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Grooveshark Shuts Down
- whichfawkes 11y agoDoes 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)?
- mikegioia 11y agoIt must be, it's no different than youtube in that regard. This is a sad, sad day. I can't believe it.
- adamwong246 11y agoYou'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 11y agoIIRC, this was in the very beginning of the company, the first year or so.
- KamiCrit 11y agoWow, 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 11y agoIf 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...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- williamcotton 11y agoThat's a really quick shutdown... there should have been some fair warning. BTW, Sturgill Simpson was the best find I've had for new music in a long, long time. You gotta see him live if you get a chance. Little Joe, his guitarist, somehow keeps getting better and better!
- jasonkostempski 11y agoNever heard of Sturgill Simpson. While reading your comment I copied the name and habitually went to paste it into Grooveshark :( edit: I haven't gotten excited about any guitar based music in a long time, least of all country, this band is great!
- raonyguimaraes 11y agoUau 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 11y agoPerhaps any of the alternatives they listed on their site?
- morganvachon 11y agoI 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?
- aidos 11y agoI think Pandora is US only, certainly not available in the UK. Which is a shame, because it was brilliant about 10 years ago when I was allowed to listen to it. Maybe that's one of the reasons it wasn't listed?
- morganvachon 11y agoIt's not so great these days, at least in the free version. Ads every other song, sometimes more ads than songs in a given hour, and (at least on my phone) it's a battery hog. I prefer Slacker.
- mikeash 11y agoPandora 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 11y agoI 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.
- adamwong246 11y agobummer. There goes allll my playlists.
- Vekz 11y agoSame 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 11y agoThere is a standard (more-or-less) playlist format: m3u. The trick is convincing services to implement export of that information.
- Joky 11y agoThe 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.
- agumonkey 11y agoPlaylists aren't illegal, what are the odds of a possibility for extraction ?
- FooNull 11y agoWell considering that they've handed over the servers and data to the plaintiffs... you probably shouldn't hold your breath
- kozed 11y agoI've always noticed random songs disappearing from my collection but procrastinated doing anything about it. I wrote a script two weeks ago to download my entire collection to avoid potentially losing some really great songs. Talk about good timing. I always knew grooveshark would be temporary and possibly unreliable but I did not expect an unannounced closure with no ability to extract our collection metadata.
- sethbannon 11y ago"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 11y agoI wonder if they had to make such an apologetic statement as well.
- ekianjo 11y agoWhen you have a loaded gun down your throat...
- fnordfnordfnord 11y agoA Hobson's choice is still a choice isn't it? Says so in the name anyway.
- ekianjo 11y agoSure, 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.
- Negative1 11y agoIf they've already lost control of the site it's unlikely they themselves were making this statement. Otherwise it is possible that it's an apology delineated by the settlement and likely written by lawyers.
- Syrup-tan 11y agoThe 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
- ams6110 11y agoShould have been personally signed by the CEO, not "your friends at..."
- bhouston 11y agoIt doens't sound like a letter the CEO would write -- it appears to be mostly reflective of the opinion/perspective of those that won the lawsuit and took over the site.
- whistlerbrk 11y agoYes, I'd agree especially considering that it's an image not text.
- FooNull 11y agoI'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?
- Syrup-tan 11y agoI hope playlist data wasn't part of the settlement, and that we will be able to recover it. It would be detrimental to the artists to have some of their fans not be able to find them again, right? Perhaps record companies care less about the artists which are forgettable in the first place.
- jglovier 11y agoMy best guess is that the playlist data (and any other relevant user data) is probably the reason the legal action even happened. What's honesty more valuable to whichever company is primarily responsible for the suit: the profits said company stands to gain now that Grooveshark is out of the way, or the behavioral user data of 10 years of internet music streaming on a front-runner service? My bet is on the later.
- dublinben 11y agoYou can already run your own streaming service with Subsonic today. What are you waiting for?
- FooNull 11y agohttp://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp ? This seems like an interesting project. I've never heard about it before, though I do wish it was an open-source one...
