Grooveshark's demise reminds us of the tension between consumers and the music industry

The online music service shut down a few days ago following a court case

Grooveshark had over 20 million users (file photo) (Getty Creative)

Yesterday I tried to read something on The Wall Street Journal's website, but I couldn't because a pop-up window told me that I'd need to pay a £12 subscription fee. This kicked off a recurring train of thought. "Damn you, business models, for disrupting my sense of entitlement to something you've made me aware of! But I want this thing, there's no other way I'll get hold of it, so maybe I should pay… But why am I finding that idea so unusual and quaint? Have I really become so enfattened with delicious online content that I expect it to be shovelled into my face for free?" The answer: yes, I have.

Some users of the online music service Grooveshark will have experienced a similar internal dialogue when it shut down a few days ago. "Despite the best of intentions," read the apology that took its place, "we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licences… That was wrong." It went on to recommend services such as Spotify, Deezer, Google Play and Beats Music, subscription services that typically charge a tenner a month for unlimited access to a huge library of music. But many Grooveshark users were furious. "Do you know of another site that allows you to listen to any song without prior login, payment or form of obstruction?" wrote one. "I could stream albums uninterrupted for free!" exclaimed another. "I don't have time for this!"

It was a pesky court case that took Grooveshark offline, one of many brought against it over the years. The service had a library consisting of tracks uploaded by its users (much like YouTube's) and always claimed to be operating within laws passed by Congress, but its failure to obtain licences from major record labels always threatened its existence. What ultimately did for Grooveshark was the revelation that its employees had been instructed to upload music themselves; faced with possible fines of $736m (£484m), it shut down and handed over all its intellectual property. Its strategy – to accumulate a huge, unauthorised library and then assume the record labels would do a deal – ultimately failed.

Many of us who happily shell out £10 each month to stream music will be aware of the tensions between record labels and musicians who believe that they're not being adequately rewarded. But Grooveshark's demise reminds us of a far older, far greater tension between those consumers who feel entitled to listen to music for free, and a music industry that feels entitled to charge more than many people are willing to pay.

Some of Grooveshark's 20 million former users will be incandescent at the idea of paying a subscription fee, or having their listening interrupted by an audio advert, or not being able to share rare tracks with each other, or being unable to download MP3s by using a browser plug-in. "Boo-hoo, suck it up," says the industry (though perhaps not using precisely these words).

But conversely, there are music-industry bodies demanding that broadband access providers add a "piracy tax" to internet connections. (A Belgian royalty-collection society, Sabam, has just had such a claim rejected by a court.) Spotify and its streaming cousins, despite their shortcomings, feel like some kind of equilibrium – albeit uneasy – that musicians, consumers and the industry can just about live with. But then you remember that people always want more for less. And, as I type, a Grooveshark substitute has now popped up online with a new URL registered in Ukraine. The game of Whac-A-Mole continues…