Grooveshark: The Original Spotify | Nostalgia Nerd

[@Nostalgianerd]

Buy a DNA kit here: bit.ly/NostalgiaNerd_mh. Use the coupon code NOSTALGIA for free shipping.

[@nitroxinfinity]

And now some private company has your DNA. No thanks.

[@nneeerrrd]

Dude, if DNA isn't a personal data, then I don't know what is. And you promote sharing it with random people on the street AND PAY THEM! What a joke u r

[@DeathMetalDerf]

My only question is actually about the sponsor of this video. Do they give your DNA records to the government so they have your DNA in a database? I'm not concerned because I plan on committing loads of crimes, but if it's on a database then it's information that could be stolen, and while I'm not sure what you'd do with the info, I'd still rather not give my DNA records to the government.

[@DeathMetalDerf]

@@vardekpetrovic9716Having to pay for every individual video I want to watch or song I want to listen to is beyond inconvenient in my opinion. Streaming might some day lose it prominence in Europe, but there are just way too many people in other places who won't want to have a card on file that gets charged a couple of bucks for every single video they watch. Also that's bad for the consumer because over time you'll have paid way more for what you've watched individually as opposed to a streaming service you pay once periodically for service at whatever level you choose.

[@meetoo594]

@@DeathMetalDerf Reading their terms of service it looks like the DNA and other records are stored on American servers and the data will be given to law enforcement if requested through a court order. If the company is sold to a third party the data also gets transferred. They seem legit at the moment but it only takes one breach or law change and its a free for all with your genetics. Also, we all know how honest, law abiding and trustworthy various American govt agencies are eh? Yeah, I really wouldn't trust them with my dna tbh, especially when combined with all the face and family matching tech they use.

[@d3x7r0]

I still miss GrooveShark. It did one thing that I haven't seen any other service match since: they used sonic analysis to queue up songs instead of using metadata. So if you were to start listening to Money For Nothing by the Dire Straits, you would get songs that sounded similar in the same way a (good) radio DJ would queue them up. Spotify and other services, by comparision, will notice that people who usually listen to Dire Straits also listen to, for example, Pink Floyd, and queue songs up that way. This means you can get massive sonic whiplash from song to song. TBF, even GrooveShark eventually dropped this in favor of metadata by the end of it's lifetime. A real shame if you ask me.

[@Mordecrox]

Which is why I hate simplistic binary data analysis. Just because me and like minded people like to listen to thrash metal and japanese idol singing doesn't mean we want to listen BOTH in the same queue.

[@DanteToska]

I have been searching for a service or website that can recommend music sonically and have been unable to find it for like over a year now. I found an app called Magroove that claims to use AI to recommend music sonically based on other tracks, but it's been very hit or miss for me (sometimes it feels like it's recommending things based on metadata)

[@mityaboy4639]

i miss Grooveshark. I paid for it from early on … it eas the best service out there

[@DanielSaner]

Spotify actually does this. Or at least they used to, I haven't kept up with them since I've left the service for Qobuz about five years ago. They once published a blog post (probably still around somewhere) where they explained that they're using three sources for generating personal recommendations: the "people with similar listening histories also liked…" kind you describe, sonic analysis to suggest songs with similar characteristics (which I assume is why I often had recommendations in my Discover Weekly playlist that barely anyone seemed to have listened to before me), and also editorial factors, where they matched your taste with data they scraped from music blogs and editorial websites, to then suggest other music those blogs have featured.

[@cookieface80]

@@Mordecrox Unless you're a Babymetal fan.

[@DrakkarCalethiel]

Grooveshark, a name I haven't heard in many many years!

[@dadsfads]

During my teens, when I was really getting into music, it was an incredible tool to find out what I like and discover new artists. I still have a GrooveShark shortcut on my desktop. The logo has become a part of the scenery and I'll never let it go.

[@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep]

Same! The shortcut is long gone, but my flair on r/Music will always be "RIP Grooveshark"

[@C.I...]

Same - its recommending algo was much better than any of the current day. That site is responsible for a lot of CD sales from myself!

