
Grooveshark Shuts Down - sskates
http://grooveshark.com/
======
physcab
Grooveshark, I want you to know I loved you. As a user. As an ex-employee. You
taught me so much. I remember my task as an intern was to turn Autoplay into
something more beyond office employees voting on their favorite genres of
music. I remember my first attempt at an algorithm, everyone got Coldplay as
their recommended artist. I remember when we discovered Hadoop for the first
time and our analysis on TBs of data took minutes instead of weeks. I remember
when Ed accidentally dropped the Artist table on master, then quickly stopped
the replication process before all hell broke loose. I remember when Nate made
it so every image on any website I visited on my laptop showed sexually
explicit material when investors came for a visit. I remember when Skyler met
his (now) wife. I remember learning about advertising and meeting Less Than
Jake. I remember learning not to run a Group By on mysql when it had 8 billion
rows in the middle of the day during peak use. I remember going without a
salary for 6 months because we had no money. And yet we persevered. You guys
and girls gave me excellent real world experience at a time when I shouldn't
have been trusted with a computer. Thank you for all the good times and the
great culture you instilled. Hope the Atlantic gives everyone free tallboys
tonight.

~~~
kleer001
That sounds like a lovely time, would make a great book or movie.

Personally I'd never really even heard of it except a long time ago, let alone
used it. Nothing personal. Just one music service in a dense forest of same.
That said, I'm of the opinion that a public Radio station and Library should
be the model for transmission and curation of works. The shutting down of
Grooveshark fills me with sonder, wonder, and sorrowful nostalgia for the
earlier years.

~~~
sidcool
Directed by Martin Scorcese.

~~~
kewlv2k
Produced by Grooveshark Production Company !

------
Syrup-tan
The site is just an image with small text, so I've transcribed it here;

\---

Dear music fans,

Today we are shutting down Grooveshark.

We started out nearly ten years ago with the goal of helping fans share and
discover music. But despite the best of intentions, we made very serious
mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount
of music on the service.

That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation.

As part of the settlement agreement with the major record companies, we have
agreed to cease operations immediately, wipe clean all of the record
companies’ copyrighted works and hand over ownership of this website, our
mobile apps and intellectual property, including our patents and copyrights.

At the time of our launch, few music services provided the experience we
wanted to offer - and think you deserve. Fortunately, that’s not longer the
case. There are now hundreds of fan friendly, affordable services available
for you to choose from, including Spotify, Deezer, Google Play, Beats Music,
Rhapsody and Rdio, among many others.

If you love music and respect the artists, songwriters and everyone else who
makes great music possible, use a licensed service that compensates artists
and other rights holders. You can find out more about the many great services
available where you live here: [http://whymusicmatters.com/find-
music](http://whymusicmatters.com/find-music).

It has been a privilege getting to know so many of you and enjoying music
together. Thank you for being such passionate fans.

Yours in music, Your friends at Grooveshark April 30, 2015

\--

Source at [https://denpa.moe/~syrup/grooveshark-
notice.txt](https://denpa.moe/~syrup/grooveshark-notice.txt)

~~~
noonespecial
"If you love music and respect the artists, songwriters and everyone else who
makes great music possible, use a licensed service that compensates _artists_
and other rights holders."

It seems so easy compensate that second group that I work harder breathing
each day. That first group, it seems like I could get a message to mars easier
than to send them a whole dollar.

~~~
Jgrubb
Buy a t-shirt. That's _the_ most direct route to actually help them out with
as few middlemen as possible.

~~~
willismichael
Can somebody verify this? I'm one who used Groove Shark to discovered music
that I really like and then bought it in an effort to support the musician
(thanks big music, you just took away one of your means of extracting money
out of me).

I would happily wear the t-shirt if I knew that it was in fact the most direct
route to actually transfer money to the musician.

~~~
Jgrubb
I was a professional musician for 15 years. After having kids, the amount of
time that I would've had to spend on the road playing and selling t shirts
would've far outweighed the time I would've had to be home raising them, so I
started teaching myself development in the tour bus. That was 7 years ago.

My old band is still out there, selling out Red Rocks, and any of their merch
that you can buy at the show has the highest margin of anything. This is true
for _every band_ from John Mayer to the Avett Brothers to your local Dead
cover band.

So help me God, buy a shirt at the show or on their website.

------
ignoramous
This makes me immensely sad as a long time user of Grooveshark.

Such contrast in fortunes when you compare YouTube [0] and Grooveshark.
Grooveshark, for most part, was an amazing service. They were at the forefront
of UI design, brilliant at surfacing new and related content (music),
excellent at quality of service (variable bit-rate buffering).

You would think that with a good exit to a company like Yahoo or Amazon, it
could have really been a hit. I could easily imagine Google gobbling them up
and merging it with Vevo. It isn't a dramatically different service than
YouTube. But it wasn't to be.

Doesn't it make sense to open source code when you know the product is dying?

[0] [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/23/cheaper-
bandwidth-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/23/cheaper-bandwidth-or-
bust-how-google-saved-youtube/)

~~~
WettowelReactor
>> Doesn't it make sense to open source code when you know the product is
dying?

That can depend on how much of the code base is their own. If they integrated
any licensed components then they may not have the resources necessary to
clean it up for release.

~~~
Dobbs
They own zero percent of the codebase. According to the link all IP was turned
over to the winners of the court case.

------
bmat
As a native of Gainesville, FL (where Grooveshark is based), this is really
sad news. Certainly they made mistakes, but what few see is how much they
contributed to the tech community here. Their CTO has personally mentored many
companies in the area, and they have a presence at pretty much every tech-
related event. I can't think of any other company within a 100-mile radius
that can fill that role now that they're gone. Hopefully they'll spin off some
new businesses in the area. Otherwise this will be a huge blow to
Gainesville's already struggling tech and startup communities.

