Grooveshark Co-founder Josh Greenberg Dead At 28 173
alphadogg writes: The tech startup world has been shaken today by news that 28-year-old Josh Greenberg, co-founder of recently defunct music sharing service Grooveshark, was found dead on Sunday in the Florida apartment he shared with his girlfriend. No foul play is suspected, but the local medical examiner is conducting an autopsy, according to the Gainesville Sun. Grooveshark was shut down in April after the company was threatened with legal action and possibly hundreds of millions in damages by several big music labels.
huh. he just up and died. (Score:3, Informative)
His mother, Lori Greenberg, told the paper that her son was in good health and that police had found no visible injuries or signs of drug use. Moreover, the local police department confirmed in a tweet that there was no evidence of foul play or suicide.
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28 is a dangerous age (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:28 is a dangerous age (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't imagine the pain of losing a child. My heart goes out to you.
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You're right 28 is a dangerous age. It wouldn't actually surprise me if he was an adventurous sort, or did high impact sports or something similar. Three of my friends back ~8 years ago had heart attacks, they were 27, 28, 28. It was directly linked to their lifestyle, one was a marathon runner, the other played high-impact sports, the other was a boxer.
You have my condolences on your son.
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Not as dangerous as 27.
Also, I thought you're supposed to punch sharks in the back like that Australian guy did?
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Why should we be thinking of his parents? It won't help.
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That really has to suck. No need for you to explain, really. I just know it must suck. I can not possibly imagine the pain it must be like to lose a child. You're supposed to die before that happens. I am not sure what I would do if it happened to me. I honestly do not know. I may well off myself because I am unable to deal with the pain. I simply do not know. Shit, it is hard to think about even.
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Dude, have a bit of humanity. Didn't your mother tell you to play nice?
If you are going to be a butthead don't do it anonymous coward.... Give us a fighting chance of finding you and firebombing your house....
I swear, what are kids taught these days....You must be a lot of fun to be around...
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You can consider it as having come out of my mouth if that helps. I have the same sympathy and echo their sentiment. Odd, really. I am not usually all that empathetic but this one just seems to be the one that makes me so. I do not control my feelings (nor do I let them control me). So, yeah, have some empathy or at least be civil enough to keep your opinion to yourself. We do not always have to be assholes.
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My cousin died at that age. She was beautiful, incredibly smart and was totally fucked up by my aunt. She had to take drugs to shut up the hypercritical voice her mother ingrained into her head.
Then there are the idiots who do stupid things like race their motorcycles at 160MPH and get killed - like my brother did 10 years ago.
Then there are the shit happens of cancer and other diseases that you can't help. That's my fate.
In other words, everybody's family at one time or another has a tragedy so get over yourself.
You're a fucking retard. Losing a child is the worst thing I can imagine.
In his honor... (Score:5, Funny)
In his honor, I plan to launch a streaming burials site, where you can watch people being laid to rest 24/7. No, I will not pay any royalties to the families of the deceased.
I plan to call the site "GraveShark".
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In his honor, I plan to launch a streaming burials site, where you can watch people being laid to rest 24/7. No, I will not pay any royalties to the families of the deceased.
I plan to call the site "GraveShark".
Definitely puts 'Shark Week' into a whole new perspective..
Your ideas intrigue me and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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Never understood Shark Week. I mean, I like Greg Norman as well as the next guy, but a whole week of him...?
disgusting (Score:5, Insightful)
it's like the death of aaaron swartz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
these fucking companies have a business model which depends upon an outdated understanding of how information is shared, then they utterly destroy the financial lives, or actually jail, young entrepreneurs who see the future. they could make deals with these guys and take over their companies for their "crimes", and benefit thataways
instead we have these pigheaded, shortsighted, cruel "punishments" for the crime of showing ignorant old fossils that their business models suck in the internet age
this is the worst of lawyers, corporations, and the legal status quo, and i hope these judges, lawyers, and corporate sycophants can sleep at night, because blood is on their hands
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Or not. Apparently he was looking forward to soon putting the legal issues behind him and did not appear to have any particular suicidal tendencies.
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God people like you are such ignorant douches.
Swartz was a douche who broke the law, repeatedly, and clearly and deserved to go to jail. He couldn't cope with paying for his crimes so he offed himself. He's a criminal, not a hero. He had nothing about what happened that made him somehow deserve your sympathy and ABSOLUTELY was a criminal.