- __david__ 11y agoSubsonic is GPL. I've been running it for a few years now. I especially like using it with iSub on iOS, though that isn't under active development anymore (it's GPL now, too).
- loceng 11y agoAnyone 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 11y agoI 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=inassignee:%22Escape+Media+Group,+Inc.%22 https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=pts&hl=en&q=inassign...
- talaketu 11y agoI'd guess it's simply legal hygiene to defend against a phoenix.
- clinth 11y agoWhy embed the message in an image, instead of text?
- jrowley 11y agoIf you don't know CSS and already laid off the person who does, then it's a good way to center text.
- eugeneross 11y ago+1
- Retra 11y agoI'd be inclined to agree if "text-align: center" weren't already in the page source...
- ljk 11y agogenuine question: do you think all the employees didn't know till today, and is being let go all at the same time?
- eugeneross 11y agoAll this time that's what I've been thinking too.
- diimdeep 11y agoMaybe this has to do something with search engines, but why ?
- rmason 11y agoAlthough 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-looks-to-rival-pandora-with-unlimited-skips/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2015/04/17/6seconds...
- msane 11y ago"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.
- sologoub 11y agoThis seems to be the result of civil, not criminal proceedings, so a far cry from a proven crime. The burden of proof is MUCH higher in criminal proceedings and for that reason we have "innocent until proven guilty" presumption. Civil matters often come down to who has deeper pockets and more lawyers.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 11y agoUnlicensed, not illegal.
- acdha 11y agoMy 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!”
- nfoz 11y agoPerhaps pedantic, but "fair use" usage of a work would fall under "unlicensed but legal".
- icebraining 11y agoThe content is not illegal. Illegal content would be stuff like child pornography.
- acdha 11y agoTrying 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.
- mahouse 11y agoA good alternative is to use the web version of Spotify (https://play.spotify.com/ https://play.spotify.com/) with AdBlock.
- cheepin 11y agoWow! I had no idea that they had a web only client. Thanks. I definitely prefer webapps to desktop installs.
- subverting 11y agoNeeds flash.
- daddykotex 11y agoI'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 11y agoJust a heads up, its vain, not vein. =))
- daddykotex 11y agoVein would be for blood in that case ;) Thanks
- krylon 11y agoGrooveshark's radio was awesome. I cannot count how many artists I have discovered that way.
- FooNull 11y agoI 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
- zzalpha 11y agoEh, 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 11y agoWhich service did you move to?
- zzalpha 11y agoI'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.
- hoodoof 11y ago>>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.
- ladybro 11y agoReposting 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/
- FooNull 11y agoWONDERFUL It didn't have all of my playlists, but I was able to at least recover a small portion of my songs. Some is better than none...
- seanieb 11y agoThat 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%202015-04-30%2018.22.11.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/h9ubz6l2uedt6mc/Screenshot%202015-...
- DaemonHN 11y agoThank you, that worked great as it had majority of my library saved in JSON format.
- chrisetch 11y agoLikewise, I was able to get most of my library from the "library" key
- Kronopath 11y agoYeah, looks like it keeps track of songs added to your collection in JSON format under the key "library<some big number>". Thanks for the heads-up. As incontrovertibly illegal and probably unethical as this website was, I'm going to miss it. It was a great way to discover new music and I've become a fan of many artists that I found through it. There really is nothing like throwing a bunch of songs in the queue and saying "give me more music like this" using its radio service.
- Zardoz84 11y agoThanks bro ! At least I could recover the name of the songs and artist of some songs that I had on grooveshark
- sssilver 11y agoThey were amazing. Rest in peace.
- jasonkostempski 11y agoThere'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.
- TheAceOfHearts 11y agoWell, 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 11y agoIf 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 11y agoI 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!
- tomd3v 11y agoI'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"
- ignoramous 11y agoThis 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-or-bust-how-google-saved-youtube/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/23/cheaper-bandwidth-...
- WettowelReactor 11y ago>> 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 11y agoThey own zero percent of the codebase. According to the link all IP was turned over to the winners of the court case.
- sebastianavina 11y agoI used grooveshark, but now streamer extension on chrome is a better option. youtube has all the music anyway
- adm_hn 11y agocan you provide a link please? The search for "streamer" on chrome extensions results in many products.
