Grooveshark shut down on April 30, 2015

Streaming music service Grooveshark has shut down as of April 30, 2015 as part of a settlement from copyright infringement lawsuits. This came as a settlement due to potential copyright infringements. The company could have been liable for up to $736 million in damages. As part of the shutdown, ownership of the Grooveshark service, website, and all of its associated intellectual property had been transferred to the labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group.

There’s still hope for recovering your playlists, however. A redditor named effstops has posted a link to a service called GrooveBackup where you can attempt to back up your Grooveshark playlists. Some users on reddit reported they have had no success with GrooveBackup. Please remember to use caution with the website.

Grooveshark has also posted the following shutdown notice that points uses towards licensed music streaming websites on their website:

Dear music fans,

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 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.

At the time of our launch, few music services provided the experience we wanted to offer – and think you deserve. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case. There are now hundreds of fan friendly, affordable services available for you to choose from, including Spotify, Deezer, Google Play, Beats Music, Rhapsody and Rdio, among many others.

If you love music and respect the artists, songwriters and everyone else who makes great music possible, use licensed service that compensates artists and other rights holders holders. You can find out more about the many great services available where you live here: https://whymusicmatters.com/.

It has been a privilege getting to know so many of you and enjoying great music together. Thank you for being such passionate fans.

Yours in music,

Your friends at Grooveshark

April 30, 2015

It will be interesting to see what happens with other music services and what new services appear after Grooveshark’s shutdown.