Best printers for Home

Best Mixer Grinder

Best wired Earphones

Best 43 Inch TV in India

Best Wi Fi Routers

Best Home Theatre in India

Smart Watch under 5000

Best Laptops for Education

Best Laptop for Students

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div>Grooveshark was <a href="http://www.cnet.com/news/more-on-demand-tunes-playlists-from-grooveshark/">one of the first</a> online services that let you play almost any song you wanted, on demand, with no restrictions.</p><p>Today it closed down. It won't be coming back, according to a <a href="http://grooveshark.com/">statement on the web site.</a></p><p>The site shut down as part of a legal settlement with copyright holders - the artist, publishers, and music labels who owned the rights to a lot of the music on the service. </p><p>In its early days, a lot of the music on Grooveshark was not licensed. U<span>sers were uploading the songs, not the company itself, but that argument has been tested on other services, like Napster, and so far it's never held legal water.</span> </p><p>Copyright owners sued, and while Grooveshark managed to settle with EMI and Sony <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/grooveshark-is-coming-back-2013-9">back in 2013</a>, it apparently wasn't enough. </p><p>Back when it started, there weren't any easy ways to listen to any song on demand at a reasonable price. But as the company said in its <a href="http://grooveshark.com/">goodbye post</a>, with the rise of paid services like Spotify, Songza, and many others, there are many legal choices to do what Grooveshark was doing (mostly) illegally.</p><p>Grooveshark also apologized for how it started out: "We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service. That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation."</p><p><a href="http://grooveshark.com/">You can read the full post here&gt;&gt;</a></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"> </p><p> </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/fourfiveseconds-music-video-rihanna-kanye-west-paul-mccartney-four-five-seconds-2015-2">Paul McCartney and Rihanna just released a music video featuring Kanye - and it's actually pretty awesome</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="p1eWo2czqi3oXDJ1TAee050Q_OOOPht0" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Before there was Spotify, there was Grooveshark. Today it closed forever

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><a href="http://www.wcjb.com/local-news/2013/11/family-friends-mourn-loss-grooveshark-director">WCJB</a></p><p class="caption">Eddy Vasquez</p></div><p></p></div></div>A top executive for Gainesville, Fla.-based <keyword id="6354530" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="music">music</keyword> streaming company <a href="http://www.gainesville.com/article/20131111/articles/131119944">Grooveshark was shot and killed early</a> Saturday in St. Petersburg, The Gainseville Sun reports.</p>
<p>Eddy Vasquez, 27, who had been with <keyword id="1021857" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Grooveshark">Grooveshark</keyword> since 2011 and served as <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eddy-vasquez/3a/74/1a2">director of international sales</a>, was allegedly shot twice in the chest by 26-year-old Andres Rodriguez Torres, a friend and former classmate of his at the University of South Florida.</p>
<p>The two were reportedly bar-hopping to celebrate Torres' birthday when an argument broke out at a Publix supermarket.</p>
<p>WCJB-TV <a href="http://www.wcjb.com/local-news/2013/11/family-friends-mourn-loss-grooveshark-director">has more:</a></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">While visiting St. Petersburg, Vasquez was shot in the chest after a verbal argument with Andres Torres. Torres was arrested at his apartment and a firearm was recovered. "It's awful cause Eddy is a young guy like we're all young and we don't think that we're not going to see each other again and the fact that he was murdered is just unbelievable... I just really can't believe it," Mitchell said.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Grooveshark, devastated by the loss released a statement that reads: "Grooveshark as a company mourns the tragic loss of one of its employees, Eddy D. Vasquez.  Mr. Vasquez was visiting friends and family in the Tampa Bay area over the weekend when he fell victim to a senseless act of violence."</p>
<p>Police say Torres also grabbed a witness and took him back to his apartment. He was arrested around 9 a.m. Saturday on charges of armed kidnapping and second-degree murder.</p>

Grooveshark Executive Murdered In St. Petersburg, Florida

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Josh Greenberg, one of the co-founders of the online music streaming site Grooveshark, has been found dead in his home, <a href="https://twitter.com/GainesvillePD/status/623193454055657472">according to the Gainesville Police Department.</a><p>Greenberg, who was 28 years old, was found dead in his bed by his girlfriend on Sunday,&#xa0;<a href="http://www.gainesville.com/article/20150720/ARTICLES/150729990">according to The Gainesville Sun</a>, which first reported Greenberg's death.</p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">According to the report, Greenberg's mother - Lori Greenberg - said that police told her after investigating Sunday that there was "no evidence of foul play, injuries, or drugs." She also said that her son did not have any health issues.</span></p><p>"They are as baffled as I am," Greenberg told The Gainesville Sun.</p><p>The Gainesville Police Department confirmed the news on Twitter, stating there was "no evidence of foul play or suicide."</p><p><div></div></p><p class="embed-spacer">A medical examiner is conducting an autopsy on Monday to look into any potential obvious health issues that may have led to Josh Greenberg's death, and toxicology results will become available in the following months, according to the report.</p><p>Greenberg founded Grooveshark along with his friend Sam Tarantino in 2006 when he was 19 and still studying at University of Florida. The music streaming website, which quickly became a thorn in the side of music labels and record companies looking to clamp down on music piracy,&#xa0;was shut down for good on April 30 at the close of a lawsuit and settlement.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>At its most popular, Grooveshark saw 40 million monthly users and had a team of 145 employees based out of Gainesville and New York City.</p><p>Greenberg's mother <a href="http://www.gainesville.com/article/20150720/ARTICLES/150729990?p=2&amp;tc=pg">told The Gainesville Sun that her son wasn't depressed</a>, but rather "relieved" at the end of the lawsuit. "<span>He was excited about potential new things that he was going to start," she said.</span></p><p><span>A memorial service for Josh Greenberg will be held in Gainseville, according to the report.</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gogoro-smartscooter-is-available-and-it-looks-incredible-2015-6">The 'Tesla of scooters' is finally available and it looks incredible</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="JrYjNydTomoXrRoIQe_bxbwlk4mNL1AL" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Grooveshark's 28-year-old cofounder has been found dead in his home

