Music Streaming Site Grooveshark Closes As Part Of Legal Settlement

After years of legal battles, music streaming service Grooveshark has shut down.

The only thing on its site now is a statement:

“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 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 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.”

The company, which was founded in 2006, went on to recommend some of the newer music streaming services that were established after its launch nearly 10 years ago, such as Spotify and Deezer.

Grooveshark suffered a major defeat last fall when a U.S. District Court judge found that its employees had violated copyright infringement laws.

That lawsuit was only the latest in a series of legal battles that started six years ago and led to Grooveshark being temporarily blacklisted from Google’s autocomplete search results in 2013.

TechCrunch has emailed Grooveshark for more information about its closure and the future of their team.

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