Grooveshark

All the music, none of the licences

Shut down
19902026

Grooveshark was a free music streaming site built on user uploads, founded by University of Florida students in 2006 and reaching tens of millions of listeners before Spotify hit the US. Sued relentlessly by the major labels, it shut down on 30 April 2015 with a public apology and handed its assets to the industry.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2007
  2. April 2007 Launch
    Grooveshark launches

    A P2P music marketplace that evolves into free streaming.

  3. 2010
  4. 2010 Peak
    Tens of millions of monthly listeners

    Free on-demand streaming before Spotify reaches the US.

  5. 2011
  6. April 2011 Incident
    Kicked out of the app stores

    Apple and Google remove the mobile apps under label pressure.

  7. 18 November 2011 Legal
    Universal Music sues

    The case that surfaces internal upload-it-yourself emails.

  8. 2014
  9. 29 September 2014 Legal
    Summary judgment: direct infringement

    The safe-harbour defence collapses.

  10. 2015
  11. 30 April 2015 Shutdown
    Grooveshark surrenders and shuts down

    Settlement, public apology, servers wiped, IP handed to the labels.

The site through time

Browse grooveshark.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Escape Media Group 2007–2015 Founded Gainesville, Florida startup

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Facing potentially ruinous copyright judgments, Grooveshark settled with the major labels on 30 April 2015: it shut down immediately, apologised, wiped its servers and handed over its intellectual property.

Our analysis: Grooveshark bet that user-uploaded music plus DMCA takedowns equalled a legal streaming service. Internal emails showing staff uploading files themselves destroyed that defence, and with statutory damages heading toward hundreds of millions, surrender was the only exit.

History [edit]

Streaming before streaming was legal

Started in Gainesville, Florida by three students, Grooveshark evolved by 2008 into something dangerously convenient: search any song, press play, free, in the browser, with playlists and radio. The catalogue came from users uploading their own files, with takedown requests handled DMCA-style. At its peak the service claimed tens of millions of monthly users, years before Spotify reached the US.

The labels saw it differently: Universal, Sony and Warner sued, and Apple and Google pulled the mobile apps. The fatal blow came in the Universal case, where discovery produced internal emails instructing employees to upload missing tracks themselves, collapsing the site's safe-harbour defence. A judge found direct infringement liability in 2014; statutory damages could have reached hundreds of millions.

The apology

On 30 April 2015 Grooveshark settled and vanished the same day. The homepage was replaced by a signed letter: "We made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders... That was wrong." The company wiped its servers, surrendered the site, apps and patents to the labels, and dissolved. Weeks later, co-founder Josh Greenberg was found dead at 28; a copycat "Grooveshark.io" was chased offline by industry lawyers within days. Few shutdowns have ever been so total.

Similar projects

Winamp It really whips the llama's ass 1997–2013 RealPlayer Buffering… buffering… 1995–now Google Play Music Your music locker, repossessed 2011–2020 Rdio The prettiest streaming service that ever lost 2010–2015 Kazaa The post-Napster free-for-all 2001–2012 Napster Every song in the world, free, right now 1999–2001

Sources [edit]

  1. Grooveshark Shuts Down After Eight Years Rolling Stone 1 May 2015 [archived]
  2. Grooveshark Shuts Down & Apologizes to the RIAA TorrentFreak 1 May 2015 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).