERDS
Auch!!, das tut weh!
At least have the decency to offer a reach around
Hey gs_forever, were you done when they “pulled the plug”?
Don’t drag FIFA into this those guys had it down to an art form. You and UMG are amateurs in comparison
All my music is on all these sites. This year I’ve made $4500.00 from iTunes, $2500 from Youtube and $800.00 from Spotify.
Never seen a dime from Grooveshark.. Go away and die.
It’s not your music, just copies.
fuck off and die, cunt
Are you a hip hop songwriter?
Anyway, gs_forever has a point.
thanx. I like your handle btw. 🙂
yanker go suck a black dick
Wtf kind of comment is THAT?
a comment that he deserves for hating on an awesome site everybody loved thats what “kind of comment” it was
Yeah well that’s no more an insult than sucking a white one….
wtf are you talking about? that dont even make any sense
So if I find an easy way to make exact copies of a U.S. $100 bill and after I get arrested by treasury department officials I can just say “It’s not your money, just copies” and then they will set me free……right?
You have a good point. I disagree with gs_forever’s rationalization of his actions.
To be fair, when you make copies of a US dollar and attempt to use it as legal currency, you are not charged with theft. You are charged with Counterfeiting… the crime is much more akin to fraud then theft.
That being said, I actually do believe in the sentiment behind intellectual property rights. And for now, theft is the closest analogy we have to the perception of injustice that results from a person enjoying the mental fruits and creation of another without giving just compensation for that enjoyment. However I’m not sure it is a correct one.
But, it really doesn’t have to be entirely accurate to serve its purpose. After all, few people raised an eyebrow when you commented that printing unauthorized currency for the express purpose of using it as such is theft. The reality is that crime (counterfeiting) is more akin to fraud (lying). But the deeper reality is that one sin is related to all other sins. (ie if you counterfeit, then the sin is lying… lying about the authenticity of the bill you are using… lying about the means you obtained the currency… and one could argue that lying is a form of theft… when we lie to each other we are taking from another trust and respect without giving back the full amount of honesty that we owe them for it).
I agree that the crimes are not identical, however Counterfeiting is a crime that most people seem to understand and it’s the closest crime I’ve found that can be used as an analogy to copyright infringement which most people don’t understand, including lawyers, judges and politicians.
I am mot sure but I believe like copyright, a person does not have to fraudulently claim ownership of the counterfeit bill, simply that act of making a copy/counterfeit bill is a crime. Mens rea is not a factor.
I suppose an analogy between trespass and copyright infringement might have more similarities
I can’t believe how many idiots here are taking this seriously. Worries me that they might take everything Resnikoff says on this site at face value.
This doesn’t sound anything like *anything* that’s ever come out of Grooveshark. Hell, this doesn’t even sound like anything that’s ever come out of anyone who claims English as their native language.
In fact, if anything this sounds exactly like the troll who has NOTHING TO DO WITH GROOVESHARK that Boy Genius Report outed 3 weeks ago: http://bgr.com/2015/05/05/grooveshark-is-back-online/
ctrl+F “Update” and read their admission they got trolled. Now if only DMN would do the same.
Figured that out all by yourself did you? Oh wait no you had to read it somewhere else.
Part of the appeal of open comment sections is troll baiting.
If you can’t outwit a troll you shouldn’t be commenting
The comments on your site have finally eclipsed the absurdity of those on YouTube
Of course he’s bitter. That is a totally justifiable feeling-I knew the folks at Groove Shark fro almost day one-Sam was a really nice kid going to school in Gainesville and trying to build his dream. He told me how important I would be to have me onboard and how artists and musicians were going to prosper with GS. Now flip the switch to 2 years later and he started to become the new Sam-The bitch of the VC company and other investors. he changed and that vision was no longer going to happen-he now wanted the $ and that very nice kid started to change-You reap what you sow and when you sell out and want to play ball with the big guys-get ready because life will change
This attitude and way gs went about things was wrong. You cant force your agenda, no matter how much conviction you have behind it, on the industry.This is the exact same attitude the boys over at, for example, napster and bearshare had over a decade ago. The result of those prissy “we can do whatever we want” attitudes? It made the industry adapt a behavior that stifled new innovative ways to get music to consumers on a nuisance free basis while paying the rightful owners.
GS is not helping the industry like they think. The attitude they possess is remarkable and similar to the people who burn down businesses and homes when they feel the law doesn’t work they way they want it to. This is not the way to work and it sure as hell is not the way to accomplish a one sided agenda which GS (or people who claim to be associated with GS) clearly has being they are not taking into consideration how they are hurting others who are actually trying to account for what everyone wants. DID YOU NOT LEARN FROM THE PAST?? You cant force an agenda that YOU feel is the way to go. You idiots are making harder for others who are spending money and burning years to find a way to work with these people to deliver to consumers what they want while paying those royalties well beyond Spotify and You Tube pays.
So to the idiots who feel they are out to save the industry like a white knight riding in to save the day, I hope you get what you deserve. While you maybe skirting lawsuits, its clear you are not aware of the criminal nature of your actions (which you are publicly boasting) and how governments around the world are prosecuting morons like yourself. Ya’ll need a good slap in the head.. And I for one, hope somebody gives it to you. If for anything to wake you up and make you realize that your self righteous “cause” absolutely sucks.