[@lizardizzle]

A few months ago I was in a grooveshark nostalgia trip and was disappointed to find that no one had talked about grooveshark at all. Glad to see this history!

[@alcidesqueiroz]

I have a crazy story from back in the day with Grooveshark. So, I was all about Grooveshark for years, jamming out to my tunes. Then Spotify came along in Brazil (in 2014), and I switched, as many others did. But one day at work, I had this itch to listen to a specific song I couldn't find on Spotify (probably the Starcraft 1 Terran theme, go figure). So, I revisited Grooveshark after months of silence. Lo and behold, the song was there! Just as I got into it, BOOM, the stream cut off. I mashed that play button, but nada. Refreshed the page, and guess what? "Today we are shutting down Grooveshark." Yup, lucky me, I managed to hit play right when they were pulling the plug! That was after MONTHS of not using it. Still mind-boggled by the sheer absurdity of it all, even 8 years later. 😂

[@RyanMercer]

Did two dna services. Found out my dad wasn't my dad. Buyer beware 😭

[@mattVmatt12]

For real?

[@RyanMercer]

@@mattVmatt12 unfortunately yes and who I thought was my father died just before I turned 13, bio father lives two hours north and blocked me on the site as soon as he realized what it was saying and looked my mother up on Facebook and told her he wants no contact with me because I'll "ruin things with my wife and kids ". Dude is in his 70s, doubt his wife and kids are just going to stop talking to him at that age...

[@soogymoogi]

Same. Found out I was a donor baby - my dad knew my mom used a donor bc they were struggling with infertility but I came out looking so much like my dad nobody questioned it. He died a few years before I discovered I wasn't his bio kid and I have weird feelings abt it. I did meet 2 half siblings though which is neat.

[@RyanMercer]

@@soogymoogi I check every week for bio dad's obit so I can learn my half siblings names 😂 😂 😂

[@soogymoogi]

@@RyanMercer good luck! Your bio dad sounds like an ass lol hopefully your half sibs are better

[@Cknight700]

I think its interesting the founder died a few years before the site got shut down. And the co founder was found dead for inconclusive reasons shortly after the site got shut down as well.

[@solwidotnl]

If I remember correctly, Napster didn't support multi-peer downloading. It also didn't support resuming partial downloads. If your peer was gone, the file remained broken.

[@303cerebral]

Correct. People would often stay online just long enough to get the song they were downloading then went offline and your download ended. If you have to go you had to go, odd to think now using the net back then meant no one could use the phone and what a big deal that was!

[@kandigloss6438]

Also it and it's copy cats didn't use torenting, his repeating that term when it refers to a different peer to peer technology all together really annoyed me, lol. I'm surprised really, he, or rather his current script writer, usually does better research than this.

[@Brainles5]

Grooveshark was amazing. And i really liked the web interface they transitioned to near the end.

[@Croz89]

I guess part of the issue is when you're dealing with copyrighted work, as a CEO you can't play it fast and loose for long, you need to acquire an expensive legal department which will increasingly tie up more of your time, which if you're a CEO of a sprightly tech startup fresh out of university you are going to find incredibly boring and frustrating to deal with when you could instead be seeing what new feature your dev team has come up with. On the other hand, if you're a more mature CEO with experience in other companies dealing with IP, who has already had to sit through many dry and mind numbing meetings with lawyers, you're probably at least able to recognise that this dull drudge work is essential to your success. That's possibly why Spotify succeeded where Grooveshark failed, they were more willing to get the costly and boring licencing work done up front.

[@Kris_A]

Very true.

[@JCBeastie]

Grooveshark passed me by, I did use Pandora before they geolocked. To this day no other service has identified my musical taste as accurately. I miss it.

[@StevenHunt1]

I went to high school with Josh and it still blows my mind to see how big of an impact he had on the Internet and the world for the time he was with us. I remember visiting him and his web design business in 2004, at the time he was running it out an extra room at a chiropractor's office. He graduated and left for UF the year after that and the rest is history.

