Remember Grooveshark, that bootleggy version of Pandora that let you stream any song, in surprisingly high quality, for free? After nearly a decade of blatant copyright infringement, the site’s finally totally kaput.
Top image: Gadgetdude / Flickr
Here’s an excerpt of the epitaph that now lives on Grooveshark’s website, which hints at the very serious and very costly lawsuits that have plagued the music streaming service for years:
Dear music fans,
Today [April 30th] we are shutting down Grooveshark.
We started 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.
This was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation.
It’s actually kinda amazing Grooveshark lasted as long as it did—when Universal opened a lawsuit against the site in 2011, it demanded Grooveshark fork over $150,000 a pop for each of nearly 2,000 unlicensed songs. And yet, against all odds, Grooveshark managed to cling on (and afford its legal fees) for another few years. Anyway, the end we were all expecting has finally arrived. RIP Grooveshark, it was nice listening to your magically free music while it lasted. [Reddit]