- 11y ago
- omgitstom 11y agoI 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.
- doragcoder 11y agoNoooooooooooooooooooooooooo...
- thinkcomp 11y agoThe lawsuit that killed it can be found here: http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/mrgtoqd0/new-york-southern-district-court/umg-recording-inc-v-escape-media-group-inc-et-al/ http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/mrgtoqd0/new-york-southern-...
- kevinqi 11y agoAs 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.
- bmat 11y agoAs 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 11y agoWell, 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 11y ago> 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.
- physcab 11y agoGrooveshark, 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 11y agoThat 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.
- 11y ago
- KamiCrit 11y agoSo why a picture of text rather than just text?
- siegecraft 11y agoDamn. 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.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- brownbat 11y ago"[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...
- deeplove1234 11y agoThis 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
- Tunecrew 11y agoAs 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 11y agoYou 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 11y agoGetting 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 11y agoYou 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 11y agoYes, 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.
- eurleif 11y agoSo, 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?
- cymetica 11y agoSeeqPod 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.
- danhodgins 11y agoI 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!
- fma 11y agoI 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.
- dorfsmay 11y agoI'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.
- rawnlq 11y agoI 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...
- SuperCynical 11y agoI 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 11y agoMobile 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.
- serve_yay 11y agoDamn. It was very useful.
- jmtame 11y agoThis 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.
- mmcclure 11y agoI 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.
- melanomma 11y agoI 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.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- BoppreH 11y agoI 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)
- boredinballard 11y agoI got off Grooveshark years ago because it was obvious it wasn't going to be around forever, I am actually pretty darn surprised they lasted as long as they did. Either you ignored the signs or were blissfully unaware.
- jschulenklopper 11y ago> Throwing away data like that is unforgivable for a service. Did you consider that immediate deletion of the data might have been part of the settlement agreement, and that there was (for Grooveshark or their owners) therefor not much of a choice to do otherwise?
- BoppreH 11y agoI fail to see how my list of song titles infringes copyright and requires immediate deletion.
- techsupporter 11y agoYou might fail to see it but it was seen by the lawyers who demanded or negotiated the settlement from the other side of the table where Grooveshark sat. The users weren't a part of the discussion and the winning side--the music industry--was able to get exactly what it wanted because otherwise they'd bankrupt Grooveshark.
- genieyclo 11y agoGrooveshark changed my life.
- nitromx 11y agoNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
- nitromx 11y agoNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
- mynameishere 11y agoWhen 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.
- SuperPaintMan 11y agoI'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."
- kbradero 11y agoI 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!
- tuxninja 11y agoman that sucks...I liked Grooveshark.
- tuxninja 11y agoMan that sucks...I liked Grooveshark !
- um304 11y agoVery 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.
- yason 11y agoThese 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.
- lucb1e 11y agoI 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_grooveshark_shut_down_forever_today/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/34goss/meta_groovesh... 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
- jeisc 11y agonow I turn back to last.fm why are they still up?
- Zardoz84 11y agoOh, 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.
- davidgerard 11y agoAt 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-format-wars http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1043337/hd-disk-for...
- leke 11y agoFirst, Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Second, So the major music companies own the music I created and uploaded as past of the GrooveShark artist program?
- T3RMINATED 11y agoim starting my own grooveshark website... the competitor is no more! yay
- waylandsmithers 11y ago"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 11y agoTo 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 11y agoCould 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?
- jelubu 11y agoOh 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?
- 6stringmerc 11y agoDear 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
- ctb_mg 11y agoYet 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?
- monique66 11y agoI 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.
- monique66 11y agoI 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.
- mikelbring 11y agoI think I am going to wear my Grooveshark shirt today.
- hharman 11y agoRIP
- jamesmiller5 11y ago8 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
- eleven1111 11y agoYou 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_grooveshark_shut_down_forever_today/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/34goss/meta_groovesha...
- aagha 11y agoAs 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
- Mike_Oldfield 11y agoHonestly, 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.
- waynerr 11y agosuper 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.