[@AlexandruVoda]

Note: Napster, KaZaA and others did NOT use torrents. Torrents were invented later and are not the only way to do P2P.

[@Boopop1024]

Thank you, this was driving me crazy.

[@nicktheslayer95]

What the hell? I woke up about three hours before this video was uploaded and my first thought was "what happened to grooveshark? I liked that site. I wonder if anyone else remembers it." Spooky

[@5Hydroxytryptophan]

It's weird how many inconclusive deaths are related with big media companies. This reminded me of the German hacker called Tron, which you should make a episode about.

[@androxilogin]

I remember the day it shut down. I was pissed off and drunk. Of course there were a few alternative servers trying to pick up where they left off but it didn't last long. Groovedown was great throughout the whole thing.

[@eyesofnova]

I had never heard of Grooveshark but it certainly sounds like a 2000 startup. Something of note, Spotify used pirated music to start off when testing their music streaming service before any labels had signed on.

[@Loki-]

I listened to grooveshark around 2009/10 while playing WoW. It was great for PC listening and had so many songs.

[@faenethlorhalien]

God, the screencap of napster gave me some serious flashbacks to my college days...

[@volvo09]

Napster was everywhere in colleges. I never went to college but I knew it was huge there. In the days of predominantly dialup internet, colleges across the world helped keep mp3's online and shared haha

[@TheBearInTheChair]

It was the only music streaming service that wasn't blocked when I was in my last two years of highschool. Man, good times

[@Ascania]

Grooveshark allowed me to discover awesome amateur and non-commercial recordings beyond the labels that other users shared. Meanwhile all the other services only provided the commercial players.

[@PedroSilvahf]

And i just noticed the shark fin in the logo. By the time it went offline i heard about a lot of people uploading full radio shows, some weekly, some daily, most of them comedy or just a host who was funny. They pulled the plug so fast i believe most of those shows are lost media by now.

[@brothmc]

thanks for the video, I miss Grooveshark as well - I worked there for years and met a lot of smart, nice, and cool people and it changed my life for the better.

[@Sk8nRock]

Found out about Grooveshark in 2013 and loved it. It's what I listened to all day at work and I found out about some great bands there. After it shutdown I just stopped listening to music online and went back to torrenting.

[@tibr]

Grooveshark was THE reason i got as into music as i am today, thanks for the trip down memory lane😁

[@xliquidflames]

KaZaa and BearShare were popular at my high school because the IT folks blocked Napster. I was also the world's biggest Metallica fan. My home town is also Gainesville, Florida where the University of Florida is (insert obligatory "Go Gators!"). Did you write this video just for me? It kinda feels like it. WinAmp had some radio features, also. It really kicks the llama's ass, as they said back then. I switched from MySpace to Facebook in my senior year of high school. I was dual enrolled at the community college, Santa Fe Community College - the feeder school for UF. This meant I had a coveted college campus email address. Remember how that was required to join Facebook in the early days? I was the only one of my friends to have a Facebook account where all the college kids were hanging out. Oh, I was too cool for MySpace anymore. Even though we're on different continents, I feel like we could sit down over a couple of -beers- eh, I mean pints and reminisce about the good ole days of the internet for hours.

[@xliquidflames]

You're going to think I'm making this up now but I taught myself HTML and Macromedia Flash and built my high school's first website. I was doing websites for people all over town by the time I graduated high school. Are you _sure_ this video isn't _about_ me? Josh got his picture on the cover of the campus magazine. I got my picture in the local newspaper sitting at the high school's web server in the back office of the school library. I still have the newspaper clipping to prove it. Okay, now I'm starting to sound like one of those people who peaked in high school. I'll leave it at that.

[@lr0dy]

Whips. It really whips the llama's ass.

[@xliquidflames]

@@lr0dy Yes, thank you. You're totally right. My memory is getting fuzzy in my old age.

[@lr0dy]

@@xliquidflames I know the feeling, dude. But for whatever reason, that one is burned into my memory.

