In a very honest open letter to the public, music streaming service Grooveshark officially announced that it was shutting down for good after almost ten years of providing access to popular music to the masses. But unlike most companies who just let everybody know they are closing by just not being there anymore, they admitted that their wrongdoing led to this moment and that they are paying (literally!) for that mistake by turning over everything to those they have wronged.
Grooveshark has been in a six-year long battle with major labels, like Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group among others, for mass copyright infringement. The labels argued that the service was hosting illegal uploads of songs from major artists, and now, the company admits that their business practices were wrong, despite their “best intentions” of allowing fans to share and discover music. Shutting down the service is actually part of their settlement with the labels. Instead of paying a maximum of $736 million in fines, they will instead turn over the website, mobile apps, and patents and copyrights, as well as wiping clean all the copyrighted works in their database.
They also recommended that users turn to other services like Spotify, Deezer, Google Play, Beats Music, Rhapsody, and Rdio, which have legally acquired the rights to play the artists music. Newly-launched service Tidal, of which Jay-Z is one of the owners, was noticeably absent from their recommendations. They also strongly urged people to use licensed services that give due compensation to artists if you love and respect those who are making this music. They also referred people to this url, for a list of these services.
Streaming music has been a hot button topic in digital music lately, with some artists like Taylor Swift pulling out of Spotify because of the unjust compensation they receive. Tidal is in fact, in response to their issues with Spotify, with the service asking users to pay more for a monthly subscription service so that the musicians will be rewarded accordingly.
SOURCE: Grooveshark
Or, just stream or download music from YouTube, which must people probably do.
All this is, is the music industry shooting yet another hole into their foot.