While probably the right move (no need to take responsibility for an app that is going to anger labels when your platform allows sideload), it is funny to see Google kicking out a company that is following the YouTube playbook word for word.
Isn't the planned google music (set to launch in 2011) service going to be more or less in direct competition with Amazon MP3 & Cloud player? I doubt they are protecting Amazon interests here.
I think that it's true. They have been trying to secure streaming and sales licenses from the labels for some time now. I suppose if that falls through (the labels are brutal at this stage of negotiations) they might team up with amazon, but I'd be surprised if that happened.
It's less of a risk here though, because as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, it's still easily available through http://mobile.grooveshark.com/android. The loss of discoverability from being on the Market sucks, but the publicity from being removed reminded me to install it at least.
Overall though, I think the ability to have your users install your app even if you get kicked off of the market is a fundamental advantage that Android has. It's going to be a detriment if you're a paid app, but if you're ad-supported, being kicked off the Market is not nearly as big of an issue. You just need to solve the publicity/discoverability issue.
Not all Android devices allow side loading, to my knowledge. So it doesn't seem to be an inherent advantage of Android. After all, you CAN jail break your iPhone.
Is it? I know that YouTube's early days were similar. But does Grooveshark have any content deals, because otherwise it is nearly 100% copyright infringement.
TL;DR They got EMI (following a lawsuit), a few prominent indies like Merge, and 99% nobodies. Alongside a still in process suit from Universal Music Group.
While probably the right move (no need to take responsibility for an app that is going to anger labels when your platform allows sideload),
Doesn't this indicate that Google admits potential culpability and concedes that it is their responsibility to police what goes into their app store?
Seems a better approach would have been to shrug their shoulders and argue that the Android app store is merely an open conduit, not their curated set of apps.
The implication is that they concede responsibility for whatever they don't remove.
> The implication is that they concede responsibility for whatever they don't remove.
I'm not sure I agree. Just because Google is asserting the right to remove apps from the store (e.g. to keep strategic partners from flipping out) doesn't mean that they're conceding that they're under any obligation to do so.
* ... doesn't mean that they're conceding that they're under any obligation to do so.*
Maybe not, but it seems like the kind of crack in the door a lawyer might jump at next time someone complains that an app offends them, or is copying their idea, or whatever.
I think the paths are similar, but there is a key difference for me: YouTube's success didn't initially 100% rely on using other peoples copyrighted works without permission or compensation. No doubt music videos etc. helped immensely but funny cat videos and other amateur goofy content was a big part of its success. Whereas with Grooveshark, I am fairly confident that amateur authorized content doesn't factor into the equation.
That said, if the major music rights holders would just license to them from the start at affordable rates they wouldn't need to violate copyright so I suppose it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem.
I'm worried that this is influenced, at least subconsciously, by Google's attempts to open their own music service. If Google can stay in the good graces of the RIAA, they're more likely to get the streaming/cloud concessions they're hoping for. Smells like a huge conflict of interest.
During the last COICA/piracy congressional hearing reps were asking why Google doesn't fix all the ills in the world and stop all crime and the one before that turned into a Google witch trial in absentia.
How's that? You mean you can't run the downloaded apps if you uninstall the App Store app?
Exactly.
I have been using an app called Privacy Blocker that scans apps, reports on what identifier info apps are sending, and optional re-writes the apk to have it send bogus data. Very cool.
So I scan the Amazon App Store app. Not good. I tell Privacy Blocker to fix it. Looks fine. Later I try to run Angry Birds Rio, one of the free apps Amazon was offering. I get a message telling me my App Store app is old and needs updating; Angry Birds then exits.
I can't figure out how to update or reinstall the App Store from Amazon, so I put back the original version (Privacy Blocker saves these). Oh, look, Angry Birds works fine.
Fuck that. I uninstall App Store; Angry Birds won't run, telling me I need the App Store app. Same goes for the Winamp app which I grabbed from Amazon (also free).
No big deal, I remove those apps, then go grab Winamp from Google's app store. Free, no problem running it, no need for some intermediary grubbing my usage details.
So, Amazon App Store, good for developers, less good for users.
The Groovesharkers are a fascinating group of folks =]
"At no point in Grooveshark's history did I ever believe Grooveshark was going to fail. The same goes for Sam. Grooveshark is more than our product and Grooveshark is more than our ideas. Grooveshark is the group of people that we have in the company. If tomorrow, every record label and every large technology company all partnered up and launched a service that they've secretly been developing for ten years, that is Grooveshark but a thousand times better, and for whatever reason we couldn't compete with it, we would turn on a dime. We'd have a meeting tomorrow and we would both come in together and we’d say, 'okay, the bad news is this business model isn't sustainable. The good news is we're all still here, so what are we doing now?' and that would really be it."
Another one that sticks with me:
"Often, when we'd go pitch a potential investor, they'd offer us a bottle of water or something, and we'd always accept the water and then use it as a prop because when we'd say 'yeah, we want to compete with piracy' we would always get laughed at and told 'okay, well it's impossible to compete with piracy, everybody has tried this, you can't compete with free.' That comment always opened the door for us, we'd say, 'Well, what about this bottle of water right here, did you pay for it? Why did you pay for it? You can turn on a tap and get it free', and I really love that example, because value is a funny thing.
Value is really in the eyes of the beholder, it comes down to whether or not someone is willing to pay. There are a lot of reasons why someone would be willing to pay. In the case of water, it's not because they can't get it for free, it's because there's the convenience, there's the packaging, there's the perceived quality, and any of those 'reasons' could be applied to traditional music. So, even if CD sales are tanking and now downloads are plateauing, that doesn't mean that there isn't money in music. When I think of all of the friends I have who haven't bought a DVD in years and they pirate their movies all the time, those same people are the ones that, every single Friday night, will spend $10 or more on a movie ticket to see it once but they won't spend $5 to own a copy forever." - Josh Greenberg, Grooveshark CTO/Cofounder
Also relevant, an explanation from Josh on the legality of Grooveshark:
"First off, I’m not a lawyer -- but I'll do my best to speak on this subject. Essentially the main governing law is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which is very long and very complicated. But there are a few parts of DMCA that, in particular, govern over services like Grooveshark, Myspace, Google, YouTube, eBay, Craigslist, Facebook, any place where users are posting content or sharing information in certain ways. Prior to this law going into effect, there was a paralyzing amount of ambiguity regarding the rights and responsibilities of consumers, service providers, and content owners. There were no defined parameters for services to operate under.
The way that the DMCA arbitrates everything is basically by saying that content owners have a right to their content at the end of the day. So, if a content owner points to a specific piece of content on a service and contacts the service provider using specific parameters, then the service provider has to take that content down.
There's also a lot more to it, including obligation for service providers to notify infringing users and to ban repeat infringers. I think what everything boils down to, is that the law recognizes that in a community of millions and millions of users, some will end up breaking the rules, but at the same time, content owners always have a right to point to their content to have it quickly removed; service providers have protection from what their users are doing as long as they comply with certain responsibilities toward content providers; and users have an obligation not to pirate or upload infringing content."
I've been at Grooveshark for a while. While I'm not going to comment on this story, I will say this: every single employee (now about 70) has sacrificed immensely for the success of this company since its start. It's pretty clear to everyone who works at Grooveshark that they don't do it for the money. They show up everyday because they have fun working with a great team, an awesome product, and the hope that one day this industry will be changed for the better. We've gone through a lot- lawsuits, employment without payment, app store removals, people saying crazy shit ("a legal jihad"??), competitors sprouting up every day etc. I'm sure this won't be the last either. But what keeps us going is hearing just how many people NEED us from my little sister who sends me her iPhone every month so we can put a dev build on it when her certificate expires, to the numerous artists we meet at music festivals both large and small who need a better way to distribute their music and get heard.
Let me just say I love your program and use it daily, but...
I recently just let the trial period on the mobile version (ios jb) lapse without buying a subscription. While I love the idea, and I love the app itself, the music quality simply isn't there. Now, I know the bandwidth limitations that come with 3g, and I know the quality is as high as you can get it, but it's just not good enough. Which makes me think that you guys might be peaking too soon. I can't see you making money off free web users with your (thankfully) unobtrusive ads, I don't see any real reason to pay to use the web version, and I don't see mobile infrastructure being fast enough to support you there, where it seems your real prime usage case is.
