After eight controversial years, Grooveshark, the world’s most notorious music streaming service, has officially ceased to be. It seems the creators have learned their lesson, too, as they themselves write in a very contrite open letter to the music industry.

As Music Business Worldwide report, the US-based company, founded in 2007, had been at war with industry giant Universal Music all week and the case has now finally been decided. As part of a settlement with all three major labels, Grooveshark’s owners, Escape Media, will close down operations immediately.

Staying true to their name, Escape have managed to avoid a huge damages payout, and will instead hand over all of their assets to the labels, as well as deleting any material from Grooveshark’s servers. Grooveshark founders Josh Greenberg and Sam Tarantino will pay around $75m in damages if they infringe on the majors’ music again.

“Today we are shutting down Grooveshark,” the open letter begins. “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.” Grooveshark had initially been served with a $17 billion suit after all of the majors found that the company had knowingly infringed on their content.

“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,” the letter continues.

“At the 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… It has been a privilege getting to know so many of you and enjoying great music together. Thank you for being such passionate fans.”

Many outlets agreed that Grooveshark’s future was effectively doomed after an internal email from Greenberg was revealed, in which the company’s CTO ordered all employees to “download as many MP3’s as possible” and upload them to Grooveshark’s servers or face being added to his “OFFICIAL SHIT LIST”.

Image via Music Business Worldwide

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