<p><div class="image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Neil Hammerschlag " title_caption="Scientists have never witnessed the mating behavior of great white sharks, such as this one cruising the waters for prey." class="zoomin" href="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/521e564fecad04c133e86428-960/great-white-shark-4.jpg"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source">Neil Hammerschlag </p><p class="caption">Scientists have never witnessed the mating behavior of great white sharks, such as this one cruising the waters for prey.</p></div></div>With apologies to Slate's Aisha Harris, who just published an article saying <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/08/28/songza_the_best_music_streaming_site_there_is.html">Songza surpasses Pandora and Spotify as the best site for streaming music</a>, the best site is actually one she doesn't even mention.</p>
<p>It's called <a href="grooveshark.com">Grooveshark</a>, and I've never understood why more people don't use it.</p>
<p>The site, owned by Florida-based <span>Escape Media Group,</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> is so good that it's not surprising it has been sued by various major music labels for copyright violations. It is engaged in an ongoing legal battles with Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group, though it settled out of court with EMI Music Publishing and just this morning signed an amicable pact with Sony/ATV, </span><a href="http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130828grooveshark">according to </a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130828grooveshark">Digital Music News</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The legal onslaught felt like "<a href="http://mashable.com/2013/04/22/grooveshark-radio/">getting punched in the face 10,000 times</a>," CEO Sam Tarantino told Mashable in April.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"></span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Nonetheless, the site remains legal and claims 20 million users. It has major advertisers too. It feels pretty legit.</span></p>
<p>What's so great about <keyword id="1021857" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Grooveshark">Grooveshark</keyword>?</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>The site licenses or shares more than 15 million songs, </strong>which means it has most things you're looking for.</span></p>
<p><strong>It lets you search for and play entire albums. </strong>This simple feature is not available on Songza and <keyword id="107171" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Pandora">Pandora</keyword>, which instead provide themed playlists, though it is available on <keyword id="685487" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Spotify">Spotify</keyword>. It enables you to hear the new Kanye album in its entirety, rather than just listening to a bunch of music that sounds like Kanye. Sometimes albums will be incomplete, but for the most part they are solid.</p>
<p><strong>You can listen to as much music as you want for free without any audible ads. </strong>This features puts to shame Spotify and Pandora, which both insert audible ads every few songs for non-paying listeners. Like Songza, there are visual ads that appear on the site for non-paying listeners. Visual ads are easy to ignore and do not kill the mood.</p>
<p><strong>It has genre radio and recommendation features too.</strong> Like those other streaming sites, Grooveshark can help you discover music and it can play a nice assortment of music if you don't want to choose yourself. I don't know if its recommendation engine is as sophisticated as Pandora's, but it works fine.</p>
<p>There are all kinds of social aspects to Grooveshark too, though I haven't explored them. I'm perfectly satisfied with a site that lets me play pretty much any album I want for free without ads.</p>
<p>The only downside I've found is that Grooveshark has limited mobile capabilities, due to restrictions from Google, Apple, and Facebook. It has a full HTML5 player, however, which means that you can access it on an Internet-connected smartphone.</p>
<p>The idea that Grooveshark, like other streaming sites, hopes to pitch to music labels is that listeners will use it to find music that they eventually buy. I behave in this way occasionally, having gone on to buy several albums that I first listened to on the site, doing so so that I could listen to them offline and because it seemed like the right thing to do (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-business-insider-employees-listen-to-music-2013-8">see the music listening habits of other BI writers here</a>).</p>
<p><a href="http://grooveshark.com/#!/">Try out Grooveshark</a> as long as it's still legal.</p>
<p><div class="image-container click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="grooveshark.com" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/521e477769beddc64ca837bc-960/screen%20shot%202013-08-28%20at%202.54.30%20pm.jpg"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span><a href="http://grooveshark.com/#!/"></a></a><p class="source"><a href="http://grooveshark.com/#!/">grooveshark.com</a></p></div></div></p>