Have a great funn day idiots!
Me 2… I agree 100%. Well said.
OK as a Messianic, I have found it very disturbing that, after six years, I have no playlist. I completely support GS and their efforts, I would even pay in support to continue the service that was offered. So anyways, were the playlists saved? Sure would like to move them to a new sight or save them for when GS revives. Anyways, hope the best for you in the future.
P.S. Jesus loves Grooveshark.
I completely agree.
You and the entire music industry should be in an army brig
I would just like to know when I will get my $30 yearly subscription fee back from GS. It was automatically withdrawn a few days before the site shut down. I have sent them emails, and I have most recently sent a letter certified mail. I will miss GS and was a loyal, happy user…but it was shady they took money from me for a subscription that I can no longer use. Anyone else had this happen to them?
That’s what you get for dealing with organized crime, dude.
Yeah, this is just not true. They refunded everyone.
I got mine like 3 days before the announcement.
I still haven’t received mine. No one has responded to my inquiries. No returned calls or emails. I think the next step may be a class action lawsuit.
Let’s hope they’ll put you away for the rest of your life like Dread Pirate Roberts.
All of you people are on here talking sh*t about how terrible Grooveshark was, but I had been using their services for probably 5 years and at one point I actually paid for the service. Grooveshark expanded my musical repertoire in HUGE ways! Because of Grooveshark I discovered new local artists who sounded similar to my mainstream favorites, I BOUGHT many many many new mp3s from Amazon by artists I loved and found on GS, I attended concerts I would have never attended because I would never have discovered the artist if not for GS, I even discovered entire new genres I would have NEVER listened to except for GS making them available and easily accessible. I miss you GS! RIP GS!
And another thing, I don’t know about all users everywhere I am only able to speak for myself. But reading some of the posts on here makes me want to know how the hell do the other posters on here know about ALL GS users and feel qualified to make broad negative generalizations about ALL GS users? Or how the hell do you refute this letter’s authenticity without addressing his factual statements with counter-facts??? All you GS haters have is conjecture! Really? Give me a freakin break! You don’t know sh*t. You’re all just a bunch of dipsh*ts who think you know it all.
I for one enriched the musical industry as a direct result of GS in ways that would have NEVER happened if not for GS. RIP GS.
very well said DrJayMan. i completely agree with you
O.K., music streaming sites may come and go just like other kinds of business – nothing is forever. However, when a site is brought down without advance notice to its users, their countless hours of listening, marking playable cuts and creating artist playlists disappears into thin air. When MOG ceased operation in America, we knew about it months in advance, and I was able to copy and paste all my playlists for future reference so that I can possibly revive them on some other websites. If what Grooveshark was doing was illegal, they deserve their fate. But, either their suitors (instead of being heartless jerks) could’ve allowed a grace period for the users to copy and paste their own playlists, or Grooveshark, knowing full well that their demise was imminent, could’ve alerted them to this possibility a few weeks before.
“The company, Grooveshark, has fended off past lawsuits by citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which holds websites blameless for material uploaded by third-party users if the websites respond to takedown requests by copyright owners.”
Like thousands of other pirate sites, Grooveshark had created a multi-million dollar business using the Safe Harbor loophole in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, DMCA, to make money and avoid prosecution. A law that allows third parties, but not employees, to upload copyrighted work over and over again without legal consequence to the website operators and owners. An out of control policy, where last year alone over 345 million take down notices were filed, with little or no impact on the number of copyrighted works available on infringing sites.
It was reported that one author filed 541 take down notices with a single infringing website to have one of his books removed without success. Instead of stipulating the permanent removal of a specific copyrighted work, the DMCA’s Section 512 dealing with take down notices only requires websites to remove a specific file.
How many years and how many songs have been streamed by Grooveshark as musicians and songwriters stood by unable to do anything to permanently remove their work from the website?
Online piracy is an epidemic that knows no boundaries, impacting film, television, music, books, photography, software, video games and all works that can be copied, digitized and distributed over the internet. A crime wave that has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions in lost revenue in this country alone.
http://fareplay.org/the-war-on-piracy-epic-fail/
“Online piracy is an epidemic that knows no boundaries, impacting film, television, music, books, photography, software, video games and all works that can be copied, digitized and distributed over the internet. A crime wave that has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions in lost revenue in this country alone.”
So, we’re back to square one. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Virtual content can’t claim IP rights. It appears that none of the above posters get it. The reason the entertainment industry is in the shitter is because of credibility and accountability. Digitized commerce is too easily unsubstantiated. Businesses, fans and artist all survive on the monitization of their services and products respectively.
So, what’s wrong with putting more people back to work and recreating an actual physical bank or library you can create and purchase at the supermarket? A physical app you have to pay for over the counter of say,Wall Mart or BestBuy. Not everything that can be digitized SHOULD be digitized as this very forum and it’s content evidences.
Little known fact: the masters of SillyCon Valley are at war with humanity itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
Not only the music industry but the whole of human civilization is doomed.
YEA YOU GO GS_FOREVER!!!! TELL THOSE DUMBASS MUSIC INDUSTRIES HOW IT IS!!
thanx, great to see some inteligent life on this site.
youre very welcome…. i have your back all the way man especially because grooveshark should have never been shut down
Sweet spelling, man.
Your sew inteligant!
IMAGINE – The labels work as one and bring back none other than the one
YOU MAY SAY IM A DREAMER – but im not the only one
Please join me, my frinds in this… so that im not the only one
So the world will be like……….one
Grooveshark died – The day music died!
Let me just make sure I have this straight. GS claims to have wanted to be an ally to artists but because he’s pissed at UMG he’s going to keep creating new sites and screwing artists out of our royalties? What a prince!
um no dhenn. im afraid youre wrong on that; especially because all the industries cared about was the money. grooveshark was a perfectly legal music service everybody loved. it helped artists every single day and all these other services have done nothing compared to what grooveshark did. the judge in manhattan was stupid enough to actually believe grooveshark was doing this infringement shit; and that makes me sick to my fucking stomach, especially because they didnt. all this bullshit talk about grooveshark is UNTRUE and it should have never had its doors closed by the dumbass industries. the industries had no right to do this…. all these other sites are probably doing shit we dont even know about and NOTHING WAS DONE ABOUT IT. decisions like this are what makes this world a fucked up inhumane place and this is why society may never improve
Honestly, why does it always have to be about the money??????! Some of us just want to listen to music. Grooveshark was the best. You got to make your own playlist, instead of listening to a radio station based on a song *cough Pandora cough* *iTunes radio cough cough* ….. BRING BACK GROOVESHARK. 😉
“why does it always have to be about the money?”
Because it costs hundreds of thousands to produce the kind of music people want…
its not even that, destiel. its the fact that grooveshark never even did anything illegal. all this shittalk about how they infringed is false. half the other services who the industries DIDNT go after were probably doing shit we didnt even know about thats illegal and they only come after grooveshark? basically all the industries care about is getting a boatload of money into their pockets. they dont even realize how grooveshark was helping artists every single day and every single second of the day too. none of the other sites did anything like grooveshark and it sickens me how they had to shut down a site everybody loved. on top of all that, i cant believe the manhattan judge was dumb enough to rule on the industries’ side. now that a very influential site is gone, theres going to be more problems that make society fall even more downhill then it already has. this by far is the stupidest thing that happened ever and i cant even begin to imagine whats gunna happen in the future
It does NOT cost hundreds of thousands to produce a quality product, just look up “The Facebook Song” by Rhett & Link, 15 million views, quality work, was done using iMovie and Garage band.
Yes a top quality song can be made for less than 10k probably less than 5k.
The remaining $90-$95 thousand dollars pays for marketing. You have to alert the public to the existence of the song and tell them that they like it and should buy it
“a top quality song can be made for less than 10k”
Um, that doesn’t even pay the writers. And then you have to pay the studio, producer, arranger, performers, mixing engineer and mastering engineer (and don’t get me started on video).
Remove one link from the chain, and the music’s over…
Yes someone can spend outrageous amounts of money to record a song but it’s not necessary and spending a lot of money on recording does not guarantee success. Dollar for dollar it is wiser to spend on marketing.
White Chistmas was recorded in just 18 minutes by Bing
Rock Around The Clock took two takes by Bill Haley
How come you forgot Nebraska? 🙂
Big Swifty, here’s why we all know these stories: They are miracles.
In the real world, it’s extremely expensive to produce the music people want.
It’s extremely expensive to tell the people what they want and convince them to buy it. Making the product can be a relatively inexpensive process.
Paying Diane Warren Inc. for a song, hiring the hit producer of the week and spending thousands on sessions is what the Grammys want to vote on but it doesn’t mean the people will buy it.
Seriously, was this guy drunk or high when he wrote this ? It has the grammar, diction, spelling, and tone of an angry 13-year old pissed at his parents for making him do his homework instead of playing Magic: The Gathering all night long while hopped up on Mountain Dew and Twizzlers. Proofread your rants before hitting send, folks, it’s the right thing to do.
I feel like this guy is hitting it on the head, especially with the power that gs gave others, i had built several playlists on gs to the point that they were like carefully cultured albums, just with several artists, but i guess there was no consideration given for all of that. Also with the hundreds of “radio stations” set up by other users and admins and people was an all around great system, snuffing gs just threw all of these different systems that had been developed out the window. Gs should never die, but I’m afraid that with the loss of all of these, what live on will only be a remnant of what once was. It doesn’t matter if gs was legal or not, what matters is what we lost when we lost gs, we lost a community that will most likely never be built up again…
Yes, it doesn’t matter that the family was doing something legal or not. What matters is what we lost.
However, don’t worry, the family will just be replaced by another family and so gs will be replaced by another.
p.s. If it’s that hard for you to make a playlist you need to get some perspective on life.
im ashamed with both don and Thatoneguy. you 2 should have faith in grooveshark if you really loved it. i sure as hell still have faith in it. grooveshark isnt gone just yet and we can make our own community. this gs_forever dude has brought us all together and he has taught me that since he has faith in his site, i have to have faith too. and so do you. trust me; having faith usually works. you cant just lose hope. it WILL come back. grooveshark can never be replaced especially because it has helped thousands of artists every single day. half the other fucking music services havent even done half of what gs has done and those other services probably did illegal shit we dont even know about. the industries dont go after them but they come after us. WHY?!?! because all they care about is the money. they are selfish, ignorant assholes who didnt see the big picture. furthermore, i cant believe the judge ruled against grooveshark. he was stupid for making that ruling and like i said before, society may fall even more and more apart. its sad how problems are caused each day bc of shit like this and if i was the judge, i would rule in groovesharks favor
You misunderstand me, i tots agree with everything you just said, I’m just mourning the loss of everything that gs built, i know that the community isn’t gone and that we WILL rebuild, I’m simply upset that everything good must be tested
thats a good point made right there and the other thing im saying is the gs lovers who are commenting on this right now: WE CAN ALL COME TOGETHER AND STAND UP TO WHOEVER IS ALWAYS TESTING THE GOOD STUFF. its ok to mourn the loss of a site we obviously loved and praised, but at the same time we must fight for our rights especially bc of the stupid excuse the industries pulled for shutting gs down
lol
what kind of stupid comment was that?