[@AttacRacc]

I miss Grooveshark so much! I used to listen to it everyday while working on my art. I remember the very DAY grooveshark got shut down. I was so upset! I still miss it to this day. I miss back when we could listen to whatever music and didn't have to worry about the music company overlords breathing down our necks. We used to be able to share our favorite music with each other, but nowadays it's hard to even discover new music without a paywall upfront. Thanks for making this video! :)

[@MadsterV]

Grooveshark gave me some single songs out of bands I would have NEVER discovered by any other means. From far off countries, but with the sound I was looking for that day. Priceless and hasn't been replaced yet.

[@kandigloss6438]

Napster and similar file sharing software didn't use torrents, that technology wasn't even publicly available until a year after Napster launched and uses a different technique of peer to peer sharing. Also if I remember correctly from my younger days you needed a third party application to share anything other than MP3s on the Napster network so most likely most people were not trading porn though Napster.

[@ayitsyaboi]

The ending is the perfect embodiment of nostalgia. We're all getting so old. 😢

[@TrytheGreenOne]

It was my favorite music listening/streaming service, it was very good at suggesting new artists. I was pretty freaking sad when it tanked. I remember replaying the last song I had loaded a few times in an old tab until it stopped working. The other services like spotify were too hungry with the ads and recommendations. I didn't trust how it tried to lead me around. Someone here said tonal whiplash, yeah that's right. Most people have poor music taste or the majority listen to popular pushed stuff and so their listens drop into your reccs a lot. My favorite music streaming service now is oddly KZbin. It reccommends decently and it has rarer music than Spotify. Here you get same pretty unusual vinyl rips that you can't find anywhere else, and YT is pretty good at figuring out what obscure thing to throw at you next. But also the libraries of rips -- Users fill in the gaps of music that Spotify simply can't or won't. I guess maybe that's another major difference - User curation. Some users on youtube have very good taste and libraries of music they share that's probably too small-time or old for copyright holders to have a problem with.

[@deathdoor]

Tech Documentaries are the best thing in this channel.

[@Brainwav]

What kind of Napster were you using? Napster was just music and far-predates torrents. Did it change to a torrent client eventually or something?

[@_comment]

No, it did not.

[@patrik5123]

Napster was not torrent, though. Torrent wasn't even invented until much later

[@likeits1985]

The name Grooveshark sounds so much more interesting than Spotify. Great to see another new video from you!

[@Boopop1024]

Copyright law is such a load of BS. It's just not applied consistently. -If you upload a video of a full music track, tv show or movie to youtube, it will get a copyright strike and either be taken down, demonitzed, something like that, because it breaks copyright. OK, that's fair enough -If you upload an original work that happens to contain 5-10 seconds of a clip from music, tv or a movie, despite it being legal under "fair use", you'll still get a copyright strike, despite having done nothing wrong. The big media companies abuse their power like this every minute. I'll treat copyright law with respect once corps start treating fair use law with respect, but I do not see that ever happening.

[@aqualung2000]

I really enjoy your channel. I wish you made more videos. You've got half a million subscribers so I know I'm not the only one. One thing I would say is this: don't be afraid to take a 2nd look -- a "deeper dive" -- into topics you've already covered. There's nothing bad or wrong about doing that. People (like me) enjoy your voice, enjoy your delivery, and enjoy your style. Take advantage of that!

[@anarchodandyist]

Why on earth would you give your DNA to a private company?!

[@SenileOtaku]

Sure, all their money, assets and whatever else they had went to the Record Companies, but did any of that money make it to the artists themselves? HA! I don't think so. The record companies don't like anyone ripping off the public and screwing over recording artists unless it's themselves doing it

[@Mace2.0]

Grooveshark... Now that's a name I haven't heard in ages. I used to main this during my 7th grade, but moved on to another competitor known as Playlist. My school laptop also had RealPlayer, which gives me the ability to download the music outright... Also flash games.

