Josh Greenberg, co-founder of the recently shut-down music streaming service Grooveshark, was found dead at his Gainesville, Florida apartment yesterday. Greenberg was 28 years old. The possibility of murder or suicide has been excluded by the local police force on Twitter. Greenberg’s death follows after a tumultuous ending to the Grooveshark story, and the murder of Grooveshark executive Eddy Vasquez, back in November 2013.
Josh Greenberg was found dead at his apartment by his girlfriend with whom he lived together. Greenberg’s mother Lori had told local paper The Gainesville Sun that her son did not look as if he was in a bad condition mentally or physically. “He was excited about potential new things that he was going to start” she told the paper.
Greenberg created Grooveshark back in 2006 with the idea to let people share digital music files peer-to-peer; much like its older equivalent Napster. The company was sued multiple times by major label corporations like UMG, WMG, SONY Music Entertainment and EMI. In March this year, a US court had resided that Grooveshark could be liable for $736m in damages when they were deemed to have willfully breached copyrights laws when they built the service’s music library. At its peak in popularity, Grooveshark employed over 145 people.
One of the other founders of Grooveshark, Andres Barreto took to Twitter to pay his respect to his lost friend and longtime colleague.
Source: Gainesville Sun