~~~
zzalpha
Well, the flipside is, let's face it, their business was pretty darn shady...
not much a role model for other up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

I absolutely grant you their technology was pretty cool, and the community
features they built are still unreplicated anywhere.

But I'd rather laud businesses who manage to combine cool technology with an
ethical, sustainable business model.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Well, the flipside is, let's face it, their business was pretty darn
> shady... not much a role model for other up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

I'll be frank: I don't see Grooveshark's business as inherently more shady
than some of the other "act first, get permission later" startups that are
lauded both in the press and on HN on a regular basis.

For what it's worth, I'm not a fan of those companies either, but I find it
weird that the overall sentiment towards Gooveshark seems to be negative, when
there are many other companies that blatantly and openly violate the law as
well.

And furthermore, while things didn't work out for Grooveshark, it's pretty
clear that Grooveshark (or at least business/products like it) have been the
reason for services like Spotify and Rdio. I think it's pretty clear that we
wouldn't have music streaming services if it weren't for the long line of
services operating at the fringes, like TPB, Grooveshark, Napster, etc. So
even if they ended up failing as a company, the gap that they sought to fill a
decade ago has been mostly filled by services like Spotify and Rdio[0].

All that said, I agree with this statement:

> But I'd rather laud businesses who manage to combine cool technology with an
> ethical, sustainable business model.

I just don't think Grooveshark is anything close to the worst offender.

[0] Services which, I might add, have been financed _by the record industry
itself_.

~~~
zzalpha
Looking around here, I'm not sure what negative sentiment you're referring to,
but... :)

That said, I think the answer to your puzzlement is pretty simple: every
situation is different.

For example, I don't much sympathize with taxi medallion monopolies. While I
understand how they evolved, today it's clear that the existing taxi business
model needed to be disrupted in order to improve the consumer experience. But
that disruption has happened because of companies essentially violating
existing regulations on taxi services.

On the other hand, I look at a business like GS, which generated its revenues
by selling subscriptions to a service that dispensed content it did not
produce, without compensating artists for the privilege, and I see nothing
more than free riding on the backs of people who did the work to produce that
content.

Of course, there's an ironic counterpoint here: were it not for the
Groovesharks of the world, it's possible demand would never have been
generated that now supports legal alternatives (in the same way that I'd claim
music piracy is one of the reasons the iPod was ever brought to market).

Tricky. :)

~~~
chimeracoder
> which generated its revenues by selling subscriptions to a service that
> dispensed content it did not produce, without compensating artists for the
> privilege, and I see nothing more than free riding on the backs of people
> who did the work to produce that content.

Would you have a problem with it if they gave it away for free (and didn't
have to worry about covering their operating costs, via a hypothetical _deus
ex machina_?)

> today it's clear that the existing taxi business model needed to be
> disrupted in order to improve the consumer experience.

I very strongly disagree with this premise, though perhaps that's getting into
a different debate.

> Looking around here, I'm not sure what negative sentiment you're referring
> to

I wasn't referring just to the comments on here, FWIW.

~~~
zzalpha
_Would you have a problem with it if they gave it away for free (and didn 't
have to worry about covering their operating costs, via a deus ex machina?)_

That's a good question... I honestly don't know!

I'd definitely have _less_ of a problem with it... which is, I realize, pretty
dumb as that doesn't alleviate the harm to the artists.

About the only intellectual justification I can come up with is that, as a
free service, it's easier to position something like that as a way to discover
artists. I think, by selling a subscription, their customers would be more
likely to view their consumption as legitimate, and so wouldn't feel compelled
to later turn around and buy the music they were listening to.

But again, that's my intellectualizing a position I can't honestly explain.

~~~
chimeracoder
> I'd definitely have less of a problem with it... which is, I realize, pretty
> dumb as that doesn't alleviate the harm to the artists.

> About the only intellectual justification I can come up with is that, as a
> free service, it's easier to position something like that as a way to
> discover artists. I think, by selling a subscription, their customers would
> be more likely to view their consumption as legitimate, and so wouldn't feel
> compelled to later turn around and buy the music they were listening to.

Well, think of it this way: that's exactly what public libraries already do -
their funding comes from tax dollars, so they don't need to turn an operating
profit

Actually, public libraries are arguably _worse_ , because tax revenues tax not
just the consumers, but the artists themselves. Not only do they give artists'
work away for free to consumers, but artists are actually forced to _pay_ for
others to access their work for free!

~~~
zzalpha
Yeah, but when it comes to libraries there's a public-good element to their
activities, as they provide access to those materials for those who otherwise
may not be able to afford them.

In addition, a library, as a source of physical copies, can't lend and re-lend
the same content over and over. Which is why, of course, ebook lending
programs at libraries are often limited to a certain number of copies...
there's an attempt to apply that same restriction to digital content.

Lastly, the lending is always time-limited, unlike digital services.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Yeah, but when it comes to libraries there's a public-good element to their
> activities, as they provide access to those materials for those who
> otherwise may not be able to afford them.

How is that any different from free services like Grooveshark, The Pirate Bay,
Napster, etc.?

~~~
zzalpha
I really need to explain to you that the poor don't generally have computers?
Or internet access? :)

~~~
awa
But.. they have access to libraries with computers... More seriously, most of
the world doesn't have easy access to libraries like US or some other
developed countries while they do have access to decent internet.

------
FooNull
I'm sooooo glad I was paying a yearly fee for a VIP membership... and now I
can't even get a copy of my playlists. All of those obscure songs I fell in
love with are gone. I wonder if the information they turned over included my
credit card billing data...

<sigh>

Is it time to build a personal, private, self-hosted, open-source grooveshark
clone?

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Is it time to build a personal, private, self-hosted, open-source
> grooveshark clone?

Popcorn Time [1] meets Spotify?

[1] [https://popcorntime.io/](https://popcorntime.io/)

~~~
csmattryder
I tried building an primitive version of that idea a few years ago, called
Downstream [1] that scoured MP3 spider sites for URLs, then fed them into
AxWMPLib (MS's drop-in media player).

It had a few ideas that were before their time, like a playlist DJ, and what a
17 year old me thought passed for a 'stylish UI' [2]

[1]
[https://github.com/MattRyder/Downstream](https://github.com/MattRyder/Downstream)

[2]
[http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/328000/328491/downs...](http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/328000/328491/downstream-03-700x365.png)

------
sethbannon
"As a part of a settlement agreement with the major record companies, we have
agreed to cease operations immediately, wipe clean all of the record
companies' copyrighted works and hand over ownership of this website, our
mobile apps and intellectual property, including our patents and copyrights."

Ouch. Sounds harsh. Wonder if they had to turn over the user data as well...

~~~
baddox
I wonder if they had to make such an apologetic statement as well.

~~~
ekianjo
When you have a loaded gun down your throat...

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
A Hobson's choice is still a choice isn't it? Says so in the name anyway.

~~~
ekianjo
Sure, it's still a choice, but it's a situation where you don't have the upper
hand and you are bound to lose no matter what you do.

------
jasonkostempski
There's a large number of artists who's CDs I've bought because I was able to
listen to their entire album on Grooveshark. Artists who's radio songs didn't
come close to demonstrating their true skills. Of course, I've also passed on
CDs because I was able to find out an artist only has 1 or 2 songs worth
listening to. This is seriously going to hinder my discovering of new music. I
didn't even know they were in court but I knew it couldn't last.

------
ladybro
Reposting a reply by Jackson800 to a comment below:

If you act quick, you can access some of your playlist data by logging in
here: [http://groovebackup.com/](http://groovebackup.com/)

~~~
seanieb
That failed for most of my playlists and favorites.

However, it's also possible to get some playlists from your browsers local
cache:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/h9ubz6l2uedt6mc/Screenshot%202015-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/h9ubz6l2uedt6mc/Screenshot%202015-04-30%2018.22.11.png)

~~~
DaemonHN
Thank you, that worked great as it had majority of my library saved in JSON
format.

------
6stringmerc
Dear Grooveshark,

From the first day I saw your service, I had doubts about the legitimacy of
what you were doing. After watching YouTube grow into a massive company -
building on infringement then turning a corner through appeasement to the
legacy media interests - I knew doing a pivot was possible. Every time I saw
your name mentioned, it looked like you were refusing to play ball.

Part of me applauds anything that really pisses off the RIAA, and there's
another part of me that has rational fear of what the RIAA is capable of doing
through legal channels. Your service had a big bullseye painted on it, so I
stayed far, far away. I never even bothered to check if my music ended up
there...I was too busy focusing on channels I know to at least try to be in-
line with artist payment methods (iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google, etc). I
fully comprehend the notion of Safe Harbors, and also comprehend that there
was no way - ever - that you could lawyer up enough to defeat RIAA.

Music is an industry that truly does need to evolve, as the current
disruptions are helpful, but still lacking the genius innovation to best
connect listeners and content producers in an equitable relationship. Will it
ever happen? I'm optimistic. However, this day was inevitable, and as much as
I'd like to compliment you on trying, I'm held back by the fact Grooveshark
was, for lack of a better term, a white-washed piracy site. Good luck on your
next endeavors, and I truly hope you learned from this experience.

\- An Independent Musician

------
daddykotex
I'm actually surprised it lasted so long. The business model was wrong from
the beginning.

The thing is that in the early months/years, nothing was working as well as
Grooveshark. If the website made the big record make so move, all the
Grooveshark team's work was not in vein.

~~~
irishcoffee
Just a heads up, its vain, not vein. =))

~~~
daddykotex
Vein would be for blood in that case ;)

Thanks

------
lucb1e
I knew. I KNEW I should have backed up my music library. I once played a bit
with their Javascript front-end and figured out how I could do it, but never
got around to. I also planned on asking them to send me a copy -- I'm a paying
customer, it seemed reasonable. A copy of the song list of course, not the
songs themselves.

Now I only have what is cached locally on my phone. I've disabled WiFi and
mobile data and opened the Grooveshark app: phew, it's still there (no remote
wipe). I remember less than three days ago my subscription was renewed. The
app locally checks the date, so I have a small month to get my data out of
there.

One tiny bit of luck: I already figured out how to decrypt the locally stored
songs back into mp3s. That's at least something... if I can dig up the script
again.

Anyone ideas on how to get the full list back easily? Is there a data archive
I can download for my "VIP" account?

Edit: reddit helps out! See:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/34goss/meta_groovesh...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/34goss/meta_grooveshark_shut_down_forever_today/)

There is GoodForOneCare's comment with some Javascript (which didn't work for
me, but gave me some hints) and there is
[http://groovebackup.com](http://groovebackup.com) which retrieved a few
playlists for me. That's something at least, whew.

Now let's see about extracting my phone's data...

Edit2: found my decryption script but it doesn't contain their encryption key.
Guess I'll have to re-crack it, this time without Wireshark to capture the
decrypted data. It's a simple substitution cipher though, shouldn't be too
hard.

Edit3: pulling data from my phone, from the root of my sdcard
(/dev/block/mmcblk0p16), the files are located in:

    
    
        /app/com.grooveshark* for the APK
        /data/com.grooveshark.android.v1 for stuff
        /media/0/Android/data/com.grooveshark.android.v1 for cache and offline files

~~~
satanagel
How did you decrypt offlined files?