[@antisoda]

Ah… Record companies… The #1 reason for piracy. :)

[@offrails]

Long time Gainesville resident and UF grad here, and we still mourn the loss of Grooveshark and the impact it had on the local startup community, though from its ashes have risen many other local tech companies. I even went to their office downtown a few times for various events - it was literally right across the street from Lillian's Music Store (of Tom Petty fame) 5:29 - That is Rinker Hall and is the building is for the school of building construction - I know this because I took that photo. The entrepreneurship club (or E-club as it was known) was an offshoot of the business school and the idea for Grooveshark came out of an entrepreneurship class taught there by now retired professor Bill Rossi Onward and upward!

[@gothicmuffinofdoom]

Spotify (and most other subscription based streaming services) didn't launch in my country until so much later than the rest of the world, so GrooveShark was the go-to place for music. I really loved it. I remember the shutdown page.

[@ImpiantoFacile]

Oh man I used the hell out of grooveshark, I loved it

[@yourcoolunclemarisa]

I miss Grooveshark so much.

[@reggiebenes2916]

I used Pandora for a hot minute back in the day, but realized I have a collection of over 100K songs from the early 2000s'. I can stream to myself. Spotify is basically owned by the music labels, and some creepy Swedish dudes, hence why the artists are getting screwed worse today. It's by design. Never give money to a record label.

[@sonixthatsme]

Yesterday I was thinking what happened with the Nostalgia nerd, and BAM there he is.

[@Kris_A]

Weird, I was thinking a few hours before the vid popped up whether Nostalgia nerd had abandoned making videos. I found it very odd to then see this pop up I can tell you! I guess we sent out the psychic nerd bat signal.

[@NiksSofa]

I loved soulsseek. discovered so much great music there.

[@atwoodsmariano]

This took me back to high school when I would listen to music on grooveshark on my school’s library computer - good memories

[@madawcofarreat2348]

Would love a video like this about Direct Connect/DC++ and SoulSeek. I tended to use those a lot more and it'd be pretty cool.

[@funtonite]

Soulseek is still running!

[@geminisfl]

Soulseek is amazing. I have been using it for almost 20 years now, and I've found the weirdest and more obscure music there.

[@imgladnotu9527]

tbh, i think its best that we leave soulseek to irrelevance in the grander scope of things. because we already know what happened to napster and its contemporaries. especially given that its one of the few places where you can find flacs instead of plain old mp3s

[@FiXato]

What was great about DC++ imho, was that if you found a hit for a song or album you liked, you were bound to find other neatly categorised music of similar artists in the sharing user's library. And perhaps even other genres you hadn't heard of before, but which you'd grow to love. It was great for music discovery.

[@madawcofarreat2348]

@@FiXato Yeah, definitely, man. I really quite enjoyed that whole format. It was just kinda interesting going through other people's folders, the way they'd organized it or done whatever. And for Soulseek, I wound up meeting this cool Polish chick through a one of the rooms and we'd keep in contact for a couple years after the fact on MSN Messenger.

[@devin-wyldeheart1233]

I actually had never heard of Grooveshark. Only Napster, Kazaa and Limewire. Plus a few others mentioned.

[@volvo09]

Yeah, I didn't hear of it either. If they had a blackberry app I probably would have heard of them, because that's when I was using Pandora on my blackberry.

[@SoLetsGoOutside]

I downloaded SO much from Grooveshark back in the day 😅 Still have a huge MP3 library thanks to GS

[@tommizell]

I lived in Gainesville at the time, and regularly would have coffee with the Grooveshark devs at Maude's cafe. Everyone in town used it - still wish I had all the playlists we shared.

[@awesomefacepalm]

I remember those times when Groovesharl was down for maintenance. It shower a picture of Josh working in the server racks smiling to the camera with the text "Down for maintenance"

[@PuchMaxi]

What a sad ending to the Grooveshark story. I only used the webbased version, right till the end in 2015. At some point you could upload your own MP3 files and there was a unofficial Grooveshark downloader tool for downloading MP3 files for offline use. Listening to streaming music on Grooveshark helped me get through university.

[@tomjjen]

I was a paying customer of Grooveshark. I always assumed they would make a deal with the record labels and make it so that I could access to all the music in the world. I pay for Spotify today and it has a lot of songs, but as soon as you get out of the mainstream songs it is a lot more hit an miss. There are filk songs that I didn't listen to since Grooveshark shutdown, until they were posted to youtube more than a decade later. Anyway, thanks for the memories.

[@doctorcrankyflaps1724]

Anyone remember Bearshare?

Pretty sure I only ever used it because Limewire died. Although before that I was solidly on team eMule ❤️

[@DarKNess1111x]

Grooveshark was and always will be the G.O.A.T! They hosted legendary b-sides that have ceased to exist since its demise 😞 they were also pioneers of music streaming, offering functionality and ease of use that remain unrivaled. I was subscribed to them since '09 until their shutdown. It's a tragedy, but one they invited upon themselves which ushered in the beginning of the end of the internet's golden era . . . If anyone can find "Skeleton Man's Bone Crushing Depression (If I get well)" by Evangelicals, share it, I beg of you. I haven't heard it and have been searching for it for nearly a decade to no avail. I can hardly remember how it goes anymore, but I long to be graced by its somber serenade once again.

[@greenhowie]

Should have held out for a SurfShark sponsor.

[@QuestForTori]

I loved Grooveshark as a poor college student. I even signed up for a year subscription at one point to use the mobile app just because the selection everywhere else lacked most of the music I wanted to listen to. Unfortunately, that was the same year they got sued into oblivion, so I never even got the full year's worth of music.

[@Klipschrf35]

Torrent didn't come around until later, you keep mentioning that phrase

[@diegolastra]

Even before Grooveshark I remember subscribing to a music streaming service called Rhapsody for about a year. I think it was around 2002-2003. I had forgotten about it until this video brought back memories of Napster and my Windows 2000 Athlon XP computer.

[@jonc-1989]

Forgot all about Grooveshark. Used it a fair bit

[@OldMan_PJ]

I never used Grooveshark, Pandora was the best service I ever used at playing content that matched what you liked, especially among niche genres.

[@BgT1990]

Downloading has always been the better option imo, especially now hard disk space is so plentiful and affordable.

[@ravenhill_of_midsummer_1968]

grooveshark was great, you could get any song you wanted on it, i miss it.

[@itogi]

Music producer mafia came to Josh and destroyed his work and life.

[@DIEKDSE]

Laughs in Linkin_Park_Numb.exe

[@_The_Jim]

its really shows how many different ways to grab music there was back in the early 2000s, I used loads of them, but dont remember grooveshark AT ALL. These tech company deep dives are really fascinating to me though, even when there isn't a tangible physical product like a games console to show the viewer.

[@terriblegamer9267]

Great video, narration perfect. Well done sir

[@OisEucalypt]

I remember having to explain to an office full of upset staff and angry students when this service went down. Truly a popular service for a time.

[@oninbridders]

I never knew Napster did files other than mp3s. I thought that's why Kazaa differed because it did everything

[@smart-home-tech]

No, you're correct, it also is not a torrent client, and it also did not download from multiple people simultaneously, and many other errors in this video.

[@nielsen145]

well, where iam from, grooveshark could not be accessed without vpn, same goes for sportify in the beginning, couple of years down the road, sportify did a deal with our copyright system and we could gain access like everybody else

[@rinsatomi9527]

Napster was not Bit Torrent

[@pyeltd.5457]

in the UK i spent all of 2009 streaming Spotify and Spotify didn't lunch in the UK until 2009 or 2008 when a hand full of major EU countries at that time got it first such as The UK, Ireland, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Pluto. i used Grooveshark in September 2013 when starting collage until late 2014 or early 2015 when the school caught on and blocked it like KZbin so they managed to do that sometime before they went down under.

[@Mr.Unacceptable]

do you know what these DNA kits are used for? Can't wait for you to find out,

[@INRamos13]

I've never understood why people willingly give away their genetic information like this

[@andresbravo2003]

Sometimes it’s like Early Napster.

[@reid4625]

oh God, the Harlem Shake outro really makes me feel ancient

[@SquroundSquircle]

I loved Grooveshark, and I loved 8tracks. There was just nothing else like them at the time, and still not really even now. They were great! You know all about Grooveshark, but I miss 8tracks just as much. 8tracks' female- and pro-DJ-heavy community of fandom and "vibes" creators/curators was unique--think assembling playlists around a mood, or perhaps your favorite snack, or fictional hunk, or a hyperspecific slice of music history. 8tracks' owners ate it alive and got hacked terribly years ago. The whole saga is very rancid for a little music playlist site. It still exists, but almost anyone worth following is gone, or their accounts are STILL being used by trolls to this day. Sad stuff. It's tragic that Josh and Eddy were gone so young, and that GrooveShark's decentralized concept and sharing couldn't, somehow, be squared with paying artists what their work is worth (I don't much care about what happens to the record company billionaires if I'm being honest). The music industry and its related tech industries have chewed up and spit out so many.

[@Kris_A]

Interesting story... in 2001, me and my brother moved to the US and were setting up a company called freemusic, that basically was conceptualised as a record label that gave people free music that was paid for by advertising. We were in talks with Michael Jackson, Courtney Love and others. We were way ahead of the times, but unfortunately the venture capital company that was backing us closed it before it even launched. We suspect that the company (which paid us a fair bit of money to abandon the idea and never do it again) sold it to the music industry for it to not happen, because it was a threat to the standard model. So after about 6 months, we came home with a cheque and that was that. Kind of sucked, but we didn't have the resources to do it ourselves anyway. Still, it was a fun ride for a little while. EDIT: The amount they paid us suggested that they got paid by someone to stop it. You don't just pay people a fair whack of dollar for something that never happened. Golden handshake.

[@cypher686]

He’s a curveball… my NDA has finally expired so I can actually say this.. firstly, what a coincidence you were watching this video too. We weren’t told to buy your product, but actually we found someone who was going to buy it off us, so we bought it off you to sell to another party for a much prettier paycheck. I’m sure they did the same

[@Kris_A]

@@cypher686 ?? Freemusic? If this is so (and not saying you are making it up... but just to establsh we are talking about the same thing and for confirmation purposes,/retain a level of anonimity), are you able to name the location (city) of the company it was sold from? Fascinating if this is so. I'd never complain about the outcome. It was a little dissapointing at the time to let it go, but I was happy to have had the experience. If our events are connected, the chances of watching the same vid, and you actually seeing my comment must be astronomical. :) Thanks for sharing... though I still want to confirm we're talking about the same thing as it'd be great to know what actually happened, and for this to be the answer. It has long been a mystery, and not one that was answered by the venture capital company. We just had to take it or leave it.

[@pyeltd.5457]

same here in 1979. we developed a streaming music app for the Atari 2600 in 1981 until the great video game crash of 1983.

[@Kris_A]

@@pyeltd.5457 Streaming music on the 2600??? What, on a cartridge? That's pretty cool.

[@jayman94fly]

Okay bro that sponsor transition was on point.

[@simpletools6805]

i miss grooveshark so much it was so user friendly and well designed

[@Dragoodranite]

hell yea! i never thought anyone would ever cover Grooveshark. My high school's website blocker wouldn't block that sight so I was able to listen to music in the library while binging manga on manga websites that also weren't blocked by the school. good times

[@OopsBigSad]

Ahh yes grooveshark taking away piracy......👀 then there I was using a grooveshark MP3 downloader application 😂

[@MarbleThumbs]

Grooveshark was great, not to mention the only music streaming website our school hadn't blocked.

[@tsht]

I still miss Grooveshark. Spotify was a huge regression in interface and in choice of musics. Still nowadays I can't find everything I seek on online streaming services (except maybe KZbin, so I use tidal and my own music on a plex server...). Moreover, you had rather nerdy radios while you could chat like a musical twitch, you could upload your own music and share it... It was like some social network of music, I was sharing music and talked about music. So for me I'm still looking forward for a service which would propose nowadays what Grooveshark proposed. Grooveshark story really is a depressing one, including this death...