This guy started a business where he stole other peoples work and gave it away for free. His business model is the same as a common thief, you ignorant prick. Stop act
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legality is not necessarily morality
they mostly overlap, but where the two have the most problems is disproportionate punishment: massive jailtime for smoking marijuana cigarette or crushing financial ruin for downloading a file for example
it was illegal for a black person to ride in a section reserved for white people. until last week it was illegal for gays to marry. it is illegal to smoke marijuana in most of the usa, but that will change soon too
aaron swartz downloaded files. grooveshark shared files
for
Re:disgusting (Score:4, Insightful)
we all can have our buttons pushed and sent over the edge. it doesn't matter how frail or unstable aaron was, the morally corrupt legal system that serves the bottom line of some fossilized ignorant corporate counsel and some asshole DA with something to prove: their moral bankruptcy, is the culprit that pushed him over the edge
if you're on the edge of a cliff and a guy pushes you slightly and you fall, is he somehow less culpable than a guy who has to pick you up and drag you kicking and screaming and throw you over the cliff? the malice is the same in both cases, even if the effort is less in one
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"let me judge someone on an imaginative hypothetical rather than judge someone else on the truthful reality"
you're a moron
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you do realize that while yes, one party is deep throating plutocrat cock, the other is taking it in all 3 holes
you vote strategically, not idealistically
which means you steer your country in the better direction. not stand there like an air head and refuse to participate until the entire political establishment matches your ideology perfectly
or vote for the party that has no chance and only serves to rob votes from the party closer to you ideologically that actually has a chance, thereby making sure the ev
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the left won the popular vote. moron gw bush who got us in a stupid war gore would not have won with florida cheats and the electoral college bullshit that should be abolished
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Something tells me that you would have been just happy as a clam if the decision had gone the other way...
Something also tells me that you are mentally unstable and willing to use this guy's death as an excuse to further your agenda. Good luck with that.
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if that's what you get from my words, you're not an intelligent nor perceptive person
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That is one way to ignore the observations. Anything that helps you justify your rage, I suppose.
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the completely off topic ignorant comments of a moron are not valid observations to consider
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straw
man
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your level of moral "thinking" is particularly brutal and ignorant. you shouldn't talk on topics you lack the reasoning abilities so say intelligent things on. there is obviously a connection between his suicide and the completely out of proportion charges against him. to deny it or dismiss that is purposeful intellectual dishonesty or genuine stupidity
we get it: "bad people deserve horrible treatment" completely out of proportion to their "crimes". you should go for vigilante justice, sharia law, and mob l
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so you work out a deal. you don't bury the guy in financial ruin. societies where punishments are worse than the crimes are brutal societies that fail. like cutting off hands for stealing under sharia law. "well he was a thief so he deserved it." that's your level of legal and moral "thinking" on this topic
No foul play? (Score:1)
Then tell us how he died. Choking on peanut butter? Slipped and hit his head? Alcohol poisoning?
A 28 year old doesn't just suddenly die. Especially not in their own home without any sort of warning or symptoms.
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That's usually what an autopsy is for. It's already been announced that there wasn't any signs of foul play, obvious drug use, or known suicidal thoughts. Toxicology results usually take some time so unless the examiner finds something really quick and really obvious, they probably can't tell you yet how he died.
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Florida. So more than likely cocaine or pills.
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Re:Dead at 28, no apparent signs of foul play... (Score:5, Informative)
The actual overdose rates don't seem to support that on the surface, unless heroin is almost exclusively being used by healthy people, and cocaine is being used almost exclusively by physically frail individuals. http://www.drugabuse.gov/relat... [drugabuse.gov]
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The recent heroin overdose uptick seems to be caused by massive cutting with fentanyl and other adulterants, so people can't determine a safe dose.
Short of having generic heroin available at WalMart for five bucks, people are gonna keep dying. But, hey, why else is the US Army guarding the opium fields?
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As an IV drug abuser... I prefer my fentanyl personally extracted and without the nasty heroin in it. Heroin is for wimps.
I no longer use opiates (or alcohol but that stopped a few years ago - opiates were more recently ceased). No, I am not going to go into the details of how to extract Fentanyl from mylar or jelly patches. The sublingual pills are easy enough but rare as hen's teeth. As always, feel free to do drugs - they are a lot of fun and you can have a great time with them. Practice safe use - you
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Look at that institutional sexist exclusion of women from drug overdose deaths.
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Lots of coke in Florida. Lots of cheap pills too - often benzos or opiates. But, really, scads of coke in Florida. Like street prices of $50/g type of amounts. It is usually pretty good comparatively. There is lots of meth but that is mostly up in the northern parts and out on the panhandle.
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GainvillePD tweet said no signs of foul play or suicide. Also, they didn't find any signs of drug use. I'm thinking maybe he had something like an undiagnosed brain aneurysm that ruptured.
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So... suicide?
I'm guessing no... Accidental overdose is my bet. Of course there are a whole range of possible options...
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Accidental overdose on 5 knives sticking out of his back and chest. Obviously no foul play. A guy tries to run a startup, the startup has crushed for various reasons, then there is the question of lawsuits for hundreds of millions of dollars in supposed damages to music labels. No foul play...
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A guy tries to run a startup, the startup has crushed for various reasons, then there is the question of lawsuits for hundreds of millions of dollars in supposed damages to music labels. No foul play...
Really? That's your approach to this? Yet another young guy trying to find a way to get rich by setting up a system built from the ground up to infringe on others' copyrights, and which gave laughable lip service to take-down notices (ripped off material that was removed re-appeared more or less instantly). Foul play? The foul play was on his part, and of course the chickens came home to roost, which is why he gave up on the scheme. Whether or how yet another failure of a Piracy-As-A-Service "start-up" mig
Re: No Foul play... (Score:5, Insightful)
When things like "happy birthday" can still retain copyright, then I have zero respect for all copyright.
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So a song supposedly written in the last 80 years or so having a copyright still on it means that you have zero respect for the GPL?
Re: No Foul play... (Score:2)
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No, it means he wants shit for free and doesn't care if artists or their heirs get paid.
Your fallacy is strong with this one. Creator-endorsed [questioncopyright.org] is a much more civil system - copyright isn't the only way to get paid. It may be one way to get paid more, but that gets paid for with lives of innocents (and no, profit reduced from a hypothetical does not make one a victim).
Re: No Foul play... (Score:2)
Re: No Foul play... (Score:2)
Re: No Foul play... (Score:4, Informative)
Call it falacy if you want. I've written and sold software that made its way onto TPB and resulted directly in lost sales,
No doubt you got an F in high school economics.
In fact here's a little lesson: At my school, a student walked into the classroom saying that the soda machine was selling bottles (which were normally $1.50) for 5 cents. You know what happened? Basically the whole class went out to buy a soda. However if the price remained at $1.50, there wouldn't have been any increased sales; they would have simply done without.
This is a very basic economic concept called price elasticity. When something is free (aka your software) then the demand is much greater. However if the price is higher, then there's substantially less demand.
In simpler terms, if somebody didn't get your software for free, they would have simply gone without it anyways.
Now, that isn't to say that piracy doesn't negatively impact sales. It can, but not in the way you're thinking. Namely, one download isn't one lost sale. It's realistically much less than that, though how much less depends on the particular good.
For example, gasoline is something that is very inelastic. It pretty much doesn't matter how much it costs, people still tend to consume roughly the same amount of it, even when it goes up substantially.
However, in digital goods it tends to work more like this: The pirated copy may negatively impact the perceived value of a legitimate copy, but has virtually no negative impact on actual sales. Somebody might, for example, pirate a copy of your program, but then wait until it is offered at a discount before buying the real thing.
Now -- having said that -- a lot of software companies have taken advantage of this by offering special incentives for pirated users to go legit, and they usually do quite well with it. Although they made less than they would have if they had sold it at full price, they at least got some sales that they otherwise never would have had, so in the end it's a much more profitable proposition than had those users just done without entirely.
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So they lost money on every sale of soda? That is not a good argument.
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Nit picking the difference between physical end electronic goods doesn't actually detract from his excellent example of price elasticity.
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In simpler terms, if somebody didn't get your software for free, they would have simply gone without it anyways.
That would only be true if (a) no one ever bought software and (b) it was considered fair for all creators of digital works to give their time for free and absorb any other incidental expenses.
As it is, this software developer had no chance to try out the market for his work, as it is clearly impossible to compete on price with zero.
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Nit picking the difference between physical end electronic goods doesn't actually detract from his excellent example of price elasticity.
I disagree. It's meaningless talking about price elasticity when you are comparing any cost with zero. The assumption is that, just because you can copy something, it has no intrinsic value. This would be plausible if software (or games, music, movies) cost nothing to create, but that's not true.
And the problem is that you can't really let the market sort it out, since no one can compete with free.
So you end up with the people who create the goods having no way to even cover their costs, let alone ma
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No, you misunderstand price elasticity. It has *nothing* to do with the production.
Price elasticity is how much sales will change with change in price. Production and costs are not relevent to price elasticity.
Production and costs + price elasticity weighs in to how you decide to price your product. Clearly there no point shipping units for less then the cost per unit. But that still doesn't effect price elasticity.
And the soda can thing was an excellent example of how the number of sales changes with the p
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It's not my responsibility to see that anybody gets paid.
But it IS your responsibility to not rip people off, or to tolerate other people doing so. Especially if you personally like the output of artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and others who - without copyrights on their creations - wouldn't bother to create what you like.
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Music labels rip the artists off, but you are calling for music labels to be respected in their dealings. It seems you are slightly confused as to what roles artists and labels play.
Are you talking about actual fraud and breech of contract? If so, artists have all sorts of recourse to recover not only something that's been fraudulently taken from them, but to recover punitive damages, as well.
Or are you talking about artists who sign an ill-considered contract because they've chosen poorly in their selection of business partners, and couldn't be bothered to get some expert help to look over the contract? You're not being "ripped off" when you choose to enter into an agreement.
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And who gets to decide that someone has been "ripped off"?
It's really not that complicated. When an artist creates something, and offers it to the market on certain terms, people who take it anyway without actually honoring those terms are ripping it off. It's as simple as that. If you don't like the terms under which someone's creative work is being offered, just walk away. If you say instead, "That's nice, Mr. Filmmaker/Recording Artist/Author, I really admire your creativity and appreciate the thousands of hours you've put into creating the entertainment I wan
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And who gets to decide that someone has been "ripped off"? If instead of there being a privileged class of people "creating" things I like, there was more of an effort to make tools that make it easier to bring things into existence things people like, the world would be a far better place.
Oh please, there has never been an easier time to make music, movies, games or anything else.
Having free tools available doesn't make everyone into a musician, film director or games programmer.
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Or are you talking about artists who sign an ill-considered contract because they've chosen poorly in their selection of business partners, and couldn't be bothered to get some expert help to look over the contract? You're not being "ripped off" when you choose to enter into an agreement.
Are you claiming that the record labels who offer these bad contracts are innocent?
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It's not my responsibility to see that anybody gets paid.
Nor is it anyone's responsibility to provide you with free stuff.
You are perfectly free to make your own software, music or movies.
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Children of engineers don't get royalty checks just because daddy helped build the Golden Gate Bridge
If daddy owned a toll bridge then the kids could still be earning toll fees from it.
Re: No Foul play... (Score:2, Insightful)
And no one who still has their life wrote "Happy Birthday", so there. Copyright law is insane, and one way to try to change it is to ignore it with derision. Not saying it's the best way, just a way.
Re: No Foul play... (Score:2, Funny)
Personally, I send payment in cash directly to artists home address and bypass any middlemen for the cost of album.
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Notorious cases of alleged police brutality resulting in the death of the suspect are often followed by widespread looting of stores, with the perpetrators using justification like yours.
I don't recall justifying anything, just saying that I don't respect copyright law. It's like a homosexual saying they don't respect any laws against gay marriage. Why do they need to justify it? It's just their opinion whether you like it or not.
If you graduated from college and still can think like that, you should ask your college for a refund.
Actually I've written commercial software that I know somebody has pirated and then sold for a profit. I just shrugged it off and decided not to get bent out of shape over it.
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Actually I've written commercial software that I know somebody has pirated and then sold for a profit. I just shrugged it off and decided not to get bent out of shape over it.
Lucky you for not having to worry about money.
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Imagine a nation-wide referendum asking voters if music copyright law should be retained. What percentage would vote "yes" you think? 0.01%? 0.02%? 0.05% possibly? Whatever number you pick, there's your answer who paid for that law.
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Imagine a nation-wide referendum asking voters if music copyright law should be retained.