I have a bunch of songs trapped in the official app on an android device. I
would love to know how to convert the .dat files into .mp3s or similar. please
share

~~~
lucb1e
I haven't found a way yet, cracking the encryption is taking longer than I
expected. I spent about a day on it now and it could take another few days,
but I probably have the decryption key at home. I'll be home next Friday, so
that would be the earliest time I could get to them (if I still have it).

Send me your email address at temp84293@lucb1e.com if you want to be updated
when I found it. Or if you find anything, let me know too! :)

~~~
lucb1e
Update: I've found a way to decrypt it. The above email address is valid until
at least 2015-05-31.

------
fma
I was at UF working on another startup when GrooveShark started and was pretty
familiar with how they started. One of our co-founders even did some design
work for them. GrooveShark always had an awesome user experience, and I always
wished their business model would be legitimized so their company can prosper
and service consumers as how they should be.

I wish the best of luck to Sam and Josh. I hope they are able to take their
passion onto other endeavors. Though UF has a lot of talented students,
because Gainesville is a dinky city, it doesn't have the same startup
resources as on the west cost. Grooveshark was able to give a lot of students
the opportunity to work on something cool and bring some exposure to UF.

------
mmcclure
I switched to Rdio a few years ago, but before that I was a huge Grooveshark
fan. Other commenters have mentioned this as well, but I think Grooveshark was
waaaay ahead of their time with their HTML5 interface. I remember being
absolutely floored by their big first redesign.

I interned at a quasi-competitor whose deal was to allow you to upload your
own music (pre-Google Music) and I remember one of the founders constantly
talking about how Grooveshark wouldn't last long with all the lawsuits. That
was ~6 years ago, and honestly I'm astonished it took this long.

It's a shame to see it go. I don't have much faith in this happening, but
hopefully some of the code makes it out of all this.

------
SuperPaintMan
I've been a GS user since almost the beginning, back when there was a little
java tool for uploading your music collection. GS gave me a way to access my
library for free and in a consistent manner over the past decade. I waited for
days as my library of 10000+ tracks (90% indie/alt + underground artists)
uploaded to their servers.

GS was way ahead of the curve when it came to delivering music easily and
widely. The HTML5 interface worked simly everywhere. Using a IE on a 360? 1st
gen iPhone? Potato? Search as song, press play, enjoy.

GS filled a niche that Spotify cannot ever fill. Because GS was built upon the
libraries of its users, all the little mp3s that had been hoarded, recorded,
never officially released, fan remixes and safegaurded had been uploaded with
the mainstream content. It was built on what users kept because they knew it
could not be replaced. The special, the underground.

So long GS. "Hack the Gibson, hack the Gibson, I'm seedin' BitTorrents like a
digital pimp, son."

------
rmason
Although it is not a direct replacement I've been honestly impressed by the
app 6 seconds. It's by the same guy who created mp3.com and his team indexed
radio station playlists in real time, something Google thought impossible.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2015/04/17/6seconds...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2015/04/17/6seconds-
looks-to-rival-pandora-with-unlimited-skips/)

------
thinkcomp
The lawsuit that killed it can be found here:

[http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/mrgtoqd0/new-york-
southern-...](http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/mrgtoqd0/new-york-southern-
district-court/umg-recording-inc-v-escape-media-group-inc-et-al/)

~~~
kevinqi
As much as it must suck for Sam Tarantino & co., it must also be relieving in
some measure - fighting such huge labels for so long must've been incredibly
stressful.

------
ctb_mg
Yet another anecdote here... for me, Grooveshark was the genesis of music
discovery. Napster, limewire, etc. helped with artists I knew about already.
mp3.com helped me with genres but did not expand my library too much. Early
Last.fm/audioscrobbler was interesting to see what my friends were listening
to, but it was not effortless to discover similar/new music there. Winamp
shoutcast stations helped me to broaden my music portfolio, but there was no
mechanism to save favorite songs/artists that I had heard, and re-listen to
them. GS took the best of all those things and added more.

So I listened to GS for years. I owe GS a lot. Now I wonder if I, or if we had
supported them more, would they have not met their demise?

------
whichfawkes
Does anyone have a good sense for how hard it would be to operate a service
like this in a vaguely legal way?

I understand that Grooveshark's own employees were instructed to download
music and upload it to Grooveshark. If this had not been the case, or if they
could not prove that this was the case, would their service be technically
legal (safe harbor laws,etc)?

~~~
adamwong246
You'd have thought they'ed be smarter than that. They go to all this trouble
to get around the DMCA and then they get busted because they told the
employees to upload music, from work computers no less.

~~~
ladybro
IIRC, this was in the very beginning of the company, the first year or so.

------
jmtame
This is really sad news. I used to look at the Grooveshark interfaces with
awe. You guys were always on top of your usability and design, right down to
the 400 error pages.

I really love the goal you guys had when you started on this journey, and I
admire that you were forging a new path. Before all of these music services
came out, you were the only reliable option for listening to music the way I
wanted to.

Josh, thank you for taking time to share your story with me when I was in
college writing Startups Open Sourced. I admire your enthusiasm and
persistence, and you seem like an awesome person to work with in any capacity.

I wish everyone at Grooveshark the best.

------
loceng
Anyone know what patents they held? I wonder if music industry will leverage
them to take down other sites who are acting within the law via patent suits.