[@opinionatedrobot2750]

Anyone remember Audiogalaxy?

[@cyberfutur5000]

Interesting. I am a bit confused about two things. I know, that I had the GS app on my phone at some point, but I remember it as some sort of a better version of "shazam". Like shazam you could play it a song and it'll tell you what it is, but unlike shazam it didn't need to be the actual song, you could sing, hum or whistle it... even play it on the guitar or piano and it worked (mostly). Am I confusing it with another app? Pretty sure it was Grooveshark... 2nd: you've mentioned that Napster went down in 2002, but the music streaming service I use for the last 5 years or so, says it's "powered by Napster" and has the logo and everything. (It's Aldi Life Musik, yes that aldi, and at least in Germany it's part of the Aldi prepaid phone service, has the exact same library as spotify, and costs the same, but you also get mobile internet and phone service, etc) The only real difference to spotify is, that it has a way worse UI, especially in the browser version... But it say it's napster. Did someone just reuse the branding? I just thought they never went away...

[@volvo09]

Napster in it's traditional sense disappeared in the early 00's when the peer to peer app was shut down. I can't remember if the company pivoted to streaming to try and stay alive, or if they were bought out(i want to say bought out)... but that service you used that said "powered by napster" was in that 2nd phase of the company and stuck around for like 5 more years. I never used it, I was pissed that the original was gone.... Haha The napster name will probably end up being like Atari.... Bought and sold for decades. I had no idea the name was still being used to this day....

[@stevenbasher5363]

You're probably thinking of "SoundHound" as far as the shazam competitor, their logo kinda looks like shark fins (it's a stylized S)

[@cyberfutur5000]

@@stevenbasher5363 Oh yes! You're right!!!!

[@cyberfutur5000]

@@volvo09 yeah the atari comparison seems about right I guess. Just one correction, it wasn't, it is. I still use it. :)

[@alexdhall]

Im pretty sure early on Spotify did use peer-to-peer as part of their infrastructure. They discontinued that at some point...

[@zekibebe3138]

I use to use grooveshark in middle school probably from 2012 to 2015, the firewall wouldn't block it so I was able to listen to so my favorite songs during class. At some point I switched to spotify. but found out that spotify for some reason couldn't be accessed at school. still used Grooveshark until I realized they shutdown and I had to find another way to get my music. spotify allowed me to listen to the songs I had on file but also discover of new genres I wouldn't have thought to I'd love.... Still think about Grooveshark though- I use to listen to so many anime songs and house music that shaped my childhood. but still much more happy with spotify, been using it since 2014. sad to hear that was the fate of Grooveshark :^(( it had a lot of potential!

[@RhythmGamer]

Damn that’s nana brought back so many good memories. That tool was my most favorite way to get music

[@KennyFrierson]

Grooveshark got me through alot of my school years

[@chris_is_here_oh_no]

Excellent documentary, I loved Grooveshark. Great to get the full story!

[@phivestarz]

I've wondered what happened since they shutdown...TY for the closure!

[@otama]

"Torrenting"... You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[@btarg1]

I remember grooveshark being embedded into TF2 servers back in the day to play music while you played. Good times

[@meantime2001]

Great Video and solid research as always. Shout out to Octavius for doing the offs. 👍 Cheers.

[@cugan83]

Please consider uploading your content in 4k, even if your timeline content is 1080p just export it as 4k. No upscaling needed. This is to circumvent youtube's recent monetisation of creator's videos that are max 1080p by splitting it into lower and higher bitrate 1080p. They monetise the higher bitrate behind the premium service yet creators do not benefit from this at all. Exporting the timeline as 4K, or UHD to be precise will circumvent this malicious practice. Providing the full quality hd via the 4k resolution downscaled. KZbin are trying to cripple your content and capitalise on its quality for their own monetary gain at the expense of you and your viewers.

[@Scuba_Bro]

Wow this is a blast from the past! 😂