GrooveShark Shuts Down Services Completely (updated)

Updated content after the break - Big and bad news in streaming land, music streaming service GrooveShark possibly needs to pay 736 million UD dollars (680 million Euro) to the American music industry after a judge rules that the company has been sharing 5000 songs illegal, that would be $150,000 in damages per song with names like Eminem, Green Day and Madonna. 

Reuters reports on this story today that U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa, who will preside over the trial in federal court in Manhattan, said in a court order on Thursday that because of Grooveshark's actions he will tell jurors they can choose to award the statutory maximum of $150,000 in damages per song. Jurors also could decide to award less. But if the jury awards that amount, Grooveshark's parent company, Escape Media Group Inc, could be forced to pay more than $736 million.

As Reuters reports:

Last September, Griesa ruled that Escape and its founders, Samuel Tarantino and Joshua Greenberg, were liable for the illegal uploads of thousands of recordings by artists such as Madonna, Eminem, Bob Marley and Jay-Z.

Griesa said the defendants had directed their employees to make the uploads in spite of the legal risk. The only question to be resolved at Monday's trial is how much Escape must pay as in penalties for the infringement.

Nine record companies including Arista Music, Sony Music Entertainment, UMG Recordings, and Warner Bros Records, sued Escape for infringement in 2011.

Griesa found in September that Escape's business plan was to exploit the copyrighted content in order to grow Grooveshark and then "beg forgiveness" from the labels.

Escape hopes to limit its losses at trial by arguing there were mitigating circumstances to the infringement, according to court papers. In Thursday's order, Griesa said he will allow the company to present evidence of its attempts to secure licenses from the record labels.

Gainesville, Florida-based Grooveshark describes itself as "one of the largest on-demand music services on the Internet" with more than 30 million users sharing over 15 million files. The company says it has a policy to honor copyright holders' "takedown" requests that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

In court papers, the plaintiffs have called Grooveshark a "linear descendant" of Grokster, LimeWire and Napster, all of which had been shut down because of copyright infringement.

A spokesman for Grooveshark said the company had no comment. Representatives for the record labels could not immediately be reached.

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Update: May 1st 2015

GrooveShark have now shut down their service. You can see their farewell message on the website http://grooveshark.com/