Controversial Streaming Site Grooveshark Is Still The Best Thing Out There

<p><div class="image-container float_right"><div class="image"><p class="source"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSZm1cwEzvk">www.youtube.com</a></p><p class="caption">Sam Tarantino</p></div></div><keyword id="1021857" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Grooveshark">Grooveshark</keyword> CEO Sam Tarantino called early-2011 through early-2012 the "<a href="http://mashable.com/2013/04/22/grooveshark-radio/">year of getting punched in the face 10,000 times</a>" - a reference to getting kicked out of Google and Apple's app stores, facing huge new competition, and getting hit with another big copyright lawsuit.</p>
<p>A year and a half later, the Florida-based <keyword id="6354530" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="music">music</keyword> streaming site is doing a lot better.</p>
<p>This summer, Grooveshark signed an <a href="http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130828grooveshark">out-of-court agreement with EMI Music Publishing and announced an amicable pact with Sony/ATV</a>, according to Digital Music News, though legal battles with <span>Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group are ongoing.</span></p>
<p>Tarantino claims to be adding 200,000 users a month, including big growth in mobile. The company has grown to 85 employees, after cutting from 145 to 60 a couple of years ago.</p>
<p><span>"We bootstrapped this thing since the beginning and it is only until now that our slow but steady steps are starting to bear fruit," Tarantino wrote in an email.</span></p>
<p>The site is controversial because of alleged copyright violations. Tarantino's vision, however, is supposedly to provide licensed content to help support artists. <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">In any case, </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/grooveshark-is-the-best-streaming-site-2013-8">Grooveshark provides an impressive experience</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">, letting users stream almost any album for free and without ads.</span></p>
<p>We asked Tarantino about recent developments over email:</p>
<p><strong style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Why did Sony/ATV and EMI back down while other producers continue to fight Grooveshark in court?</strong></p>
<p>I wouldn't call it "backing down".  We've always operated with the intent to license content on the platform, and we have been for the past 7 years. People tend to forget that I started this company because I'm a musician first, and my goal has always been to leverage technology to build and grow artists. Over the years we've been positioned as the black sheep because we grew the company in Florida, not in Silicon Valley. No one really understood who we were. When you reach a scale where you're big enough to challenge the establishment, that can be a scary thing, IF you don't understand what drives us. I think most people thought we were just a bunch of coders wanting to ruin an industry but the reality is we were doing the best we could with limited resources. We bootstrapped this thing since the beginning and it is only until now that our slow but steady steps are starting to bear fruit. In the last 2 years, we opened an office in NY and I myself as CEO moved up to spearhead the long process of educating everyone in the industry on who we are and why we are doing what we do.</p>
<p><strong style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">2011/2012 felt like "getting punched in the face." How is 2013 going?</strong></p>
<p>Actually 2013 has turned out an about face from last year. There are new faces both here at Grooveshark, and across the industry. We've scaled back up to 85 employees, 20 who are in NY. We've been taking steps in preparation for some major growth. This has been the most exciting year for me personally since we exploded to 35 million users back in 2009-11. However this time around, the excitement feels far more substantial because we've been on the downside of a meteoric rise.  We're in the championship rounds, and its in those later rounds, AFTER you've been pummeled, you really understand what it takes to stand back up and finish, and that's a lesson we needed to learn.</p>
<p><strong style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">What does your user growth look like?</strong></p>
<p>Our overall growth has been solid, our mobile growth has been phenomenal.  We made the decision last year to go to an HTML5 web app.  The benefits of which are that we are device/OS agnostic and can be accessed via the browser on any smartphone or tablet by going to Grooveshark.com.  Since late last Fall we've been growing at a pace of about 200K users each month.</p>
<p>While the rate of growth has been a pleasant surprise, we understand that a big part of music consumption has always been on the go.  We have some pretty big launch plans this fall to amplify the mobile experience, and mobile is a major part of our overall strategy moving forward. </p>
<p><strong style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">What is your revenue breakdown and how is it growing?</strong></p>
<p>Grooveshark's revenue model is primarily ad driven.  We work with scores of the world's biggest brands and advertisers.  Our audience is a young, affluent, and engaged music enthusiast; and we deliver millions of these consumers.  We do have a subscription offer for users interested in accessing our Android app and receiving sneak peaks at new product releases.  I've had countless users admit that the true reason why they subscribe is to support this site that they love.  These people are fans, and any company will tell you that there is a massive difference between a fan and a spectator. It's very humbling to know we have so many fans and makes me love what I do even more every single day.</p>
<p>We've had good growth here in 2013 but if in the headwinds of multiple <keyword id="387129" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="lawsuits">lawsuits</keyword> we've been able to grow at a modest pace, now imagine what we'd be able to do with tailwinds.</p>
<p><strong><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">What does the future of the music business look like?</span></strong></p>
<p>The core of it is around live. Look at how much people spend on concerts or festivals. It's incredible because in many cases people will pay $50, $75, even $100+ dollars to see a band live. As a band you'd have to sell 10 CDs to make up for one $100 ticket. Unless you've been making music for 20 years, most bands don't even have that much content in the first place. We've reached a point where the consumer is now spending more of their entertainment wallet share on live music than on the actual content itself. The question is how do we help everyone in the space reach that consumer who is spending on the live experience? </p>
<p>Here's an example; I went to see Alt-J at Central Park Summer Stage which was $42.99. Seven of the next eight dates are sold out. The size of these venues averages about 2,500 people which means that on average they are bringing in just over $100k a night. If they do 100 nights per year like many touring acts then they are doing $10M gross. If they are touring 200 nights that's $20M gross. And that is for a NEW act.  U2 holds the record for the highest grossing tour in history.  Their last 360 Tour generated over $700 million in ticket sales from 110 dates. Compare that to selling 1-2 million albums at $15 a piece. The winners of the music biz are those who focus on creating a 360 degree consumer experience coupled with multiple revenue streams. It's about delivering great content from great artists that people want to see, hear, and feel. Whoever is not aligned with that is in trouble.</p>
<p>I love Kevin Spacey's speech because he nailed it. "The audience has spoken, they want stories. They're dying for them. They're rooting for us to give them the right thing and they will talk about it, binge on it, carry it with them on the bus, and to the hairdresser, force it on their friends, tweet, blog, Facebook, make fan pages, silly gifs and god knows what else about it."</p>

After Getting 'Pummeled' By Lawsuits, Music Streaming Site Grooveshark Is Making A Comeback

<p><table class="image-container float_right" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"></div><p class="source"><a href="&lt;a href="></a>"&gt;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boxing_at_the_2000_Olympic_games-cropped-small.jpeg</p></td></tr></table>The last couple of years were rough for <keyword id="1021857" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Grooveshark">Grooveshark</keyword> CEO Sam Tarantino. </p>
<p>The span of time between 2011 and early 2012 was "a year of getting punched in the face 10,000 times," <span>Tarantino </span><a href="http://mashable.com/2013/04/22/grooveshark-radio/">tells Mashable's Seth Fiegerman</a><span></span></p>
<p>Tarantino went through a series of blows during that time. First Google pulled the Groveshark app from Google Play because of complaints from record labels. And then Spotify launched in the U.S. in July 2011, effectively taking away some of Grooveshark's users. But that wasn't even the worst of it. Universal <keyword id="6354530" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="music">Music</keyword> Group, along with all of the major record labels, had filed a federal lawsuit against Tarantino and his team for uploading copyrighted songs <a href="http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/new-lawsuit-means-all-major-labels-are-suing-grooveshark/">by the end of January 2012</a>.</p>
<p>Now, Tarantino is "literally broke" and trying to lower his rent. But he's going full force ahead in trying to revive Grooveshark from a tumultuous time. </p>
<p>Just yesterday, Grooveshark launched a new <keyword id="572624" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Streaming">streaming</keyword> service called "Broadcast." It lets anyone act as DJ by streaming playlists in real-time. DJs can even break up songs in the playlist with their own interpolations.</p>
<p>There are obviously still competitors, but Tarantino says if big players like Apple, Google, and Amazon enter the streaming space, it could push record labels to come up with "sustainable" licensing fees. </p>

Grooveshark's CEO Is Making A Comeback After 'Getting Punched In The Face 10,000 Times'

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>After years of legal battles with the music industry, Grooveshark officially shut down for good on April 30th - that is until a rogue fan relaunched the music streaming website under a new domain.</p><p>Grooveshark, originally founded in 2006, quickly became popular among music fans because of its on-demand catalogue that allowed you to stream songs a la carte long before Spotify arrived on the scene. While popular, many of the songs uploaded to Grooveshark were copyrighted songs - with even <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/30/judge-rules-grooveshark-infringed-thousands-of-copyrights/">Grooveshark's founders reportedly instructing employees to upload popular songs</a> - all of which eventually led to the official website's shutdown.</p><p>Less than a week later after <a href="http://grooveshark.com/">Grooveshark went dark</a>, a new version of Grooveshark has popped up,<span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and it's the handiwork of a rogue fan who goes by "Shark," who claims he managed to back up 90% of the songs before the official website's shutdown, <a href="http://bgr.com/2015/05/05/grooveshark-is-back-online/">according to BGR.</a></span></p><p>"<span>I started backing up all the content on the website when I started suspecting that Grooveshark's demise is close and my suspicion was confirmed a few days later when they closed," Shark wrote to BGR in an email. "By the time they closed I have already backed up 90% of the content on the site and I'm now working on getting the remaining 10%."</span></p><p><span>To protect itself from being yanked down again, the new Grooveshark website includes a legal disclaimer, informing users that "t<span>he songs you want to download may have copyright(s) on them" and that "<span>you're not allowed to download the song if you don't possess the original record."</span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><br /></span></span></span></p><p>Of course, even with obvious links to file DMCA take-down requests and its legal disclaimers plastered all over the site, there's no telling how long the new Grooveshark will manage to keep the lights on - so don't cancel that Spotify Premium membership quite yet.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-terms-cost-2015-4">Here's how much you have to buy to make Amazon Prime worth it</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="cxaDF3bDpBumNTY2jzHvClJf-TIZtSo-" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Grooveshark is officially dead, but a rogue fan backed up 90% of the music and relaunched a new version of the streaming website

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Spotify <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/102631432">has raised $350 million</a>, sources tell CNBC. Goldman Sachs participated in the new funding.</p><p>Previously, Spotify <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/spotify">has raised $537.8 million from investors </a>including Kleiner Perkins, Fidelity Ventures, and Technology Crossover Ventures. Spotify's valuation previous to the newly reported funding <a href="http://graphics.wsj.com/billion-dollar-club/?co=Spotify">was $8.4 billion.</a></p><p>The news comes at an interesting time in the music streaming space. On Friday, music streaming site Grooveshark shut down. Grooveshark <a href="http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/05/01/music-streaming-service-grooveshark-shuts-down-after-years-of-legal-troubles/">had spent years tangled up in legal battles with music record labels</a>.  </p><p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"We started out nearly ten years ago with the goal of helping fans share and discover music," the company said in a letter to users on its homepage. "But despite [the] best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service. </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">In addition, Jay Z's music streaming service Tidal has recently faced criticism. The music streaming service, backed by artists like Madonna and Kanye West, plummeted down the App Store charts. It had been ranked within the top 20 free apps in the US Apple App Store, <a href="http://bgr.com/2015/04/21/tidal-vs-pandora-vs-spotify/">but has since fallen to outside the top 100</a>. Jay Z spoke out against the negative press Tidal <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jay-z-twitter-smear-campaign-music-streaming-service-tidal-apple-spotify-2015-4">has received in a tweetstorm earlier this week.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">We reached out to Spotify for comment and will update this story when we hear back.</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/battery-technology-needs-breakthrough-lacking-processors-2015-5">Why battery technology is still one of the biggest challenges for engineers</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="85cXV0dDpimBY_-VJjyahkLWy3GkteQL" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Spotify reportedly just raised $350 million

<ul><li><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince</p></div><p></p></div></div><strong>The CEO of Cloudflare said he is "deeply uncomfortable" with his own decision to have his company stop protecting The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website.</strong></li><li><strong>He decided to stop working with The Daily Stormer after its team suggested that Cloudflare sympathized with its Nazi ideology.</strong></li><li><strong>The Daily Stormer's site was taken down by attackers as soon as Cloudflare stopped protecting it. </strong></li></ul><p>Until today, Cloudflare had never dropped a customer due to political pressure.</p><p>It's this fact that company CEO Matthew Prince said makes him so "deeply uncomfortable" with <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cloudflare-stops-providing-services-to-daily-stormer-site-2017-8">his decision</a> early Wednesday to stop providing paid services to The Daily Stormer, including protecting its website from attackers.</p><p>As it turns out, attackers took down the neo-Nazi site as soon as Cloudflare stopped protecting it, Prince told Business Insider. Daily Stormer remained offline on Wednesday evening.</p><p>Daily Stormer drew national scrutiny and condemnation after it published a story that demeaned Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman who was killed on Saturday when a car rammed into people counter-protesting against a white-supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. </p><p>Prince made clear that he found the website's content "vile." But he regrets that he alone was able to decide its fate.</p><p>"The ability of somebody to single-handedly choose to knock content offline doesn't align with core ideas of due process or justice," Prince told Business Insider on Wednesday. "Whether that's a national government launching attacks or an individual launching attacks."</p><h3>How it ended</h3><p>While Cloudflare may have been Daily Stormer's last line of defense, Prince's decision didn't actually take the company's site offline by itself. Earlier in the week, GoDaddy and Google both publicly announced they had dropped Daily Stormer as a customer of their domain hosting services.  </p><p>And then there were the attackers.</p><p>The site going offline was an outcome imagined by both friends and foes of the neo-Nazi site. One of the services Cloudflare provides is to provide a sort of buffer between visitors and websites, to protect sites from denial-of-service attacks. It does this in part by obfuscating the identity of the websites' hosts. It was that service that helped protect Daily Stormer. </p><p>"The size and scale of the attacks that can now easily be launched online make it such that if you don't have a network like Cloudflare in front of your content, and you upset anyone, you will be knocked offline," Prince wrote in a <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/">blog post</a> Wednesday. "In fact, in the case of the Daily Stormer, the initial requests we received to terminate their service came from hackers who literally said: 'Get out of the way so we can DDoS this site off the Internet.'"</p><h3>Government pressure </h3><p>Cloudflare says it handles 10% of all internet requests. So while this is the first time that Cloudflare has stopped working with a website for political reasons, Prince said his company has faced plenty of external and international government pressure.</p><p>"There are human rights organizations that are criticizing the Chinese government that we continuously get pressured to restrict," he said "There are LGBT organizations in the Middle East. Often times it's things covering abuses by government that governments would rather not have online."</p><p>This is not the first time, though, that Cloudflare has dropped support for a site. It has ended service to other websites in response to illegal activity, such as child pornography. And in 2015, a court ordered Cloudflare to block websites associated with the music streaming service Grooveshark, which was in trouble over copyright violations.</p><p>In this case, though, Cloudflare dropped Daily Stormer because the neo-Nazis claimed the company supported their cause. </p><p>"The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology," Prince wrote in the blog.</p><p>Prince said that his team is set to have a debate over how to address such issues moving forward.</p>     <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-7-people-arya-stark-kill-list-game-of-thrones-hbo-deaths-prayer-2017-8">Here's everyone left on Arya Stark's kill list on 'Game of Thrones'</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Cloudflare CEO: Hackers pushed The Daily Stormer offline as soon as Cloudflare stopped protecting it

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Good morning! Here's the tech news you need to know going into the weekend.</p><p><strong>1.<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/here-comes-teslas-missing-piece-battery-announcement-2015-4"> Elon Musk unveiled Tesla's latest product: Tesla Energy.</a></strong> It's a suite of batteries for homes and businesses.</p><p><strong>2. <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/yelp-share-price-april-30-2015-4">Yelp shares tanked over 23% in trading yesterday.</a></strong> It reported a big miss on first quarter earnings, as well as a disappointing outlook.</p><p><strong>3.<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/linkedin-earnings-2015-4"> LinkedIn shares were down over 20% on weak guidance.</a></strong> But it beat revenue expectations.</p><p><strong>4. <a href="http://recode.net/2015/04/30/jawbone-completes-300-million-funding-from-blackrock/">Wearables company Jawbone has raised $300 million in funding from investment firm BlackRock.</a></strong> That brings its valuation to around $3 billion.</p><p><strong>5. <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/analysts-on-tinder-subscriptions-and-advertising-2015-4">Analysts are confident that Tinder is going to start bringing in big money soon.</a></strong> JMP Securities believes that monetisation of Tinder could add 5% to IAC's 2016 revenue.</p><p><strong>6.<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/grooveshark-shuts-down-2015-4"> Streaming music site Grooveshark has shut down.</a></strong> It was one of the first streaming sites, and often hosted content illegally. Now, it has shut down as part of a settlement with rightsholders.</p><p><strong>7. <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-apple-watch-has-lowest-hardware-cost-to-price-ihs-2015-4">A teardown of the Apple Watch reveals that its parts likely cost $84 to manufacture.</a></strong> The hardware cost is estimated to be around 24% of the final retail price.</p><p><strong>8. <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/leaked-lyft-documents-show-growth-2015-4">A leaked presentation from ridesharing company Lyft shows that it spends over 60% of its revenue on marketing.</a></strong> But it has been paying off - ridership grew 4x in 2014.</p><p><strong>9. <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/grace-helbig-show-on-e-and-youtube-2015-4">YouTube star Grace Helbig made the move to TV - but her ratings are falling.</a></strong> The third episode of her E! talk show only brought in 182,000 viewers.</p><p><strong>10. <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/lvmh-accel-and-more-pour-40m-into-fashion-e-commerce-aggregator-lyst/">London fashion startup Lyst raised $40 million in funding.</a></strong> It aggregates fashion products from around the web.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-power-user-hacks-2015-4">5 clever iPhone tricks only power users know about</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="huN2Zzczr6N8qz_gUrYzZxcxaCD8z5Sv" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

10 things in tech you need to know today

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger</span></p><p class="caption">People relax at the public swimming pool of Schoenbrunner Bad on a sunny day in Vienna, Austria, July 19, 2015.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Hello! Here's what you need to know for Tuesday.</p><p><span></span><strong>1.</strong> Officials believe a <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-blast-hits-turkish-town-near-syria-border-some-dead-and-wounded-security-officials-2015-7">suicide bombing connected to Islamic State militants may be responsible for an explosion on Monday that killed at least 27 people</a> in the mostly Kurdish town of Suruc in Turkey, near the Syrian border.</p><p><strong>2.</strong><span> Greece on Monday confirmed it </span><a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/greece-pays-the-imf-2015-7">repaid the roughly €2 billion it owed to the International Monetary Fund</a><span>, as well as a €</span><span>3</span><span>.5 billion payment due to the European Central Bank.</span></p><p><span><strong>3.</strong> <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-polling-stations-open-in-controversial-burundi-election-2015-7"><span>Burundi </span></a><span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-polling-stations-open-in-controversial-burundi-election-2015-7">President Pierre Nkurunziza looks set to win a third consecutive term as polling stations open on Tuesday</a> amid violent street protests <span>and after a failed coup attempt in May. </span></span><span><br /></span></span></p><p><strong>4. </strong>T<span>he <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/pictures-of-the-new-cuban-embassy-in-dc">US and Cuba re</a></span><span><a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/pictures-of-the-new-cuban-embassy-in-dc">stored full diplomatic relations on Monday a<span>fter </span><span>54 years </span><span>of cold relations</span></a>, signaled by Cuba raising its flag outside its state embassy in Washington and the US reopening its embassy in Havana.</span></p><p><strong>5.</strong> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/business/international/internal-panel-says-toshiba-inflated-earnings-by-1-2-billion.html?module=WatchingPortal&amp;region=c-column-middle-span-region&amp;pgType=Homepage&amp;action=click&amp;mediaId=none&amp;state=standard&amp;contentPlacement=20&amp;version=internal&amp;contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&amp;contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2015%2F07%2F21%2Fbusiness%2Finternational%2Finternal-panel-says-toshiba-inflated-earnings-by-1-2-billion.html&amp;eventName=Watching-article-click">Japanese electronics maker Toshiba overstated its profits by more than $1.2 billion</a> over the last seven years, a revelation that is likely to lead to the chief executive's resignation on Tuesday.<span><br /></span></p><p><strong>6.</strong> <span>Hackers operating under the name <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/ashley-madison-hack-attack-stolen-data-2015-7">Impact Team attacked affairs website Ashley Madison over the weekend</a> and threatened to leak the account data of the site's 37 million users. The attack was reportedly designed <span>to protest and punish the site, <span>which the hackers accused of charging to delete customer information, but not actually doing that.</span></span><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><strong>7.</strong> In a defence paper published annually, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-japan-defence-paper-slams-chinas-coercive-maritime-demands-2015-7">Japan accuses </a><span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-japan-defence-paper-slams-chinas-coercive-maritime-demands-2015-7">China of acting "unilaterally and without compromise" in its bid to reclaim land</a> in the South China Sea.</span></span></span></span></p><p><strong>8.</strong> Josh Greenberg, the 28-year-old cofounder of the online music-streaming site Grooveshark, <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/grooveshark-co-founder-found-dead-in-home-2015-7">was found dead in his Florida home on Sunday</a>. Police said there was "no evidence of foul play or suicide."</p><p><strong>9.</strong> The <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/afp-record-heat-for-globe-in-june-us-scientists-2015-7">global average temperature for June was the hottest for the month</a> on record.</p><p><strong>10.</strong> In a world first, an<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/afp-teen-in-remission-from-hiv-12-yrs-after-stopping-meds-researchers-2015-7"> 18-year-old French woman born with HIV has been in remission for 12 years</a> after not taking medication for that period of time.</p><p><strong>And finally...</strong></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/zach-johnson-wins-british-open-2015-7">American Zach Johnson won the British Open on Monday in a<span> 4-hole playoff, making it the 39-year-old's </span><span>second career major championship.</span></a></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/1998-mclaren-f1-auction-15-million-dollars-2015-6">This 1998 supercar could auction for $15 million</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Rsc3hodTqM0OE0pn7eL8MJ-yolA-SZHN" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The 10 most important things in the world right now

<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Sonos" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5263eade69bedd8b45461ec9-960/play1blktilt.png"><span class="click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><keyword id="820239" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Sonos">Sonos</keyword></p></div><p></p></div>Sonos <a href="http://blog.sonos.com/products/introducing-the-new-sonos-play1/" target="_blank">recently unveiled</a> a smaller, more affordable speaker system called the Play: 1.</span></p>
<p>The Play:1 is basically the little brother to the Sonos Play: 3 and Play: 5 speakers. </p>
<p>For $199, you can experience high-quality sound and stream <keyword id="6354530" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="music">music</keyword> from most of your favorite music services. </p>
<h2>Set Up</h2>
<p>Getting started out of the box is pretty simple.</p>
<p>First, you need to plug in the Sonos Bridge adapter to your router, which Sonos is giving away for free to new customers (the Bridge is what allows you to stream music wirelessly from your speakers). Then you need to install the app on your Mac, PC, Android, or iOS device.</p>
<p>Once you install it, simply tell the app you want to add a speaker, press the increase volume button and play button when prompted, and then you're good to go.</p>
<p>Set up on the software side was not quite as seamless as on the hardware side. As a first time Sonos user, I wasn't quite sure how to add additional services, like Hype Machine and Spotify. But a quick Google search quickly solved that issue.</p>
<h2>The Pros</h2>
<p>The Sonos Play: 1 is super sleek, affordable, and offers amazing quality sound.</p>
<p>But where Sonos really shines is in its ability to stream music from multiple different sources.</p>
<p>I'm a regular Hype Machine and Spotify listener, but until I tried out Sonos, there was no way for me to make a playlist featuring songs from both of those sources. It was either one or the other. </p>
<p>Now, I can very quickly and easily control music from Hype Machine and Spotify using just one interface. </p>
<p>When paired with a second Play: 1, you can achieve true stereo sound. Though, that means shelling out another $199. </p>
<h2>The Cons</h2>
<p>Even though Sonos does support quite a lot of music services, it is missing some critical ones. It's lacking, for example, iTunes Radio, iTunes Match, Xbox Music, Google Music All Access, Soundcloud, and Grooveshark.</p>
<p>Unlike competitor Jambox's speakers, Sonos is not truly portable given that it must be plugged in at all times. </p>
<p><span>Also, in order to achieve truly stereo sound, you're going to need to buy a second Play: 1.</span></p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p><span>As an owner of a small, Bluetooth-enabled Jambox (not the Jambox Mini), which retails for $149, I'd say it's worth the extra $40 for the Sonos Play: 1. </span></p>
<p>Unless you often find yourself needing a speaker you can pack up and take with you, go with the Sonos Play: 1 over the Jambox. The Sonos Play: 1 sounds remarkably better than the Jambox, and makes it dead-simple to create the ultimate party playlist from multiple music sources.</p>

REVIEW: Wow, The Sonos Play: 1 Is An Amazingly Beautiful, Must-Have Wireless Speaker 

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div>Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has <a href="https://news.spotify.com/us/2014/11/11/2-billion-and-counting/">written a blog post</a> defending how much money the streaming service pays artists, saying Spotify has paid more than $2 billion to labels and other entities that then distribute a cut to the artists themselves.</p>
<p>This issue of Spotify underpaying artists resurfaced last week when Taylor Swift <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-swift-pulled-all-of-her-albums-from-spotify-2014-11">pulled her entire catalogue of music from Spotify</a> after refusing to put her new hit album "1989" on the service. Swift has previously said that artists need to protect their work and value it appropriately, and Spotify has previously been criticized for not paying artists enough.</p>
<p>"Taylor Swift is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it," Ek wrote.</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that the amount of money Spotify pays labels does not equal the amount of money artists see from allowing their music to be streamed.</p>
<p>Last month, Jimmy Buffett <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jimmy-buffett-asked-the-ceo-of-spotify-for-a-raise-2014-10">complained</a> that artists who stream their music on Spotify are "at the end of the pipeline" when it comes to the money Spotify pays labels for permission to stream albums. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And the money Spotify pays labels, while it amounts to a reported 70% of the company's revenue, averages </span><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25217353">less than a penny per play</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p>But Ek argues that Spotify still protects artists against piracy, which doesn't earn the artist any money: "Piracy doesn't pay artists a penny - nothing, zilch, zero."</p>
<p>Ek defended the amount Spotify pays per stream by pointing out that one stream is "one person playing one song one time."</p>
<p>"People throw around a lot of stream counts that seem big and then tell you they're associated with payouts that sound small," Ek wrote. "... <strong>At our current size, payouts for a top artist like Taylor Swift (before she pulled her catalog) are on track to exceed $6 million a year, and that's only growing - we expect that number to double again in a year.</strong> Any way you cut it, one thing is clear - we're paying an enormous amount of money to labels and publishers for distribution to artists and songwriters, and significantly more than any other streaming service."</p>
<p>That sounds like a big number, but keep in mind that one week of album sales for Swift's new record 1989 would do ~$12 million in gross sales. </p>
<p>Ek also seemed to shift blame to the record labels for not paying artists a big enough cut of the money the labels receieve from Spotify.</p>
<p>"When I hear stories about artists and songwriters who say they've seen little or no money from streaming and are naturally angry and frustrated, I'm really frustrated too," Ek wrote. "... As I said, we've already paid more than $2 billion in royalties to the music industry and if that money is not flowing to the creative community in a timely and transparent way, that's a big problem."</p>
<p>About 25% of Spotify's 50 million active users pay for the service, according to Ek. The users who stream music for free have to listen to ads, which provide another stream of revenue for Spotify.</p>
<p>Spotify premium subscribers pay about $120 per year for the service.</p>
<p>Here is his full posting:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>Taylor Swift</strong> is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it. We started Spotify because we love music and piracy was killing it. So all the talk swirling around lately about how Spotify is making money on the backs of artists upsets me big time. Our whole reason for existence is to help fans find music and help artists connect with fans through a platform that protects them from piracy and pays them for their amazing work. Quincy Jones posted on Facebook that "Spotify is not the enemy; piracy is the enemy". You know why? Two numbers: Zero and Two Billion. Piracy doesn't pay artists a penny - nothing, zilch, zero. Spotify has paid more than <strong>two billion dollars</strong> to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists. A billion dollars from the time we started Spotify in 2008 to last year and another billion dollars since then. And that's two billion dollars' worth of listening that would have happened with zero or little compensation to artists and songwriters through piracy or practically equivalent services if there was no Spotify - we're working day and night to recover money for artists and the music business that piracy was stealing away.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">When I hear stories about artists and songwriters who say they've seen little or no money from streaming and are naturally angry and frustrated, I'm really frustrated too. The music industry is changing - and we're proud of our part in that change - but lots of problems that have plagued the industry since its inception continue to exist. As I said, we've already paid more than $2 billion in royalties to the music industry and if that money is not flowing to the creative community in a timely and transparent way, that's a big problem.   We will do anything we can to work with the industry to increase transparency, improve speed of payments, and give artists the opportunity to promote themselves and connect with fans - that's our responsibility as a leader in this industry; and it's the right thing to do.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We're trying to build a new music economy that works for artists in a way the music industry never has before. And it <em>is</em>working - Spotify is the single biggest driver of growth in the music industry, the number one source of increasing revenue, and the first or second biggest source of overall music revenue in many places. Those are facts. But there are at least three big misconceptions out there about how we work, how much we pay, and what we mean for the future of music and the artists who create it. Let's take a look at them.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong><br>Myth number one: free music for fans means artists don't get paid. </br></strong>On Spotify, nothing could be further from the truth. Not all free music is created equal - on Spotify, free music is supported by ads, and we pay for every play. Until we launched Spotify, there were two economic models for streaming services: all free or all paid, never together, and both models had a fatal flaw. The paid-only services never took off (despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing), because users were being asked to pay for something that they were already getting for free on piracy sites. The free services, which scaled massively, paid next to nothing back to artists and labels, and were often just a step away from piracy, implemented without regard to licensing, and they offered no path to convert all their free users into paying customers. Paid provided monetization without scale, free reached scale without monetization, and neither produced anywhere near enough money to replace the ongoing decline in music industry revenue.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We had a different idea. We believed that a blended option - or 'freemium' model - would build scale and monetization together, ultimately creating a new music economy that gives fans access to the music they love and pays artists fairly for their amazing work. Why link free and paid? Because the hardest thing about selling a music subscription is that most of our competition comes from the tons of free music available just about everywhere. Today, people listen to music in a wide variety of ways, but by far the three most popular ways are radio, YouTube, and piracy - all free. Here's the overwhelming, undeniable, inescapable bottom line: the vast majority of music listening is unpaid. If we want to drive people to pay for music, we have to compete with free to get their attention in the first place.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">So our theory was simple - offer a terrific free tier, supported by advertising, as a starting point to attract fans and get them in the door. And unlike other free music options - from piracy to YouTube to SoundCloud - we pay artists and rights holders every time a song is played on our free service. But it's not as flexible or uninterrupted as Premium. If you've ever used Spotify's free service on mobile, you know what I mean - just like radio, you can pick the kind of music you want to hear but can't control the specific song that's being played, or what gets played next, and you have to listen to ads. We believed that as fans invested in Spotify with time, listening to their favorite music, discovering new music and sharing it with their friends, they would eventually want the full freedom offered by our premium tier, and they'd be willing to pay for it.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We were right. Our free service drives our paid service. Today we have more than 50 million active users of whom 12.5 million are subscribers each paying $120 per year. That's three times more than the average paying music consumer spent in the past. What's more, the majority of these paying users are under the age of 27, fans who grew up with piracy and never expected to pay for music. But here's the key fact: <em>more than 80% of our subscribers started as free users</em>. If you take away only one thing, it should be this: No free, no paid, no two billion dollars.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong><br>Myth number two: Spotify pays, but it pays so little per play nobody could ever earn a living from it.</br></strong> First of all, let's be clear about what a single stream - or listen - is: it's one person playing one song one time. So people throw around a lot of stream counts that seem big and then tell you they're associated with payouts that sound small. But let's look at what those counts really represent. If a song has been listened to 500 thousand times on Spotify, that's the same as it having been played <em>one time</em> on a U.S. radio station with a moderate sized audience of 500 thousand people. Which would pay the recording artist precisely … nothing at all. But the equivalent of that one play and it's 500 thousand listens on Spotify would pay out between three and four thousand dollars. The Spotify equivalent of ten plays on that radio station - once a day for a week and a half - would be worth thirty to forty thousand dollars.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Now, let's look at a hit single, say Hozier's 'Take Me To Church'. In the months since that song was released, it's been listened to enough times to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars for his label and publisher. At our current size, payouts for a top artist like <strong>Taylor Swift</strong> (before she pulled her catalog) are on track to exceed $6 million a year, and that's only growing - we expect that number to double again in a year. Any way you cut it, one thing is clear - we're paying an enormous amount of money to labels and publishers for distribution to artists and songwriters, and significantly more than any other streaming service.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong><br>Myth number three: Spotify hurts sales, both download and physical.</br></strong> This is classic correlation without causation - people see that downloads are down and streaming is up, so they assume the latter is causing the former. Except the whole correlation falls apart when you realize a simple fact: <em>downloads are dropping just as quickly in markets where Spotify doesn't exist.</em> Canada is a great example, because it has a mature music market very similar to the US. Spotify launched in Canada a few weeks ago. In the first half of 2014, downloads declined just as dramatically in Canada - without Spotify - as they did everywhere else. If Spotify is cannibalising downloads, who's cannibalising Canada?</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">By the same token, we've got a great list of artists who <em>promoted</em> their new releases on Spotify and had terrific sales and lots of streaming too - like Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, <span class="MusicLinks-hookedWord"></span> and alt-J. Artists from Daft Punk to <span class="MusicLinks-hookedWord"></span> to Eminem had number ones and were on Spotify at the same time too.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Which brings us back to <strong>Taylor Swift</strong>. She sold more than 1.2 million copies of <em>1989</em> in the US in its first week, and that's awesome. We hope she sells a lot more because she's an exceptional artist producing great music. But she's the only artist who has sold more than a million copies in an album's first week since 2002. In the old days, multiple artists sold multiple millions every year. That just doesn't happen any more; people's listening habits have changed - and they're not going to change back. You can't look at Spotify in isolation - even though Taylor can pull her music off Spotify (where we license and pay for every song we've ever played), her songs are all over services and sites like YouTube and Soundcloud, where people can listen all they want for free. To say nothing of the fans who will just turn back to pirate services like Grooveshark. And sure enough, if you looked at the top spot on The Pirate Bay last week, there was <em>1989</em>…</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Here's the thing I really want artists to understand: Our interests are totally aligned with yours. Even if you don't believe that's our goal, look at our business. Our whole business is to maximize the value of your music. We don't use music to drive sales of hardware or software. We use music to get people to pay for music. The more we grow, the more we'll pay you. We're going to be transparent about it all the way through. And we have a big team of your fellow artists here because if you think we haven't done well enough, we want to know, and we want to do better. None of that is ever going to change.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We're getting fans to pay for music again. We're connecting artists to fans they would never have otherwise found, and we're paying them for every single listen. We're not just streaming, we're <em>main</em>streaming now, and that's good for music makers and music lovers around the world. </p>