Even if Google and Apple weren't booting you off their platform, how would you survive long enough that you could deliver the same quality music through my phone that I already have on my phone?
There is a setting to choose better quality songs. The default is to prefer lower quality songs. Also, you can offline songs on mobile devices for playing later.
Also, you can offline songs on mobile devices for playing later.
For some songs. Other song have given me a "not available on mobile" (or something to that effect) message. But those songs are not available at any quality.
A different experience - I recently tried out Grooveshark on my jailbroken iPhone, and I liked it. The interface is nice and clever, the music quality was fine (I was listening over WiFi though), the radio-style recommendations were decent. I'm just not a big enough music consumer to sign up for the $9/month service; I'm usually happy with my existing music library and if I want to listen to a couple new things I often just use YouTube on my computer. I'd recommend it to friends who wanted a subscription service though.
Thing is, if I have wifi, there's no need for a mobile app. I almost always have my laptop on me, and am more than content to listen with that. Grooveshark mobile makes the promise of any music, anywhere, any time. That's awesome, and is the one thing I could see paying an admittedly steep subscription for. It just didn't deliver well enough for me.
The quotes are great. I searched for some of the phrases on Google to try to find the source, but found nothing. Can you submit the original so we can read more?
I just interviewed Josh out of my own personal curiosity; the original source is from a book called Startups Open Sourced which I'll post a link to on Hacker News in a week or two. I'm currently looking around and trying to find people to read samples and provide written feedback, maybe get a few positive reviews out of that process if I'm lucky.
The Grooveshark interview was really great, Josh was very open about a lot of the questions I asked and gave lots of detail. I'm glad he took time to do that.
If the other sections are as good as this one promises to be, I'm sure you'll find a lot of willing readers. My email is in my profile if you want to send me something to proofread. Seems like a great project.
"Well, what about this bottle of water right here, did you pay for it? Why did you pay for it? You can turn on a tap and get it free"
Maybe I don't understand Grooveshark, or they don't understand water, but the water is paid for. At home, I pay for it monthly. In a commercial building, there's water bills that get paid every month, and worked in to the overall utility charge renters pay.
Similarly, when I walk in to stores/malls, music is being played. It's 'free', but someone's paying for the satellite feed. And I don't get a choice of what to listen to, just like I don't have much choice where the water comes from when I 'turn on the tap'.
Water is effectively free for many people, but it's certainly getting paid for. Try not paying your water bill for a month - you won't get any.
Internet service costs you money, too. A cup of water from the tap is so incidental that it might as well be free. Bottled water is sold at obscene markups, and people buy it; I think it's a very apt illustration.
"We were surprised by Google’s removal of the Grooveshark App from the Android Market Place, and are still unclear as to what policies have now been violated. We have always had a positive relationship with Google as evidenced by the Grooveshark App’s active and featured presence in the Android Marketplace for the past one and a half years.
We respect copyright law and the rights of content owners, generating positive results and revenues for the artists and labels that we have agreements with. Regarding the content for which we do not have agreements in place yet, we abide by, and pay royalties, according to the rules outlined in the DMCA, the same legal act that governs Google and YouTube’s activities.
We are eagerly looking to enter into agreements with all labels and content owners, so that we can work together to the benefit of all parties. To be effective, these agreements, however, must be struck directly with the respected content owners in the boardroom not the courtroom."
If I remember right, at least a year ago when I first got my Nexus One, Grooveshark was also hidden on Android Market if I had an AT&T SIM in my phone. I could only see it and download it if I pulled my SIM out and connected via wifi. Otherwise, searching for it turned up nothing.
This was when I discovered that there are carrier specific blacklist on the Market -- PDANet was a similarly blocked app, presumably on AT&T's request.
Grooveshark's official app, sadly, never ran well for me. There are bunch of other Grooveshark apps, such as TinyShark, which perform far better. Would be fun to see Google running around killing little sharks.
