Grooveshark shuts down in settlement with record companies

Grooveshark, the free online music streaming service that allowed users to upload their own songs, announced on Thursday that it was shutting down.

The service came under fire in recent years for allowing copyrighted material on the site—until owners filed DMCA notices. Several record companies, including Warner Bros., Sony, Atlantic, and Universal Music Group, sued Grooveshark in 2011. Now the record companies have come to the agreement with Grooveshark to shut down the site and remove all copyrighted songs.

Josh Greenberg and Sam Tarantino founded streaming service in 2006, and the site attracted tens of millions of users. They called it "the world’s largest on-demand and music discovery service." But Grooveshark not only allowed users to upload any song; the founders also apparently demanded that employees upload popular songs in an effort to expand the site's music library.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments