Ask HN: How legal is Grooveshark's model?

6 pointswesleyzhao4 comments

Is there business of providing free streaming songs when searched sustainable?

I believe that the songs they play are properly licensed, much like radio stations. I also believe this cost them a stupidly large amount of money.

So I believe your question can be rephrased "Will the cut the studios ask for be insufficient to bankrupt grooveshark or other streaming media suppliers?"

At various times I have seen songs that look like they have been uploaded from someone's MP3 collection (e.g. search for "mp3") - this makes me wonder how legit their licensing really is. Although perhaps they recognise which songs are being played and pay the appropriate people, but I can't really see the music industry going for that.

It seems as though you are correct. http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/13/grooveshark-slips-past-emis... They have signed with some labels and as such can legally play some content. On the other hand, they were recently kicked off android over copyright concerns, so apparently they arn't airtight http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/04/google-kicks-gro...

Spotify is making the freemium model work in the UK & other parts of Europe. However, Spotify's success is partly due to their extraordinarily high free-to-premium conversion rate (upwards of 20%).

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