49 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 81.6 ms ] threadExactly, I guess they don't want to get in the middle of it. The disadvantages of building on someone else's platform, I suppose.
As the parent stated, that is youtube starting.
And now they also have to protect amazon mp3 investment on them.
Seems weird, but I bet theres lots of politics between google and amazon over android
Google shopping is not about google selling stuff... and guess who's usually on top
Either way, I'm still sure I'm not allowed to uninstall amazon mp3 app from my android super open and free dev phone
They do have some precedent here, consider the google books ebookstore: http://books.google.com/ebooks
Overall though, I think the ability to have your users install your app even if you get kicked off of the market is a fundamental advantage that Android has. It's going to be a detriment if you're a paid app, but if you're ad-supported, being kicked off the Market is not nearly as big of an issue. You just need to solve the publicity/discoverability issue.
TL;DR They got EMI (following a lawsuit), a few prominent indies like Merge, and 99% nobodies. Alongside a still in process suit from Universal Music Group.
Doesn't this indicate that Google admits potential culpability and concedes that it is their responsibility to police what goes into their app store?
Seems a better approach would have been to shrug their shoulders and argue that the Android app store is merely an open conduit, not their curated set of apps.
The implication is that they concede responsibility for whatever they don't remove.
I'm not sure I agree. Just because Google is asserting the right to remove apps from the store (e.g. to keep strategic partners from flipping out) doesn't mean that they're conceding that they're under any obligation to do so.
Maybe not, but it seems like the kind of crack in the door a lawyer might jump at next time someone complains that an app offends them, or is copying their idea, or whatever.
That said, if the major music rights holders would just license to them from the start at affordable rates they wouldn't need to violate copyright so I suppose it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem.
During the last COICA/piracy congressional hearing reps were asking why Google doesn't fix all the ills in the world and stop all crime and the one before that turned into a Google witch trial in absentia.
Also Amazon's App Store, though I tried them out and won't go back until they stop coupling app store apps to the App Store app itself.
How's that? You mean you can't run the downloaded apps if you uninstall the App Store app?
Exactly.
I have been using an app called Privacy Blocker that scans apps, reports on what identifier info apps are sending, and optional re-writes the apk to have it send bogus data. Very cool.
So I scan the Amazon App Store app. Not good. I tell Privacy Blocker to fix it. Looks fine. Later I try to run Angry Birds Rio, one of the free apps Amazon was offering. I get a message telling me my App Store app is old and needs updating; Angry Birds then exits.
I can't figure out how to update or reinstall the App Store from Amazon, so I put back the original version (Privacy Blocker saves these). Oh, look, Angry Birds works fine.
Fuck that. I uninstall App Store; Angry Birds won't run, telling me I need the App Store app. Same goes for the Winamp app which I grabbed from Amazon (also free).
No big deal, I remove those apps, then go grab Winamp from Google's app store. Free, no problem running it, no need for some intermediary grubbing my usage details.
So, Amazon App Store, good for developers, less good for users.
"At no point in Grooveshark's history did I ever believe Grooveshark was going to fail. The same goes for Sam. Grooveshark is more than our product and Grooveshark is more than our ideas. Grooveshark is the group of people that we have in the company. If tomorrow, every record label and every large technology company all partnered up and launched a service that they've secretly been developing for ten years, that is Grooveshark but a thousand times better, and for whatever reason we couldn't compete with it, we would turn on a dime. We'd have a meeting tomorrow and we would both come in together and we’d say, 'okay, the bad news is this business model isn't sustainable. The good news is we're all still here, so what are we doing now?' and that would really be it."
Another one that sticks with me:
"Often, when we'd go pitch a potential investor, they'd offer us a bottle of water or something, and we'd always accept the water and then use it as a prop because when we'd say 'yeah, we want to compete with piracy' we would always get laughed at and told 'okay, well it's impossible to compete with piracy, everybody has tried this, you can't compete with free.' That comment always opened the door for us, we'd say, 'Well, what about this bottle of water right here, did you pay for it? Why did you pay for it? You can turn on a tap and get it free', and I really love that example, because value is a funny thing.