I’m sick of hearing all the bs about digital music piracy. Before the internet, artists and music companies alike received just compensation through the sale of records, CDs, whatever physical manifestation was the norm, not to mention their share of concert revenue, and royalties from radio stations. People everywhere were able to record the music they (or someone) bought and PAID FOR onto cassette tapes, or later, burn that music to CDs so they could listen to their music in the car, or while they walked or jogged. They even shared their tapes or CDs with their friends and family. No one came after cassette tape or CD manufacturers crying because people were able to make copies of their music collection for their convenience. And they didn’t arrest people on the street with a walkman with a tape or CD in it.
Along came computers and the internet and a way to digitize recordings, and users everywhere began creating mp3 files from the music that they (or someone) originally bought and PAID FOR at some point. They also decided to share those files, just like they used to share their tapes or CDs. Now the music industry is crying that people are making copies of music and giving them freely to anyone who wants to stream or download them, and they’re criminalizing the companies that make that possible.
People still buy music, go to any FYE, they’re still buying CDs, hell, they’re even buying LPs again, and they’re buying mp3s online, or they’re paying “legitimate” online sites so they can stream the music they want. And the last time I checked, people still BUY tickets to go to concerts. Artists are not starving. Music companies still make millions. This is about music companies wanting to grab every last freaking fraction of a cent they think they are entitled to, from everyone who dares to use 21st century technology to listen to their favorite music. Enough already. This is 2015, enough technology exists to allow endless sharing of music files, again, that someone, at some point, actually BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. They’re crying about 0’s and 1’s that are floating around cyberspace, frustrated because they can’t do anything to stop it. Of course they can use they’re high powered lawyers to sue the hell out of any company that enables people to share those 0’s and 1’s, so the company and all the resources are blown to hell. That will teach them! Problem is, for every one site that is shut down, several more are created and found by people like me who will never stop listening to music online, no matter how many lawsuits those fools file.
Let’s not even talk about the fact that shutting down GS did NOT mean that millions of fans suddenly gave up and started buying all the music they had in their GS playlists. Are they that delusional? Let’s talk about the real and most important reason that people like me loved GS so much, and the playlists we were able to put together. WE CAN’T FIND a lot of the music that we were able to find on GS, thanks to other people who freely shared that music, music that can’t be found anywhere else to BUY if we wanted to! I had so many songs that are from the 60s or 70s that are out of production, and cannot be found on any of the pay sites that I have searched, and I have tried! Obscure music in some cases, that were literally only found on GS, after searching the entire internet. No artist is going to get compensated for a song that is no longer on the market, in any form. Hell, I can’t even find some of them used online in album form, let alone CDs or mp3s.
So are we just supposed to go to hell and get over it? So what if we never get to listen to those songs again, right? As long as those evil, illegal GS-like companies are busted up.
I was smart enough to offline many of my collection, but GS was destroyed before I could offline it all, it takes awhile when you have a few thousand songs in your collection. I’ve been able to find most of them through the latest GS search sites, but not all of them. I will keep trying, on other sites (Youtube is working well), I am hoping GS users who uploaded them in the first place will continue to upload them elsewhere so they can all be resurrected. I was content before to just stream, and not actually download, all they’ve done by busting up GS is to encourage people to actually download songs so we have them no matter what, instead of just streaming them. Doesn’t that just make it worse, in their mind?
I hope GS is fully resurrected some day, including all the content that used to be there. I know that despite the industry’s efforts to continue to stomp out sites that allow people to freely share music online, there will always be a way for people like me to find the music I love, music that someone, at some point, originally BOUGHT AND PAID FOR.
I’m not entirely sure this is about money. I could easily be wrong, but I think lawsuits like this one are more about power and control. Have you read any news stories about corrupt “free trade” agreements like TPP? Just look at the PIPA/SOPA laws that failed a few years ago… they probably wouldn’t have made these horrible record labels any more money (opponents claimed that these laws would only have slowed piracy down), but they would have created the kind of control that corrupt power abusers dream of. Since America is a democracy, the entertainment industry was forced to realize that democracy can only betray the public to a limited extent, hence the TPP. Ultimately TPP is a wet dream come true for these hypocrites.
That appears to have been the reason why grooveshark.com was killed: a limited amount of power could have been takem from these labels. Or, perhaps they felt power could be taken someday. Either way, other music sites will probably think twice before they say “no” the these labels, giving them a huge quantity of satisfaction.
