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Can we subtract 1-2 points from Grooveshark for their questionable legal tactics? Awesome comparison, Chris. This should be the go to page used to respond to

Can we subtract 1-2 points from Grooveshark for their questionable legal tactics? Awesome comparison, Chris. This should be the go to page used to respond to any question about these services.

chrischen 15y ago
I wanted to rate them for their features but yea I guess I should mention that Grooveshark could just disappear one day with all your playlists.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  Actually, yeah...stability of the company for a service where you have to put a lot of work in to have a good experience might as well be a rating.
cmelbye 15y ago
Yeah, I definitely wouldn't rate Grooveshark 9/10. It's great, and I've happily used it for months, but it's no Spotify. Aside from the legal issues, the sound quality is generally pretty bad, the crowd-sourced music catalogue with incorrect song/artist/album names is maddening, and 9/10 for Mobile seems a high when you have to jailbreak before you can use it on one of the largest phone platforms.
- chrischen 15y ago
  I didn't take points off for having to jailbreak. I reviewed the app for the app, and the app is great. Plus, apparently jailbreaking is easy. It's true the music player itself is inferior to Spotify, and the quality of search results is not as good. But it's free, I'm fairly certain it has more songs than Spotify, it's accessible from any computer, and it has other features like radio (which from personal experience is slightly better than Spotify's in term of recommendation quality).
- jmtame 15y ago
  seems a high when you have to jailbreak it's not difficult to jailbreak your phone. go to jailbreakme.com, and you're done.
physcab 15y ago
How are our (I'm a grooveshark employee) legal tactics questionable? We sign deals with new labels all the time and our #1 company-wide goal is to help an artist make over $1M through our service. Here is a list of all our label agreements: http://www.grooveshark.com/labelslist http://www.grooveshark.com/labelslist. I don't think its updated though since we have a deal with EMI and I can't find it on the list. Yes, a few of the other majors are missing, but that is always an on-going conversation. We also fully comply with the DMCA in the same way YouTube and all other UGC sites work. Case in point: try searching for Beatles.
- makmanalp 15y ago
  Hi, I'm a longtime grooveshark fan and user but I've also had similar questions to the grandparent. You let users upload music arbitrarily. You also add that music to your index and use it globally on the site (or I presume so, since some of your music has irregular tags or tags that say things like "radio rip"). How is this legal? I don't think you're allowed to upload music and keep it there as long as you don't get a complaint about it. That's basically the same thing as having an ftp full of mp3s. You can't even claim that you're not hosting the content. Maybe what you're doing is more similar to what youtube is doing.
  - earbitscom 15y ago
    It's legal because the person uploading it agrees to their terms and says it's not copyrighted, or that they have the right to upload it. In most cases, these people do not. Grooveshark relies on DMCA and says that they prohibit this behavior but they know full well that tons of the content being uploaded is copyrighted. The simple fact is, they should know what content they have licenses for, and what content they don't. Maintaining a list of the top 1,000,000 bands in the world and not letting anybody upload tracks with metadata that included those bands and song names in it would not be that difficult. The data is there, because otherwise users could not search for those band names and find what they're looking for. Simply put, if Grooveshark did everything they could to fight copyrighted material being added to their site, they wouldn't have a business. Maybe now that they have some licenses and an audience they could survive, but they would have never gotten to where they were without significant illegal content being uploaded and accessed by their users.
invisible 15y ago
Why should Grooveshark be penalized for trying to build a company under the law and license content in the process? Do you think that you just create a startup one day and walk into a huge label the next? It does not work that way in this business. To address some of your inaccuracies (are you making this stuff up?): - Universal is suing specifically for a few bands not covered under the DMCA. We actually do a better job of filtering those bands than Youtube. Source: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/uploads/fb/32/fb32701d5d705be04823ba01de133bd7/UMGvGrooveshark.pdf http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/uploads/fb/32/fb32701d5d705b... - Licensing for a single artist can be owned by multiple labels for different albums. This licensing also varies based on country as well. To say we can simply check for an artist name in an upload isn't true when you are talking about the breadth of possible content. Plus, if we filter uploaded content inaccurately we could be liable from both sides of the coin (those wanting the content on, and those not wanting it on). - Grooveshark has licensed EMI's content since Oct 2009. Merlin was licensed on Aug 2010. We are actively trying to get more licensing deals setup. (Also, some past deals have involved paying licensing for past streams as well.) - The DMCA's safe harbor clause was enacted to help encourage technological innovation. Uploads to Grooveshark are similar to uploads to youtube. If you feel otherwise you are gravely mistaken. Creating and sharing music as an artist should be simple and we believe indie artists are as important as signed artists - in fact, we're trying to work with indie artists to make them money and get them tour gigs.

