Grooveshark comes back days after official site goes down following copyright issues

Questionable music site allowed people to stream and download music

Grooveshark, the music streaming site, has been resurrected by an unofficial clone just days after it was taken offline.

The new site, hosted at Grooveshark.io rather than .com, offers the same features as the original service. Users can search through the copyrighted music that led the site to be set down, streaming and downloading their choices.

The original site was shut down last week, apparently in response to copyright troubles after it failed to get licences for the music that it was streaming.

“We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service,” the site’s administrators wrote on the page in the wake of the shutdown. “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.”

But people claiming to have backed up 90 per cent of the site’s content have resurrected it at the new unofficial page. The site has been revived by a team led by a man calling himself Shark, according to the Verge, who was connected with the official site some years ago.

Grooveshark allowed users to stream copyrighted music at their request. Files were uploaded by users so the site could get away with hosting them so long as they took them down when asked.

But labels still took the site on, and it had been fighting legal challenges for years before it was shut down last week.

The new site has a series of disclaimers telling visitors that files are streamed “only for preview purposes” and that all “the Mp3 Files listed on Grooveshark.io are property of their respective owners, are all derived from several internet resources and not physically located on Grooveshark.io servers”.

Unlike the original site, users can’t upload files. Grooveshark.io instead trawls the internet like a search engine, its makers claim, finding files that are being hosted elsewhere.

Administrator Shark told BGR that they were prepared for legal challenges, despite that disclaimer. "It’s going to be a roller coaster, and we’re ready for it,” he said.

The site was briefly down after it was discovered, but appears to be up again.