So why just Grooveshark? There are plenty of other sites that are far more popular, like YouTube, where you can go and search for and play just about any song you want, many without any advertisements in them up front. And there are free utilities online that extract the audio from the YouTube video you are streaming and let you download it as an mp3. So why don’t they shut down YouTube? Because YouTube is a giant, no one is going to shut down YouTube, but Grooveshark was just a small, easy target to pick on. They knew they would roll over dead, and frankly, they had no choice.
As far as the game of GS whack-a-mole, I have not seen any replacement site for a new “Grooveshark” since a federal court ordered Cloudflare to shut down the latest site on Wednesday. The RIAA is made up of bullies, and the courts everywhere support them 100%.
I wold like this “author” to re-write this “letter” with a rational argument. There is too much emotion and not enough fact or rational thought.
@Author, if you did get funding to “line the pockets of record labels” would you be still in business?
I’ve already hated these copyright bullies for all the problems they’ve caused society. I especially dislike Sony for using music CDs to distribute rootkits. They should have been put out of business by the department of justice. I’m sure if I’m caught producing and spreading malware, I’d spend several years in prison. Why should the CEO of companies like Sony be any different?
Also, I’m tired of seeing decent websites get attacked by these liars. The original grooveshark.com was definitely my favorite music website, and I’m certainly sad to see it go. I especially liked the fact that I could listen to ANYTHING as opposed to something that’s chosen for me. The HTML5 section was also nice, since I dislike Flash Player.
If the history of copyright bullying has tought me anything, it’s the simple fact that these bullies never learn anything at all. I’m sure Sony and their corrupt friends will shut grooveshark.li down soon. The last thing they will suspect is the possibility that another domain will appear. When it’s shut down, they will not suspect another domain. The game of Whack-a-mole will continue for tge end of time, because these people aren’t just morally corrupt… they’re incapable of actually learning anything.
i totally agree with you. the industries had no business shutting gs down because as I explained a million times now, money is the only thing the industries care about and also half the other services are probably doing shit we don’t even know about and they only go after gs to make them look bad. this proves that people will never learn how to do the right thing and its honestly pretty fucking sickening
It looks like I was right: grooveshark.li seems dead. I wonder what the new domain will be.
PS: I don’t think these companies are this worried about money. As far as I can tell, the real goal is to make more power, not more money. Power and control, that’s what it’s all about.
exactly! it should never only be about the money! finally someone is intelligent enough to understand!
hay gs_forever,its clear that u are doing this out of anger and u don’t really care about the artist ,all you are trying to do is prove something to the majors.My advice is go finish your business with the majors ,if u really cared about the artist ,u would have posted checks and revenues u have sent to artist for the work u have done so far. so do’t tell me about your bs.
my regards
fyi anonymous he does care about the artists. hes basically telling the industries to screw themselves (which i dont blame him for doing so) bc of falsely accusing gs of this infringement bs to get money into their pockets. if he didnt care then he wouldnt have posted that letter for the whole entire public to see so get your facts straight before putting words into peoples mouths
its a good thing GROOVESHARK is dead cos there new site sucked big time with all that generic bullshit pizza looking likes, simple that was what grooveshark was in the beginning.,.,., Anyways i loved the old site and love this minimalist new one “.il” i am happy
if you come to think of it, its not a good thing grooveshark is dead because then the artists wont get the help they need. also, youre saying you wish gs was dead but yet you loved it. you are one confusing individual i must say
i am just saying that grooveshark was SIMPLE easy to use on the old web site the new site became generic with all the bells and Whistle and looking like all the other site, i guess grooveshark got greedy. i am pissed that there gone but i wasnt going to stay with grooveshark if they where going to continued on the path they where going.
well thats understandable, but yet again this shark dude backed up 90% of its content and if it werent for the industries going after grooveshark all the time, grooveshark would of had almost everything or maybe EVEN everything back (under a new domain that is). for some reason the industries just keep pushing the line and its getting to a point where i just wanna tell them in person how hey really are acting. it is really annoying and im getting sick of it
What the hell is Grooveshark? Why does anyone even care?
grooveshark was this music service where you can pick any song you want that you can listen to and it isnt like pandora where they pick the songs for you. its kind of like youtube, but a little different. unfortunately tho, grooveshark got shut down because the music industries (universal music group, sony and some other industry) accused grooveshark of some stupid copyright infringement thing that they never committed. it was just a scam to get more money into the industries pockets, and sadly it worked 🙁 grooveshark should have never been ripped down. it was a perfectly legal site that helped thousands of artists every single day. NOTHING LIKE THAT WAS ACCOMPLISHED WITH OTHER MUSIC SERVICES. another thing that makes this story even more herendous and inhumane is half the other sites were probably doing illegal shit we dont even know about and they only come onto grooveshark. the industries just caused one of the biggest problems ever and who knows what kinds of problems will turn society even further downhill then it already is. i dont even wanna imagine it. just picturing it makes me sick but yea basically thats what grooveshark was
Actually, in today’s world, the inability of some people to grasp the importance of intellectual property “will turn society even further downhill then [sic] it already is.”
Grooveshark was a business that got in a legal fight with other businesses, and it lost. That’s normal stuff. Kicking a puppy is inhumane; war is horrendous. This was neither inhumane nor horrendous; it was lawful dispute resolution between commercial entities. You should take a break from commenting and spend that time reevaluating your moral code.
