Universal doesn't want a settlement or share of ad revenue. They want Grooveshark gone. A Universal insider was quoted as saying the label has declared 'legal jihad' against the startup.[1] This was 1 year ago. So they've had plenty of time to build their war strategy.<p>Besides, even if Grooveshark wanted to make a deal (I'm sure they do), they couldn't afford Universal. The vast majority of grooveshark users don't pay, but just get ads. For the ones that do pay, their monthly fee still pales in comparison to the value of the hundreds or thousands of songs they've stored in their account. I've got 300 songs in my GrooveShark. Even if were paying the $6 per month, it would take 50 months to cover the costs of those songs at $0.99 each. And during those 50 months, I would have probably added another 300 songs.<p>The only end game I see here is GrooveShark going out of business. And I say this with great sadness, because I'm a regular user and love the service.<p>1. <a href="http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/090310groovesharkumg" rel="nofollow">http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/090310groovesharkumg</a>
As a former employee of GS I can say that getting sued is nothing new and may in fact be a good thing for them in a wierd and twisted way. The reason being is that sometimes (this was the case with EMI atleast) the labels use a lawsuit to begin negotiations. Getting sued is almost like a stamp of approval. Obviously I don't know anything about this lawsuit but if they can outlast the legal costs and emerge with a stronger subscriber base from their redesign, they'll be ok.
"UMG is seeking maximum damages of up to $150,000 per infringement from Grooveshark, which could mean more than a $15 billion payout if the lawsuit is successful."<p>Those numbers seem ridiculous. I imagine the only real purpose they serve is to create fear in similar / emerging ventures and to set an upper bound that guarantees bankruptcy.<p>It seems as pointless as condemning somebody to 1000 death sentences.
I like Grooveshark's business model.. I think it's one of the most clever of all the new media companies.<p>Media is a two way market. Both content owners and buyers must be completely satisfied for the market to work effectively.<p>The two problems with labels: 1. they want to get paid alot and 2. they want to control their catalogs so that they can control their marketing.<p>The two problems with customers: 1. they want to pay less and 2. they want to listen to whatever they like.<p>Grooveshark solves these problems completely. They pay copyright holders to stream songs on the system and charge customers through ads or fees for the service.<p>At the same time, missing songs in the library can be uploaded by users and they get fairly paid for the "work" from Grooveshark's profits. Content owners don't have to do any work to seed the system with their content but they get paid for every stream or download.<p>So labels save money by not having to manage their content, since, in theory, it's already been uploaded by users and the crowdsourcers make money "working" for Grooveshark.<p>The catalog ends up more complete than labels typically allow and the users are happier. Everybody wins.<p>The only problem is that the system only works if the labels give up some control and they HATE that.<p>Hopefully Grooveshark survives, I think it has the best shot at finding a workable path for everyone.
I don't understand why the CEO was uploading illegal files. Seems like the worst possible thing he could have done -- really kills any "we're trying to provide a legal service; not our fault our users are uploading copyrighted material" arguments. The safe harbors won't protect them if this is true.<p>I remember hearing Shawn Fanning say he never shared anything illegal on Napster.
I'm not really surprised. I've always been astounded that Grooveshark (which is an awesome service, I use it everyday) was able to do what they do.<p>I figured that the labels were simply building enough evidence to simply destroy the service outright which will clearly send a message to anyone else who wants to do something similar.<p>It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Paying Grooveshark member here, will be sad to see this go. As unorganized as their service is, their library is massive. Of course, it's obviously illegal how their library is able to be so massive. I'm hoping I can at least save my playlists so I don't have to recreate them later off memory.<p>I would really love it if Spotify could take some UI lessons from Grooveshark.
The sad thing about this whole deal is that Grooveshark is awesome! Nevermind the fact that a simple Firefox plugin lets you download the MP3 for each song that you listen to for free...<p>In retrospect, it's only a matter of time before the labels go all Napster on their ass.
Saw this coming. I am a GS subscriber, but it's quite obviously a streaming version of napster.<p>It is really poorly organized like napster was as well - every user who has renamed a song or used alternate spelling comes up, names that make no sense, poor quality rips, etc.
This was only a matter of time.<p>I've been using Grooveshark for a couple of years now and I didn't even know they were illegal (I figured they had deals with all of the record companies) until I saw info posted about it here on HN.
I'm shocked that Grooveshark has made it this long. Especially when you compare it to the legal cases successfully prosecuted against individuals for file sharing which were clearly not commercial.
A part of this that I don't hear people discussing is that for a legal right to remain relevant it needs to be enforced. If legal and cultural precedent move towards a weakening of copyright in general, then certainly the music business (and all digital content business) will be drastically affected, even if in a specific instance (Grooveshark) they are not losing revenues.
Another thing that I think many people aren't aware of is how expensive it is to produce and market music. It's insanely expensive. The vast majority of artists with actual record deals don't come close to recouping the expense. The labels have always made money on hits, which have to cover the costs of producing and marketing them, plus all the costs of the non-hits.
I'm curious, do folks on this forum who are anti copyright enforcement for music feel the same way about software?
From what I've heard, Grooveshark has been pre-emptively making payments to the labels monthly for over the past year so that they don't sue. They labels seemed to be okay with this as they sort of figured out what Grooveshark was - I wonder what happened to cause the change of heart by Universal.
I wonder if there will be many winners from these music wars? I've been seeking out music released under Creative Commons licenses via Jamendo and the Internet Archive for a while now, and the quality and selection continues to improve (not just click hop, noise or tracker-based techno anymore). <i>Most</i> artists don't benefit from their relationships with labels, so anything that reduces their exposure can hurt their main sources of income (performances, merchandise, etc.). It will be interesting to see if new artists start ignoring labels because they simply aren't worth the trouble.
If they go down, I´d love to see them open source all the tech behind their site... maybe as a way to say Universal "now there are 1000 more sites like us, fuck you".
"UMG is seeking maximum damages of up to $150,000 per infringement from Grooveshark, which could mean more than a $15 billion payout if the lawsuit is successful."<p>If the RIAA/MPAA should rule our world, then $15 billion should be the price of a sandwich.
Grooveshark is highly successful on facebook (much more than spotify and pandora), and its been gaining even more fans lately.<p><a href="http://99like.com/music.php" rel="nofollow">http://99like.com/music.php</a>
slightly offtopic: would it work to tag music on Youtube via Musicbrainz(eg <a href="http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Jaikoz" rel="nofollow">http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Jaikoz</a>) and replace GS tracks with YT streams? Would it offset legal issues onto YT?<p>Probably better to do for a new startup.
Here are the questions I have every time I see these music lawsuits:<p>How many of the people using this Grooveshark service are present/former/would-be Universal customers?<p>How do you prove this? Should you attempt to prove it before deciding to sue?<p>What if the people using Grooveshark are just too cheap or too poor to ever buy Universal releases? Is that possible?<p>On the flipside, what if they are also Universal's best customers? Is that possible?<p>The article says they named specific uploaders in the complaint. Maybe they have been able make some assumptions about them as existing/potential customers? (e.g. They have some assets and/or they've bought Universal releases in the past.)
I've been wondering how Grooveshark's existence was even possible. I assumed they just hadnt been messed with yet by content owners, and that was why it was still around. Maybe that's about to change.