Can we subtract 1-2 points from Grooveshark for their questionable legal tactics? Awesome comparison, Chris. This should be the go to page used to respond to any question about these services.

chrischen 15y ago

I wanted to rate them for their features but yea I guess I should mention that Grooveshark could just disappear one day with all your playlists.

earbitscom 15y ago
Actually, yeah...stability of the company for a service where you have to put a lot of work in to have a good experience might as well be a rating.

cmelbye 15y ago

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't rate Grooveshark 9/10. It's great, and I've happily used it for months, but it's no Spotify. Aside from the legal issues, the sound quality is generally pretty bad, the crowd-sourced music catalogue with incorrect song/artist/album names is maddening, and 9/10 for Mobile seems a high when you have to jailbreak before you can use it on one of the largest phone platforms.

chrischen 15y ago
I didn't take points off for having to jailbreak. I reviewed the app for the app, and the app is great. Plus, apparently jailbreaking is easy. It's true the music player itself is inferior to Spotify, and the quality of search results is not as good. But it's free, I'm fairly certain it has more songs than Spotify, it's accessible from any computer, and it has other features like radio (which from personal experience is slightly better than Spotify's in term of recommendation quality).
jmtame 15y ago
seems a high when you have to jailbreak it's not difficult to jailbreak your phone. go to jailbreakme.com, and you're done.

physcab 15y ago

How are our (I'm a grooveshark employee) legal tactics questionable? We sign deals with new labels all the time and our #1 company-wide goal is to help an artist make over $1M through our service. Here is a list of all our label agreements: http://www.grooveshark.com/labelslist http://www.grooveshark.com/labelslist. I don't think its updated though since we have a deal with EMI and I can't find it on the list. Yes, a few of the other majors are missing, but that is always an on-going conversation. We also fully comply with the DMCA in the same way YouTube and all other UGC sites work. Case in point: try searching for Beatles.

makmanalp 15y ago
Hi, I'm a longtime grooveshark fan and user but I've also had similar questions to the grandparent. You let users upload music arbitrarily. You also add that music to your index and use it globally on the site (or I presume so, since some of your music has irregular tags or tags that say things like "radio rip"). How is this legal? I don't think you're allowed to upload music and keep it there as long as you don't get a complaint about it. That's basically the same thing as having an ftp full of mp3s. You can't even claim that you're not hosting the content. Maybe what you're doing is more similar to what youtube is doing.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  It's legal because the person uploading it agrees to their terms and says it's not copyrighted, or that they have the right to upload it. In most cases, these people do not. Grooveshark relies on DMCA and says that they prohibit this behavior but they know full well that tons of the content being uploaded is copyrighted. The simple fact is, they should know what content they have licenses for, and what content they don't. Maintaining a list of the top 1,000,000 bands in the world and not letting anybody upload tracks with metadata that included those bands and song names in it would not be that difficult. The data is there, because otherwise users could not search for those band names and find what they're looking for. Simply put, if Grooveshark did everything they could to fight copyrighted material being added to their site, they wouldn't have a business. Maybe now that they have some licenses and an audience they could survive, but they would have never gotten to where they were without significant illegal content being uploaded and accessed by their users.

invisible 15y ago

Why should Grooveshark be penalized for trying to build a company under the law and license content in the process? Do you think that you just create a startup one day and walk into a huge label the next? It does not work that way in this business. To address some of your inaccuracies (are you making this stuff up?): - Universal is suing specifically for a few bands not covered under the DMCA. We actually do a better job of filtering those bands than Youtube. Source: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/uploads/fb/32/fb32701d5d705be04823ba01de133bd7/UMGvGrooveshark.pdf http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/uploads/fb/32/fb32701d5d705b... - Licensing for a single artist can be owned by multiple labels for different albums. This licensing also varies based on country as well. To say we can simply check for an artist name in an upload isn't true when you are talking about the breadth of possible content. Plus, if we filter uploaded content inaccurately we could be liable from both sides of the coin (those wanting the content on, and those not wanting it on). - Grooveshark has licensed EMI's content since Oct 2009. Merlin was licensed on Aug 2010. We are actively trying to get more licensing deals setup. (Also, some past deals have involved paying licensing for past streams as well.) - The DMCA's safe harbor clause was enacted to help encourage technological innovation. Uploads to Grooveshark are similar to uploads to youtube. If you feel otherwise you are gravely mistaken. Creating and sharing music as an artist should be simple and we believe indie artists are as important as signed artists - in fact, we're trying to work with indie artists to make them money and get them tour gigs.