~~~
benyami
I don't know enough about how the patent system works. Wikipedia says
Grooveshark is a service of Escape Media Group Inc. A few results show up in
Google's patent search for Escape Media Group Inc.

Edit to add link:
[https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=pts&hl=en&q=inassign...](https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=pts&hl=en&q=inassignee:%22Escape+Media+Group,+Inc.%22)

------
mahouse
A good alternative is to use the web version of Spotify
([https://play.spotify.com/](https://play.spotify.com/)) with AdBlock.

~~~
cheepin
Wow! I had no idea that they had a web only client. Thanks. I definitely
prefer webapps to desktop installs.

------
krylon
Grooveshark's radio was awesome. I cannot count how many artists I have
discovered that way.

~~~
FooNull
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The majority of my favorite playlists were
filled with music I had slowly curated by favoriting songs I heard while
listening to the radio stations. Even if I can still listen to my own music
via youtube/vlc, the grooveshark ecosystem was a gem, and now it is gone

------
SuperCynical
I was listening to music (on Grooveshark touch) while driving down the
highway. The page refreshed and this came up, it was a very weird feeling.

This was the best music product I've ever used, and it was buggy as fuck
sometimes. I used it so much I learned weird ways to get around the menu
rendering issues on the html5/touch version of grooveshark. Even with its bugs
it was my main music platform.

Thank you for your hard work. It was one of my favorite webapps.

Long live Grooveshark~

~~~
91bananas
Mobile web client was seriously the buggiest piece of shit ever. Every week it
introduced new little things that you had to find ways around. But I still
battled it every time I got in my car so I could listen to exactly wtf I
wanted to listen to. That will be missed greatly.

------
Mike_Oldfield
Honestly, what was Grooveshark doing that was hurting anybody? If you'd answer
by saying 'The artists' or 'the record companies', you're dead wrong. Record
companies have insane income, while artists and bands make up a large portion
of the world's millionaires. New or less popular artists were sometimes even
positively affected by their music being on the site, as it made finding their
music easier. The companies who sued are only showing the world what they
actually care about. Money. Yeah, money. Cash, loot, dollars, euro, yen, moo-
lah. Whatever you want to call it. I'm not saying that Grooveshark was perfect
or that it's employees were saints, but I am saying that they were treated
unfairly. The RIAA is trash, and Grooveshark's demise is a testament to that.
Personally, as a musical artist and as someone who loves music of all kinds, I
would never trust my music with any of these companies. The only way I can
feel toward artists who go along with what these companies is disgusted. My
music will always be allowed on streaming websites, as long as I get proper
credit for it, not payment. Credit.

------
aagha
As a long-time Grooveshark user, (paying) subscriber, and partner, this is a
very sad event. I echo others in that Grooveshark's music service was one of
the best out there in terms of their UI, audio quality and music discovery--I
discovered TONS of new bands and artists thanks to them, and bough the music
of those I really loved.

A word about Josh Greenberg, the co-founder and CTO of Grooveshark. He's an
amazing guy. When I started my startup Metrical[0], he was the first person to
give it a try--in a real, production environment. He put us in front of
millions of users and was patient as we worked through bugs and issues. He
really put faith in someone with a "cool idea" and gave me a shot. Thanks
Josh!

Grooveshark was an amazing service, and will be missed. Josh, I'm looking
forward to seeing you go on to bigger and better things.

Remember The Man In The Arena, by Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again
and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who
does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great
devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the
end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at
least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those
cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

0 - [http://getMetrical.com](http://getMetrical.com)

------
Tunecrew
As someone who works full time in the music business, I shed no tears for
Grooveshark.

The only thing I don't like about this situation is that there appears to be
no settlement for the thousands (tens, hundreds?) of indie artists, labels,
writers and publishers whose music was on the site.

10% revenue loss for an indie label or publisher has a far greater impact on
their viability than 10% loss to <insert major label here>.

~~~
Kiro
You make music because it's fun. If you're doing it for the money you're doing
it wrong. If I could make even a single dime on my music it would be a
privilege but I'm happy as it is.

~~~
Kiro
Getting downvoted but my opinion stands: being a musician is not a job and you
can't expect to get paid for it. It would be like expecting to get paid for
playing video games. Making music is a leisure activity and a very rewarding
one. Thinking you should make a living on it is just greedy. Get a normal job
and create music for its own sake.

~~~
cotix
You can, infact, make a living with playing video games. I wonder how you
would feel if I said developing is a big hobby of mine, a leisure activity,
and a very rewarding one actually. You should not make money from that, get a
real job, and practice your development hobby for its own sake.

~~~
Kiro
Yes, I know you can. Just as you can make money making music. The important
word here is "can". You are not however entitled to it. A lucky few gets paid
but that's an extreme privilege you shouldn't take for granted.

The difference with development is that no-one questions the business model.
You code and get paid for it while music is a completely different story.
Before I became a professional developer I coded for fun and was happy with
that. If the market would be like music (where 99% of artists cannot make a
living out of it) then yes, I would say exactly that.