I’d respect you more if you said “we stole stuff because we could, it was awesome and I’m pissed that someone stopped us.” You’d still be a thief, but at least you wouldn’t be insulting your victims with poor attempts at excuses and justifications.
well actually, i dont use the word “us” because i was never a grooveshark employee nor ever worked at grooveshark CQ. however i was a grooveshark user. somehow the industries figured out a tricky way to rip gs down. this lawful dispute should have never happened. grooveshark may have lost, but they lost in an unfair way. also, it is horrendous because no site has helped artists every day like grooveshark did. i also forgot to point out that im not insulting my victims because im on their side. as a matter of fact, we feel insulted by the industries and anyone who commented that agrees that grooveshark should of died. they have no idea what kind of intelligence grooveshark had and they should of thought before acted. THINK BEFORE YOU ACT. trust me, it helps a lot more then just taking action without thinking about what will happen first
Unlike most “alleged” pirate sites who use the loophole in Section 512 of the DMCA, the founders from Grooveshark got caught making one of the few mistakes you can make, IN WRITING, and end up SOL.
Because Grooveshark, was convicted of criminal activity, the RIAA was well within their rights to get the injunction to have them shut down. Unfortunately, the rogue employee was too lazy to start from scratch with a new business and start the cycle all over again.
BTW, I know many independent artists, who did not have any respect for Grooveshark or any for-profit pirate site that manipulates the system to continually repost content, stored on their hard drive, after receiving take down notices from the artists. Yes, the artists not the labels.
I think most of us are tired of the charade that is piracy and your decades old arguments are pathetic at this point. It is your right to be delusional, but don’t expect us to take you seriously.
yes im delusional when i directly read the letter the grooveshark employee posted to the public. its actually people like you that arent taken seriously, considering the fact that this was a FALSE conviction/accusation that grooveshark was commiting this copyright infringement bullshit. fuck the industries. they even fired the lawyer that supported the industries in the middle of the court case because all he wanted was more money. thats the only thing the industries care about. money; and thus other services were probably doing illegal shit we dont even know about. if anything youre the one whos pathetic for actually buying into this. grooveshark did not deserve the shit they got. they deserved to keep running bc they helped artists every single day. im pretty sure the artists had respect for grooveshark considering how much of a positive impact it had. shit like this is hypocritical and if i was a grooveshark employee, you best god damn believe i would fight to keep grooveshark alive. it should still be alive right now, but since society is falling downhill more and more each day, people just do whatever their brainwashed minds think is best when really it isnt whats best. i would give a well-explanatory statement thats good enough PLUS TRUE to make the judge rule on groovesharks side if i worked for grooveshark. i was a grooveshark user myself and i loved everything about the site and nobody needs grooveshark haters like you giving the grooveshark lovers hate. to anyone who believes in this bullshit, you all make me sick
I tried to resist, but I must ask ….
What on earth makes you think you could “give a well-explanatory statement thats good enough PLUS TRUE to make the judge rule on groovesharks side”?
You’ve attempted to defend grooveshark at length here, but you have failed. You can barely put coherent sentences together. Your statement is limited to shouting “grooveshark is good because I say grooveshark is good; grooveshark helped artists because I say grooveshark helped artists” ad nauseam.
I’m sorry to inform you that your statement is objectively not good enough, and there isn’t a judge in the country who would give credence to any of the statements that you have put forth so far.
If you didn’t work for grooveshark, then you simply aren’t qualified to assert facts about the litigation or grooveshark’s corporate actions or performance. More importantly, this isn’t your fight – get a life, dear.
If you’re lying and you did work for grooveshark …. get a job.
ok… first off, dont call me dear. second, i havent failed at defending grooveshark because the evidence is right in the letter this employee posted for the entire public to see. thirdly, im pretty sure there would be a judge who would give credence because the industries basically fucked themselves over and caused a big mess. fourthly, i am qualified because i was once a grooveshark user and i check grooveshark news every single day to keep myself updated on whats happening. one last thing; i dont think grooveshark is good just bc i say so (altho i am entitled to my opinion just like you are entitled to yours). i am stating facts here because ive used the grooveshark services for 2 years now and i found it very helpful. if you werent a grooveshark user, i suggest you go home
My family can’t afford to buy me an ipod, nor can we afford to buy CD’s and music online. I am also a player of the violin (my father was given it by a freind years ago). I am a major music lover. Grooveshark enabled me to listen to music and enjoy all of it free. I was devastated when it was shut down, and have been following the copies and clones of the site, finding the new one after the last was shut down. Please, if you know the newest one after grooveshark.li, get a hold of me. [email protected]. I would love to keep up my love of music. THANK YOU, MAN WHO KEEPS GROOVESHARK ALIVE WHAT YOU DO IS NOT IN VAIN.
finally someone who isnt a fucking uneducated dumbass! i give you all my respect violingroove ^^^^
Try pleer.com. I have also had much luck with youtube, you can use a utility online to extract the audio from the video then save it as an mp3. Google for such utilities. Good luck.
Props for Prosto! Grooveshark absolutely was great! I lost nearly 1,000 titles though. I even uploaded a few from my own collection and received notice for copyright infringing. I just wanted to contribute to the “community”. Without the “lovers of music” there wouldn’t have been much to choose. Some titles were rare as well! RIAA are assholes! Burn in hell! Long live GROOVESHARK!
i didn’t read it all but you dont sound crazy. i used to use grooveshark untill in updated. i loved it.