You Searched For "Grooveshark" and got 13 results

Before there was Spotify, there was Grooveshark. Today it closed forever

Matt Rosoff

Grooveshark Executive Murdered In St. Petersburg, Florida

Paul Szoldra

Grooveshark's 28-year-old cofounder has been found dead in his home

Steven Tweedie

Controversial Streaming Site Grooveshark Is Still The Best Thing Out There

Gus Lubin

After Getting 'Pummeled' By Lawsuits, Music Streaming Site Grooveshark Is Making A Comeback

Gus Lubin

Grooveshark's CEO Is Making A Comeback After 'Getting Punched In The Face 10,000 Times'

Megan Rose Dickey

Grooveshark is officially dead, but a rogue fan backed up 90% of the music and relaunched a new version of the streaming website

Steven Tweedie

Spotify reportedly just raised $350 million

Maya Kosoff

Cloudflare CEO: Hackers pushed The Daily Stormer offline as soon as Cloudflare stopped protecting it

Becky Peterson

10 things in tech you need to know today

James Cook

The 10 most important things in the world right now

Dina Spector

REVIEW: Wow, The Sonos Play: 1 Is An Amazingly Beautiful, Must-Have Wireless Speaker

Megan Rose Dickey

Spotify CEO To Taylor Swift: You Were Going To Get $6 Million From Us This Year, If We Didn't Exist You'd Get $0

Pamela Engel

Popular Keywords

Buying Guides