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Grooveshark Co-founder Josh Greenberg Dead At 28
alphadogg writes: The tech startup world has been shaken today by news that 28-year-old Josh Greenberg, co-founder of recently defunct music sharing service Grooveshark, was found dead on Sunday in the Florida apartment he shared with his girlfriend. No foul play is suspected, but the local medical examiner is conducting an autopsy, according to the Gainesville Sun. Grooveshark was shut down in April after the company was threatened with legal action and possibly hundreds of millions in damages by several big music labels.
We should be thinking of the family, especially his parents. My son also died at 28, one-third of a decade ago.
Josh may not be dead of fowl play, but the music industry... as in the artists are definitely dead.
The big labels are doing fine, with record album sales. However, their bands are the labels' constructs with musicians hired individually. They don't have A&R men that find a good band gigging at a night club and sign that band anymore. At best they are looking for someone good looking, and docile enough to sign what lyrics are put in front of them.
As for what put the artists out of business. Very simple: Streaming (virtually zero revenue), pay by the track (can't make money from 99 cents/track as you can with CD sales), and piracy (zero revenue.) There are far more bands than venues, and if you want to "gig" you have to rent the venue and pay those costs, as opposed to just hopping on stage and getting a cut of the door and bar as in the past.
So, the artists are hosed... but the music industry will happily making Justin Biebers, and the masses will obey and buy those songs.
A guy tries to run a startup, the startup has crushed for various reasons, then there is the question of lawsuits for hundreds of millions of dollars in supposed damages to music labels. No foul play...
Really? That's your approach to this? Yet another young guy trying to find a way to get rich by setting up a system built from the ground up to infringe on others' copyrights, and which gave laughable lip service to take-down notices (ripped off material that was removed re-appeared more or less instantly). Foul play? The foul play was on his part, and of course the chickens came home to roost, which is why he gave up on the scheme. Whether or how yet another failure of a Piracy-As-A-Service "start-up" might have contributed to his death remains to be seen.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
When things like "happy birthday" can still retain copyright, then I have zero respect for all copyright.
it's like the death of aaaron swartz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
these fucking companies have a business model which depends upon an outdated understanding of how information is shared, then they utterly destroy the financial lives, or actually jail, young entrepreneurs who see the future. they could make deals with these guys and take over their companies for their "crimes", and benefit thataways
instead we have these pigheaded, shortsighted, cruel "punishments" for the crime of showing ignorant old fossils that their business models suck in the internet age
this is the worst of lawyers, corporations, and the legal status quo, and i hope these judges, lawyers, and corporate sycophants can sleep at night, because blood is on their hands
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And no one who still has their life wrote "Happy Birthday", so there. Copyright law is insane, and one way to try to change it is to ignore it with derision. Not saying it's the best way, just a way.
Somewhere a hipster is sad that you don't care.