~~~
mryan
Nobody is "entitled" to make a living from making music. However, everyone is
entitled to say "I have created some music. In exchange for some money I will
give you a copy of this music".

You say "no-one questions the business model" which is clearly false. Have you
never heard of a developer being asked to work for free (or equity) on someone
else's idea? IMHO that's the same as you saying musicians should be grateful
to earn any money from their work.

------
siegecraft
Damn. They just launched a major redesign of the site a few weeks back and
(unlike most major redesigns) people didn't hate it. The loss of my remaining
VIP membership is nothing compared to my sadness at losing my favorite music
service, not to mention having to find a replacement. At least when Google
Reader shut down I wasn't a paying customer.

------
jamesmiller5
8 Years. I have loved and listened on Grooveshark for the last 8 years. Since
my first job while in highschool. You were the first app I have ever
installed, on my company _blackberry_ so I could listen on the commute. You
let me send my highschool sweetheart songs of love and joy, let me express so
effortlessly what I wanted to say when words fail. Her and I needed you
through long nights at college, keeping us focused and energized. When I
scored my first internship we offlined our entire collections for the 36 hour
drive from Chicago to California. We drove that 4 more times with you. And
finally, after the many years of sharing together and a college degree later,
you were there to play the music as she walked down the isle.

I can genuinely say you made my life better, you have given me true happiness.
Thank You.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB2YyAgg9Z4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB2YyAgg9Z4)

------
waylandsmithers
"We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music
on the service."

That's one way of putting it. I'm sad to see grooveshark go but always
wondered how the hell it was legal every time I used it. I guess it turns out
it wasn't. To be honest I'm shocked it lasted this long.

------
weed_X
To recover my collections and playlists i used:

webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PutYourUrlHere&strip=1

1\. Seach your profile (or your profile's collection, playlist etc.) with
Google.

2\. Don't click search results, just copy the URL of your profile

3\. Replace the text "PutYourUrlHere" with the URL you copied. It is important
to include "&strip=1" at the end because it opens you the text version of the
page, otherwise it won't work.

My cached profile page was from 28.3.2015, so at least I managed to save most
of my data. groovebackup.com was not as useful as this approach.

~~~
swimfar
Could you try it again and see if that still works? I couldn't get it (or any
of the other methods) to work. Did they maybe update the robots.txt so google
can't cache it anymore?

------
yason
These things just make me more determined to stick by my music collection in
mp3/ogg format, stored locally.

Until the digital rights to copy bits are globally declared we can't trust any
company to provide continuous service, regardless of how well "licensed" they
are. People are copying music anyway but the mafiaa make it difficult for you
to create a public service or offer a public tool to do it easily, even if
you're still exercising your fundamental rights to manipulate your own
computer and your own storage in any way you like.

------
tomd3v
I've been using them for the last 2 years and had a huge playlist. Is there
any way to retrieve the playlist? groovebackup.com just returns "Missing data
for playlist"

------
adamwong246
bummer. There goes allll my playlists.

~~~
Vekz
Same here. I've kind of dreaded this day and thought why is there no
standardized 'playlist protocol' or playlist format that music services could
share. This is like the 4th time I've had an old music service shut down and
lost all my playlists with no migration path.

~~~
TehCorwiz
There is a standard (more-or-less) playlist format: m3u. The trick is
convincing services to implement export of that information.

~~~
Joky
The problem may be that the m3u would contains artist name, song title, and
position in the playlist, and even if you could export this, it would not be
very robust to import somewhere else.

------
leke
First, Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Second, So the major music companies own the music I created and uploaded as
past of the GrooveShark artist program?

------
TheAceOfHearts
Well, I'm sorta sad and pissed. I was in their original $30/year plan and I
got charged like 1 month ago... No refund? :(

~~~
scintill76
If it was on a credit card, you could try contacting the bank for a refund. I
don't know exactly the rules/laws about it, but I'd think only getting 1/12th
of what you paid for is pretty good cause to get most of it back.

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
I used a debit card :(. But yeah, even getting half back would've been nice.

This is a good reminder that I should stop using my debit card online, thanks!

------
Zardoz84
Oh, shit ! And now I lost my favourite music lists without possibility of
recovering. I had some music there that I can't find in other places.
Great..... If they could allow to recover these lists (Author - Song) on text.
You are doing "good bye" in a way that a lot of user would hate.

------
eleven1111
You can probably recover your playlist. (Instructions for Chrome) On the
computer you used grooveshark on: visit the website, open developer tools,
open "resources tab", click on local storage->grooveshark.com. Now find the
key called 'libraryXXXXXX' where the X's are numbers. Right-click it, "edit
value" and copy/paste that data here: [https://json-csv.com](https://json-
csv.com). Source of instructions:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/34goss/meta_groovesha...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/34goss/meta_grooveshark_shut_down_forever_today/)

------
rawnlq
I would pay money to get my playlists which I painstakingly curated back.
(They weren't on [http://groovebackup.com.](http://groovebackup.com.))

And I thought I would learn after I lost a bunch of stuff when megaupload got
shut down...

------
sssilver
They were amazing. Rest in peace.

------
omgitstom
I really respect Sam as a CEO. Anytime I've seen him talk about the music
industry, it has been fresh and his ideas could really fix it. I used
grooveshark for as long as I could, but moved to Spotify about a year ago.

------
zzalpha
Eh, after a couple years with a paid GS subscription I switched to a higher
quality paid service a while ago. Grooveshark's brutally bad album support,
combined with the penchant for content just vanishing from my playlists,
rendered the service nearly useless to me in the long run.

AFAICT, it's most unique feature was community radios... a feature I'd love to
see replicated elsewhere but is, as for as I know anyway, still unduplicated.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Which service did you move to?

