Digital Grooveshark Timeline

Grooveshark app returns to Android store

By | Published on Wednesday 29 August 2012

Grooveshark

Grooveshark’s Android app has reappeared in Google’s app store, over a year after it was evicted from the official Android app platform, seemingly because of pressure put on the web giant by the major music companies.

The majors have long had problems with Grooveshark, of course, and while EMI did at one point licence the streaming music service, it fell out with the digital firm earlier this year. Universal, meanwhile, has been trying to sue Grooveshark out of business for some time, with its most recent legal onslaught also endorsed by Sony and Warner Music.

The majors, of course, accuse Grooveshark of enabling copyright infringement, by letting users as well as rights owners upload their own MP3 collections into the Grooveshark catalogue, meaning large amounts of music is available via the digital platform without the copyright owner’s permission. For its part Grooveshark insists it operates a takedown system inline with the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, so is fully legal (in America at least).

Official Grooveshark apps were removed from both the Apple and Android stores as Universal stepped up its assault on the rogue digital platform in 2010/11, and earlier this year the digital firm launched an HTML5 app, available via a web-page, thus circumventing the official app stores.

But then the Wall Street Journal noticed in recent days that a Grooveshark app was available via the Google app store once again, and a spokesman for the streaming service subsequently told Billboard: “After working closely with Google to get rogue apps removed, we’re delighted that the official Grooveshark app has been reinstated in the Android market. Grooveshark is dedicated to helping music fans search, discover and share music while pioneering new artist promotion, distribution and monetisation techniques. We look forward to continuing to build a relationship with Android and leverage this fantastic platform for our partners”.

Neither Google nor the major labels have responded to the news so far.



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