For what it’s worth, I also paid for Grooveshark, twice, it enabled me to offline much of my collection. Plus it eliminated ads. I would pay something again for a similar service, but none of the pay sites have as good a variety of content, that I could find.
Hey, Folks- I was a paid GS user since 2010 and I’m a writer, not a tech. I used the playlist function (the Titling of) as a poorman’s copyright for all my Story ideas,concepts,etc.. Now I’ve lost 5+ years of my work,my life’s flippin’ work. O.K., it’s my fault for not backing up, but I write comedy,not code,O.K.? I don’t have access to a computer always–I live so far off the grid they are just now hearing about this great new thing called “Rolled Crapping Paper”,ok? I’m frantic to retrieve my work–but I can’t keep up with the shifting domains and the clones aren’t recognizing My User name or password. I’ve lost 599+ Titles encompassing all aspects of my work, from my Comedy locker material to finished scripts. I used the titling function as a memnonic device- I see the title,I remember the whole premise. I NEVER EVEN LISTENED TO THE FUCKING MUSIC ANYWAY!! “Hiding In Plain Sight”, Right? So fucking clever,savvy? Yeah,real Leonardo. Some one out here in the comments PLEASE tell me how to get access to my stuff PLEASE. The Fucking Studio Slime have tens of millions of dollars in potential concepts of mine and are so fucking blind they’d rather steal a concept from Finnish daytime programming than look in their own talent backyard. HELP!!!!!
To Clarify.. I’m Just trying to access my account long enough to get a copy of my lists. I haven’t been able to log in since the Mainsite (.Com) got knee-capped, And the clone sites aren’t recognizing me.
Use http://googleglass.my/groovebackup/
Use http://googleglass.my/groovebackup/
Hey I agree with gs_forever this is total bullshit, especially since i used gs to get my own music (that I wrote) out there for people to listen too, and as a starting out artist that’s a great opportunity for me to have great and i wasn’t expected to pay anything to put music out into the world, it was just about the music, not money not copyrights and not power, just the music.
To the gs team that is reading this i want to personally thank you guys for creating the website in the first place and giving artists that were getting started a chance to thrive, thank you.
Shawn Sutton
[email protected]
“you don’t live one life you live many, because every time you touch another humans heart you live their life and they live yours”
-Shawn Sutton
Hey I agree with gs_forever this is total bullshit, especially since i used gs to get my own music (that I wrote) out there for people to listen too, and as a starting out artist that’s a great opportunity for me to have great and i wasn’t expected to pay anything to put music out into the world, it was just about the music, not money not copyrights and not power, just the music.
To the gs team that is reading this i want to personally thank you guys for creating the website in the first place and giving artists that were getting started a chance to thrive, thank you.
Shawn Sutton
[email protected]
“you don’t live one life you live many, because every time you touch another humans heart you live their life and they live yours”
-Shawn Sutton
Hey I agree with gs_forever this is total bullshit, especially since i used gs to get my own music (that I wrote) out there for people to listen too, and as a starting out artist that’s a great opportunity for me to have great and i wasn’t expected to pay anything to put music out into the world, it was just about the music, not money not copyrights and not power, just the music.
To the gs team that is reading this i want to personally thank you guys for creating the website in the first place and giving artists that were getting started a chance to thrive, thank you.
Shawn Sutton
[email protected]
“you don’t live one life you live many, because every time you touch another humans heart you live their life and they live yours”
-Shawn Sutton
Hey I agree with gs_forever this is total bullshit, especially since i used gs to get my own music (that I wrote) out there for people to listen too, and as a starting out artist that’s a great opportunity for me to have great and i wasn’t expected to pay anything to put music out into the world, it was just about the music, not money not copyrights and not power, just the music.
To the gs team that is reading this i want to personally thank you guys for creating the website in the first place and giving artists that were getting started a chance to thrive, thank you.
Shawn Sutton
[email protected]
“you don’t live one life you live many, because every time you touch another humans heart you live their life and they live yours”
-Shawn Sutton
Hey I agree with gs_forever this is total bullshit, especially since i used gs to get my own music (that I wrote) out there for people to listen too, and as a starting out artist that’s a great opportunity for me to have great and i wasn’t expected to pay anything to put music out into the world, it was just about the music, not money not copyrights and not power, just the music.
To the gs team that is reading this i want to personally thank you guys for creating the website in the first place and giving artists that were getting started a chance to thrive, thank you.
Shawn Sutton
[email protected]
“you don’t live one life you live many, because every time you touch another humans heart you live their life and they live yours”
-Shawn Sutton
dude i agree with you but you wrote this comment like 5 times…. we get it
Where are these 12 other domains you have? Grooveshark.li has been down for so long, I’m really starting to miss it. If there is another domain ready to go, please please please tell us.
grooveshark.im
Hi there,
I read gs_forever letter and i personally agree with all he said. I am an artist myself, not a musician but an Illustrator. I always work listening music and i can definitely say that thanks to Grooveshark i discovered many bands, Dj’s and other artists.