~~~
zzalpha
I've personally switched to Google Play Music, mostly out of sheer
convenience. Previously I used just the free service to upload my own stuff...
the amount of storage they offer is pretty huge and the sync app isn't too
bad.

Then I decided to give All Access a try and discovered a pretty enormous
selection at a decent price (double what I was paying for my GS subscription,
but with a properly curated library that doesn't disappear randomly), with
full offlining support to my phone.

Overall I've been incredibly happy. I'm sure other services are as good or
better but I've not found a reason, yet, to shop around so I figure I'll stick
with Play for the foreseeable future.

------
KamiCrit
Wow, was listening to some Sturgill Simpson, went out and came back to a
"server is having issues" page. Refreshed it later and this happens!

~~~
jackson800
If you act quick, you can access some of your playlist data by logging in
here:

[http://groovebackup.com/](http://groovebackup.com/)

I couldn't get everything back, but could get a few of my playlists at
least...

------
jelubu
Oh no! I'm so sorry to see you go! :( But I think it's awful not to have at
least one days or a few hours notice. I've been a loyal follower for years and
have so many amazing playlists I've carefully cultivated on there. I know it
was perhaps foolish to do so on this site alone, but my God, I'm heartbroken.
Is there no way of recovering just the lists of song names? Pleeeease?

------
monique66
I can't believe that grooveshark's actually gone. there was a time when it
didn't work on our computer, and it was awful. Grooveshark's always been my
go-to place for music, and I loved it. Now that it's gone, I'm super sad and
angry. I had all my music on there, and it's all gone :( all I have now is
what I can remember. Imma miss you guys.

------
clinth
Why embed the message in an image, instead of text?

~~~
jrowley
If you don't know CSS and already laid off the person who does, then it's a
good way to center text.

~~~
Retra
I'd be inclined to agree if "text-align: center" weren't already in the page
source...

------
raonyguimaraes
Uau that was a big surprise! I have been using this service for such a long
time. Now, what would be the best alternatives available ?

~~~
bitwarrior
Perhaps any of the alternatives they listed on their site?

~~~
morganvachon
I found it interesting that they omitted two very obvious alternatives
(Pandora and Slacker Radio). An overt snub, or simply no point in naming two
of the most well known services?

~~~
mikeash
Pandora doesn't provide the same service. They purely do "radio" and don't let
you make playlists or play specific songs.

I can't explain Slacker's omission though.

~~~
morganvachon
I thought Pandora offered playlists in their paid tier? I've never paid for it
so I don't know the details of their full service.

~~~
mikeash
Their paid service just removes ads, and adds some minor enhancements like
allowing more skips.

~~~
morganvachon
>allowing more skips

Hmm, I'd think if I'm paying for the service I could skip as many times as I
want.

Thanks for the info!

~~~
mikeash
Yeah, you'd think....

Pandora is a weird service. They pay less for their music in exchange for
putting restrictions on it that make it less likely to substitute for music
purchases. It really is supposed to just be radio, and they do things like
limit skips so that you can't just skip ahead until you get to the exact song
you want to listen to. The music companies want you to still go out and buy
the album if you want to do that. On the other hand, Pandora is cheaper, at
$5/month versus, for example, $10/month for Spotify.

Personally, I wish I could get Pandora's selection algorithm's into Spotify
and have the best of both worlds.

------
davidgerard
At which point customers once again learn about DRM.

I'm frankly amazed there are HN readers who didn't already realise this.

Piracy: The Better Choice(tm).
[http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1043337/hd-disk-
for...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1043337/hd-disk-format-wars)

------
mynameishere
When BMI and ASCAP can shut down a coffee house "open mic" night in 24 hours
it's absolutely astonishing that grooveshark lasted as long as it did.

But what's the harm? Just torrent the music you want, or if your daddy's rich,
buy it for 99 cents or whatever.

------
dorfsmay
I've used them and assumed they had sorted the licensing issues.

I don't necessarily agree with the licensing model the music and film
industries are using, but I'm surprised that, being so visible, they were able
to keep going for so long without running into trouble.

------
kbradero
I used Grooveshark, they had the best service and they company was awesome.

Is a shame the music industry is rotten and went as far as to kill this
awesome company. My best wish for the team, you guys are great, dont let this
get you down.

And kudos for your all these years!

------
danhodgins
I loved Grooveshark, but I knew from day one it was only a matter of time
until their legal issues would catch up to them.

Loved the service though.

Every time they shut down a service like this 5 more pop up, so everyone will
just start using the next incarnation.

Introducing Sharkster!

------
um304
Very sad to hear it. You guys made an awesome service with a gorgeous UI/UX.
Your recommendation engine was the best of its kind. I wish you strength
through difficult time and I'm sure you'll do great in future.

------
brownbat
"[T]he fact that company execs specifically went and reuploaded songs that
were taken down by DMCA notices is incredibly damning." -Techdirt

This and Grokster... it'll be nice when we finally get a case where someone
actually has clean hands.

Let this be a lesson to anyone starting a service without an idea of how big
it'll get. Do something awesome, but keep your nose clean. (PS, in case it's
not obvious - sometimes they read your early emails when you go to court,
especially those sarcastic and glib ones that could be misread to make you
look like a jerk.)

Meanwhile, how much data on Grooveshark users did the labels just acquire? I
wonder if they'll see suits against users as a waste of time, or a way to
quickly extract a small settlement from each of them...