Value is really in the eyes of the beholder, it comes down to whether or not someone is willing to pay. There are a lot of reasons why someone would be willing to pay. In the case of water, it's not because they can't get it for free, it's because there's the convenience, there's the packaging, there's the perceived quality, and any of those 'reasons' could be applied to traditional music. So, even if CD sales are tanking and now downloads are plateauing, that doesn't mean that there isn't money in music. When I think of all of the friends I have who haven't bought a DVD in years and they pirate their movies all the time, those same people are the ones that, every single Friday night, will spend $10 or more on a movie ticket to see it once but they won't spend $5 to own a copy forever." - Josh Greenberg, Grooveshark CTO/Cofounder
Also relevant, an explanation from Josh on the legality of Grooveshark:
"First off, I’m not a lawyer -- but I'll do my best to speak on this subject. Essentially the main governing law is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which is very long and very complicated. But there are a few parts of DMCA that, in particular, govern over services like Grooveshark, Myspace, Google, YouTube, eBay, Craigslist, Facebook, any place where users are posting content or sharing information in certain ways. Prior to this law going into effect, there was a paralyzing amount of ambiguity regarding the rights and responsibilities of consumers, service providers, and content owners. There were no defined parameters for services to operate under.
The way that the DMCA arbitrates everything is basically by saying that content owners have a right to their content at the end of the day. So, if a content owner points to a specific piece of content on a service and contacts the service provider using specific parameters, then the service provider has to take that content down.
There's also a lot more to it, including obligation for service providers to notify infringing users and to ban repeat infringers. I think what everything boils down to, is that the law recognizes that in a community of millions and millions of users, some will end up breaking the rules, but at the same time, content owners always have a right to point to their content to have it quickly removed; service providers have protection from what their users are doing as long as they comply with certain responsibilities toward content providers; and users have an obligation not to pirate or upload infringing content."
I recently just let the trial period on the mobile version (ios jb) lapse without buying a subscription. While I love the idea, and I love the app itself, the music quality simply isn't there. Now, I know the bandwidth limitations that come with 3g, and I know the quality is as high as you can get it, but it's just not good enough. Which makes me think that you guys might be peaking too soon. I can't see you making money off free web users with your (thankfully) unobtrusive ads, I don't see any real reason to pay to use the web version, and I don't see mobile infrastructure being fast enough to support you there, where it seems your real prime usage case is.
Even if Google and Apple weren't booting you off their platform, how would you survive long enough that you could deliver the same quality music through my phone that I already have on my phone?
For some songs. Other song have given me a "not available on mobile" (or something to that effect) message. But those songs are not available at any quality.
The Grooveshark interview was really great, Josh was very open about a lot of the questions I asked and gave lots of detail. I'm glad he took time to do that.
Maybe I don't understand Grooveshark, or they don't understand water, but the water is paid for. At home, I pay for it monthly. In a commercial building, there's water bills that get paid every month, and worked in to the overall utility charge renters pay.
Similarly, when I walk in to stores/malls, music is being played. It's 'free', but someone's paying for the satellite feed. And I don't get a choice of what to listen to, just like I don't have much choice where the water comes from when I 'turn on the tap'.
Water is effectively free for many people, but it's certainly getting paid for. Try not paying your water bill for a month - you won't get any.
"We were surprised by Google’s removal of the Grooveshark App from the Android Market Place, and are still unclear as to what policies have now been violated. We have always had a positive relationship with Google as evidenced by the Grooveshark App’s active and featured presence in the Android Marketplace for the past one and a half years.
We respect copyright law and the rights of content owners, generating positive results and revenues for the artists and labels that we have agreements with. Regarding the content for which we do not have agreements in place yet, we abide by, and pay royalties, according to the rules outlined in the DMCA, the same legal act that governs Google and YouTube’s activities.
We are eagerly looking to enter into agreements with all labels and content owners, so that we can work together to the benefit of all parties. To be effective, these agreements, however, must be struck directly with the respected content owners in the boardroom not the courtroom."
On the other hand, as Android still has Flash, even if you couldn't install non-market apps one could just go to Grooveshark's website.
This was when I discovered that there are carrier specific blacklist on the Market -- PDANet was a similarly blocked app, presumably on AT&T's request.