When i say “discovered” i mean not just listening and downloading their music, but literally going to their gigs, especially artists from independent label that i wouldn’t have discovered without Grooveshark. Just to say few names; MrScruff, Tinariwen, Steve Bug Dj, and many more.
gs_forever is right, making the music free for everyone especially for people that can’t afford to pay for listening it’s crucial and democratic (because the free Spotify and others have just a little portion of niche/independent music compared to Grooveshark, instead they have a lot of commercial crap)
Myself, my friends and many other listeners i personally know, we prefer instead of giving money to the major labels (few rich guys that don’t even care about the immense underground population of starving musicians that don’t get anything from them) to support the bands and musicians going to their gigs paying for the tickets.
I listened music from the last 30 years, but thanks to Grooveshark i learnt so much more about music during the last decade.
I CAN ONLY SAY A BIG THANK YOU TO GS_FOREVER AND THE OTHER GUYS THAT MADE POSSIBLE GROOVESHARK TO BE ONLINE FOR MANY YEARS AND I HOPE THAT GROOVESHARK WILL BE BACK SOON.
RESPECT & LOVE FOR GROOVESHARK
Th-ink
He makes a good point about the playlists. I was listening to lots of new indie and electronic artists whose names I will probably never find again.
I’ve always been a huge supporter of GS since almost day 1. I’ve been subscribing since day 1 of VIP that was available. I’ve used GS to stream music in my store, to spread the love and share music from new artists over seas and also stream DJing on my own off time via my Facebook. When I drive to places, I play GS in my car, and proudly share this wonderful experience with my friends.
You know what, I’ve even looked in to and have purchased so many new CDs, albums digitally and physically, and got to expand my music artist experience because of GS. It really breaks my heart to see it go down. I will patiently await the day GS comes back in my life. You have my full support. God Speed. GS forever.
Something tells me the music industry will not tolerate this guy’s attitude and will probably want him arrested.
yea well thats not gunna happen… they cant have someone who is telling the truth arrested.. if anything the people who work at the industries should be fucking fired for this bullshit….. groovesharks been gone for 2 and a half months now and im really starting to lose my patience. i want it back NOW
Music lovers dont care about music industry but only music itself… Grooveshark was an awesome site.. it brought tears to my eyes when i lost all my playlists i had created over the span of 4 years… some songs cant be found on even youtube or other popular sites… i used to listen to them daily… i’d rather want my music back.
hey everybody. i have great news. grooveshark is back (well in a way)! theres this new music service called streamsquid that allows you to import your old playlists. all you have to do is type in the email you used for your grooveshark account and with just one click, you can bring your old grooveshark playlists there. heres the link to it: http://streamsquid.com/
Dude. You rock!! This is the best news and the best thing that has happened since GS was shutdown.
Loved and mourned GS. You’re back! Thank you!!!!!
Yay!! Thank you!!! I am so happy!!
as of right now, all it is is finding the songs on youtube and importing the grooveshark playlists, but from what i read they are trying to bring back a lot of the features of grooveshark (legally that is)
hey Philip,
Accessing streamsquid today is just painfully slow. Have you observed the same behavior lately?
Thank you for sharing!
what exactly do you mean by “painfully slow”?
I hope GS lives forever! Those RIAA jack asses have no soul.
I think its awesome that all this is going on! I’m gonna be honest, I hate things like iTunes or Steam that just complicates people’s lives and doesn’t really stop piracy. People that are going to do illegal things are going to find a way to do it. When I started getting into grooveshark, I was still in middle school, and I even used it for school projects relating to music. I loved it immensely, and was so sad when it went down. There was no warning either, so I couldn’t save the playlists I had on there to even play with paid for songs. A bunch of memories and fun were just lost. I don’t get into the legality of things too much, but I appreciate whoever is keeping some free streaming services alive. And you know, if all else fails, I always have my trusty youtube-mp3 converter.
I paid GS for music. … i hate spotify .. i hate youtube… i hate these big named websites… can i not go else where??? do i have to fucking use them ?! CAUSE THAT’S WHAT IT FUCKING FEELS LIKE….. WE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TWO OPTIONS.. THIS BIG GUY OR THE OTHER BIG GUY….. sorry… I’ll listen to nothing then… fuck celebs.. i wasnt even listening to the big artists that over play themselves on the radio.. i was listing to the little guy, i was listening to the oldies, the dead artists…. with out a commercial every other song…. i dont want to hear some teen bop fucking kid telling me to respect artists… you’re brains washed.. leave me alone to enjoy me music with out getting fucked left and right by millionaires ..gs forever… gs for life
excuse me but i agree this is complete bullshit. it is claimed for spotify to be the best but it actually sucks. youtube is ok but it is nothing like gooveshark. the industries had no right to do this just to have money go into their pockets. its been almost a year and still nothing has been done. its frustrating and im disgusted. long live grooveshark!
Mmm, if I made music, I would want to make all the money I could out of it. I am glad this unregulated site is down.
If you took the time to make it and produce it, then you hold the right to sell it without worry of it being stolen and straining profit. Whether it be intellectual or physical property.
I miss GrooveShark. Best music streaming I ever used. I don’t care for spotify and use Youtube occasionally for music. I use Amazon music now, but their are many artists who are not on there.
There is a remake of the Grooveshark app and has pretty much any artist I’ve ever searched for which I listen to about 90% underground bands and local bands in small time Nebraska some band with under 50 followers even.
Today I still miss GrooveShark…