------
melanomma
I loved this site. It had virtually all the music I listen, even some
buried/abandonded tracks that are fairly hard to find online and are almost
never on paid services. Goodbye, sweet prince.

------
cymetica
SeeqPod paved the way for Grooveshark and Spotify and was one of the first
streaming search engines. They got acquired by Sony and that could still be an
option for Grooveshark.

------
hoodoof
>>As part of the settlement agreement with the major record companies, we have
agreed to cease operations immediately, wipe clean all of the record
companies’ copyrighted works and hand over ownership of this website, our
mobile apps and intellectual property, including our patents and copyrights.

Wow - a company comprehensively crushed and defeated.

------
waynerr
super cruddy of them not to send anything out about this going down was using
a week or two ago and now all the songs and play lists gone just a let down
majorly.

------
mikelbring
I think I am going to wear my Grooveshark shirt today.

------
msane
"That was wrong. We apologize"... After what, 3-4 years of mainly illegal
content? Wow :) if only every crime was that easy to deal with. It's very Wall
Street of them.

~~~
icebraining
Unlicensed, not illegal.

~~~
acdha
My dictionary defines illegal as “contrary to or forbidden by law”. If you're
distributing material without permission it's still illegal even if you stick
your fingers in your ears while loudly shouting “na na na I can't hear you!”

~~~
icebraining
The _content_ is not illegal. Illegal content would be stuff like child
pornography.

~~~
acdha
Trying to redefine the question will not make your earlier wrong answer
correct. At no point has anyone questioned the legality of the actual music –
the discussion has always been about whether it was legal for them to share
copies.

~~~
icebraining
I wasn't answering, I was nitpicking :)

------
KamiCrit
So why a picture of text rather than just text?

------
tuxninja
Man that sucks...I liked Grooveshark !

------
nitromx
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

------
doragcoder
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo...

------
genieyclo
Grooveshark changed my life.

------
serve_yay
Damn. It was very useful.

------
jeisc
now I turn back to last.fm why are they still up?

------
tuxninja
man that sucks...I liked Grooveshark.

------
hharman
RIP

------
eurleif
So, the music industry most likely now has all the information about everyone
who used GrooveShark. What are the chances they start suing uploaders, or even
just heavy users?

------
deeplove1234
This just ruined my whole entire day!!!! All I know is grooveshark been with
them since I was a child!!! This is not happening can't stop crying!. I love
you grooveshark you guys was amazing!!! Please come back some other way!!!!
Lmao

------
BoppreH
I discovered it a few minutes ago because I had just purchased a Premium
Spotify license and opened Grooveshark to export my collections.

All my favorite songs, albums and bands were listed there, and only there. I
used Grooveshark for a few years, and enjoyed it. Thank you for that.

But also fuck you.

Throwing away data like that is unforgivable for a service. Imagine Facebook
disappearing with your list of friends, or Google Docs with your documents.
Since ownership was transferred, I don't expect to see my data again. And this
destroys all goodwill I had.

"The writing was on the wall!" Whose wall? Certainly not mine, not with
Youtube and its obviously pirated songs still existing.

Thank you for the generous service, Grooveshark, but fuck you for destroying
my music collection.

(no, it's not on groovebackup.com)

~~~
beagle3
> Imagine Facebook disappearing with your list of friends, or Google Docs with
> your documents.

Yes, I imagine it on a daily basis. That's how the cloud works. It's happened
before, and it will happen again. Any cloud based data is bound to disappear
at any second because of a hack (ask Matt Hunan), because of a court order you
are not aware of, because of an in-court-or-out-of-court settlement you are
not part of and not aware of. Lots of reasons. That's why I don't actually
trust the cloud as anything but backup.

Furthermore, anything not backed up offline (even if there's an online backup)
is also in danger from malicious actors.

The only person to blame for not keeping a backup (of just the song titles, no
less) is yourself. Use expletives if it makes you feel better, though, by all
means.

~~~
Garthex
I learned that the hard way a month ago when I found that all my photos from
the past 6 years that I had been storing on Dropbox had been mysteriously
deleted :(

Storing != backing up

Still trying to let go of ever having those visual memories again. Certainly
you're right that it's no one's fault but our own, but that doesn't make the
lose any easier to deal with. I do blame Dropbox though, considering I'm a
paying customer. When it happened I saw that the actual backup feature costs
extra.

Dropbox may be a ok syncing service but it's a pretty shitty backup service
given any collaborators can delete your files. Suffice it to say I'll be
backing up locally and finding an alternative to Dropbox.

(Sort of a tangent/rant/vent there, but if anyone has a recommendation for
cloud backups I'd love to hear.)

~~~
beagle3
No cloud experience myself that sounds useful to you, but BackBlaze seem to be
everyone's favorite around here -- but do note that they are purely a "backup"
rather than "storage" service.

They delete stuff you have not backed up in the last 30 days. If you have a
removable drive that you backed up to backblaze, it must go through their
program again once every 30 days, or they will consider this abandoned.

Ask yourself this, now: Why cloud, when $70 buys you a 1TB portable hard drive
with ~100MB/sec bandwidth (that you don't have at all unless you live in Japan
or Korea, and that you don't get to Dropbox/BackBlaze even if you live there).

~~~
atYevP
Yev from Backblaze here -> You're not wrong. In fact we recommend having an
on-site backup FIRST, then moving on to other backup mediums. I wrote a post
about it -> [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-
strategy/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/). Online
backup is great, but local backup will always be quicker to get data on to and
off of!

