With all the fuss around Spotify and Jay Z’s streaming service Tidal, other, similarly nautical services may have gone slightly under the radar. This includes Grooveshark, a decade-old service, which closed down this week, with a final message to subscribers.

In a message posted to the official site, Grooveshark has expressed contrition over the way it conducted its business, says it's settled with major record companies, and recommends users go to other services like Spotify or Beats Music.

The statement reads: “We started out nearly ten years ago with the goal of helping fans share and discover music. But despite 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.

That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation.”

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The statement also went into some detail about the settlement between Grooveshark and the music rights holders: “As part of a settlement agreement with the major record companies, we have agreed to cease operations immediately, wipe clean all the data on our servers and hand over ownership of this website, our mobile apps and intellectual property, including our patents and copyrights.

At that time of our launch, few music services provided the experience we wanted to offer ­and think you deserve. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case. There are now hundreds of fan friendly, affordable services available for you to choose from, including Spotify, Deezer, Google Play, Beats Music, Rhapsody and Rdio, among many others.

If you love music and respect the artists, songwriters and everyone else who makes great music possible, use a licensed service that compensates artists and other rights holders. You can find out more about the many great services available where you live here: http://whymusicmatters.com/find-music.”

 

The exact details of the settlement, however, are unknown. According to The Verge, Last week a judge opened the door for a jury to impose the maximum fine of $150,000 for each song deemed to have infringed copyright; almost 5,000 were under consideration in the trial, meaning Grooveshark could have been liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.