How the hell is Grooveshark still alive? Essentially it's a streaming frontend for illegaly uploaded music.
They do pay royalties to some artists, and at least for a while a lot of upcoming artists were advertising their new albums there. I discovered a bunch of great groups through that.
Unrelated with revenue, but I liked how some artists (Avicii comes to mind) ask you what do you think about X song when you play it in Grooveshark, that's some valuable direct feedback. The radios are awesome too.
Can't hide the fact I've been using it for years, but I truly think Grooveshark is the best music streaming service by far. Spotify's catalog is nowhere as large, Pandora misses on so many features, Last.fm recommendations are good but what else do they do...
Rdio has a better interface, Spotify better social/apps, Pandora better radio. Grooveshark will die because it's only option is to eventually go legal, and then it loses it's only advantage.
And I think it's only a good thing. 'Legal/Illegal' are just man-made barriers to access the spirit of freedom to rejoice/discover various cultures/tradition/communities.
I understand that there is a possible monetary loss involved as a side-effect, but I don't think it's much serious as the various Copyright organisations project it to us[1]. If that was how it was, the internet would be piracy free, already.
[1] http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-piracy-boosts-music-sales...
Doesn't sound like a good idea, does it?
Music, just like any other service, art or physical product, requires time and effort - it has value and is not a commodity. If you don't value it enough to justify spending more than the price tag of a spotify subscription (which doesn't help any artist anyway), then don't - it's fine - but don't expect artists to work for free.
That said, Grooveshark is a mor ethan shady business and should have been closed a long time ago in my opinion.
I don't feel I have the right to tell anyone not to reproduce my art at their own expanse. If I play you a song, it's your right to record it and play it to your friends - just like it's your right to whistle it. Just like it's your right to remember it.
To me, intellectual property feels like a diversion. Instead of having an audience that pays me for my work, I have a middleman that makes me work for free so that he can overcharge my audience while I wait for my percentage.
I don't need to restrict anyone's freedom to make a living. The middleman does. And if grooveshark hurts his income - he had it coming. He's been hurting both our incomes (artist and audience) for years.
1) If I offer a service, it's not one time - I need to keep working till a specific deadline/check point is reached.
With music/movies, it's a one time investment - You compose music once and put it on sale. And it does the work for you. Just for comparison, if I stop providing my service/offer it for free, I may not make money at all.
2) I'm not asking 100% of the artist's money for free. It maybe only a certain (in)significant percentage because despite piracy, the artist still makes money from sales. In fact, piracy improves sales (see link in parent post).
Whereas, if I offer my services for free, I make no money at all and there is no free marketing for my business involved (that would make me profitable) as in the scenario above.
So, it's not fair that you expect I should offer 1) services for free and 2) 100% of it.
I totally get your point though, and like I said, I still believe that time and effort, one time or not, is pretty valuable.
Cheers.
One thing to note, though, is that they do pretty well with takedowns. For example, I attempted to upload a copyrighted song years ago and uploads were disabled on my account. They also work with publishers and artists to ensure fair compensation is made.
I've paid for the Pro account for a few years now and strongly believe they could do better than their competition if they made the service paid-only.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/28/4668442/grooveshark-settle...
http://bgr.com/2013/08/28/grooveshark-sony-music-settlement/