I recall being pretty confused by Grooveshark. It seemed… like, I mean, it was possible to stream a ton of music for free, so it had a vaguely pirate-y feel to it. But then, at the time YouTube also hosted a ton of music and other content seemingly without any license.

It was a weird time. IIRC lots of people seemed to think streaming was somehow distinct from downloading a file.

I'm not surprised they disappeared.

I understand the need to protect intellectual property, and much as I hate how it is run in the US, copyright it vital, but it’s sad that platforms like Grooveshark are casualties of our system.

In around 2009, I remember my dad used to listen to music on his laptop a lot, but getting songs synchronized between different computers was a pain in the ass before the days of Plex or Jellyfin and the like. When I introduced him to Grooveshark, it was sort of huge for him; he started making tons of playlists, and it was easy to listen to stuff everywhere. IIRC he figured out how to install Flash on his early Android phone so he could stream Grooveshark from his car.