Which is exactly why referendum votes are usually such a terrible idea. Because most people lack the information and critical thinking skills to vote wisely. The same people you think would sweep away copyright laws would then be wondering why nobody is making them any movies beyond the generally crappy garage-level indie dreck that can scrape up some family and gofundme me cash. They'd wonder why their favorite musicians would be charging $400 for a concert ticket, and no longer laboring to make complex r
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Paid for the law in its current strict form by content owners and distributors. And btw if 99% were to vote for abolishing the copyright law, you can't attribute it to no one understanding the complex issue -- that's a valid argument only when the perception is split.
If people would be really as disappointed as you describe, then have another referendum in 10 years and ask them do they want the copyright law back. Given the latest formulaic crap that's been made in the last few years, I don't think we'd be
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Yet another young guy trying to find a way to get rich by setting up a system built from the ground up to infringe on others' copyrights, and which gave laughable lip service to take-down notices...
pfft. not even the half of it:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/judge-rules-grooveshark-infringed-thousands-of-copyrights/
In 2007, Grooveshark CTO Joshua Greenberg wrote a company-wide post reading:
Please share as much music as possible from outside the office, and leave your computers on whenever you can. This initial content is what will help to get our network started—it’s very important that we all help out! ... Download as many MP3’s as possible, and add them to the folders you’re sharing on Grooveshark. Some of us are setting up special “seed points” to house tens or even hundreds of thousands of files, but we can’t do this alone There is no reason why ANYONE in the company should not be able to do this, and I expect everyone to have this done by Monday IF I DON’T HAVE AN EMAIL FROM YOU IN MY INBOX BY MONDAY, YOU’RE ON MY OFFICIAL SHIT LIST.
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Really? That's your approach to this? Yet another young guy trying to find a way to get rich by setting up a system built from the ground up to infringe on others' copyrights, and which gave laughable lip service to take-down notices (ripped off material that was removed re-appeared more or less instantly). Foul play? The foul play was on his part, and of course the chickens came home to roost, which is why he gave up on the scheme. Whether or how yet another failure of a Piracy-As-A-Service "start-up" might have contributed to his death remains to be seen.
Paid for by your friends in the MPAA and RIAA.
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The mafia has used "drug overdose" for at least the past 30 years. We all know what the RIAA really is...
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I'm guessing he suffered an overdose of lawyers.
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or an un-diagnosed heart condition. which is surprisingly common.
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Well, everybody knows about angry birds so it shouldn't be a surprise.
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Commas, quotes and antecedents lives matter.... Especially at a time like this...
Reading confusion (Score:2)
"he" clearly refers to her son in this sentence.
You can read it like this:
"Greenberg's mother is quoted in the Gainesville Sun article saying her son was more relieved than upset by the service shutdown"
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Josh may not be dead of fowl play, but the music industry... as in the artists are definitely dead.
The big labels are doing fine, with record album sales. However, their bands are the labels' constructs with musicians hired individually. They don't have A&R men that find a good band gigging at a night club and sign that band anymore. At best they are looking for someone good looking, and docile enough to sign what lyrics are put in front of them.
As for what put the artists out of business. Very simp
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http://www.floridageekscene.co... [floridageekscene.com]
Re:Music industry is sooo fucked... (Score:2)
Josh may not be dead of fowl play
Certainly not: he was no chicken that one.
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Josh may not be dead of fowl play,[...]
What! There is no killer chickens on the loose. That's a relief.
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The big labels are doing fine, with record album sales.
While I agree about the challenges around streaming, pay by the track, and piracy, where are you getting the idea that album sales are at records?
Album sales (including album downloads) are down by nearly 65% from their peak around 2000.
http://blog.thecurrent.org/201... [thecurrent.org]
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I hope this isn't just some boring suicide and is actually some kind of insane Illuminati cover up shit.
You hope that bad shit that happens is worse than it first appears so that you can be entertained? That's pretty fucked up.
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Re:That's OK (Score:4, Insightful)
Somewhere a hipster is sad that you don't care.
Re: That's OK (Score:2)
We don't know why the cofounder is dead, but the site is dead because it was a hotbed of blatant piracy. Honest people who enjoyed the service should be able to admit that.
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I did sometimes, that's why I admitted that it was a hotbed of blatant piracy.