Apple pulls Grooveshark music app


17 Aug 2010

After well over a year of preparing its service and getting its app ready and approved by the Apple App Store streaming music service Grooveshark has had its iPhone app suddenly pulled almost as soon as it was released.

Some people thought it was unusual that Apple had approved the iPhone app in the first place as Grooveshark is a streaming music app that lets you play literally any song you like regardless of record label as long as you or another user has uploaded it so it has both the limitations and benefits of crowd sourcing.

The free Grooveshark app, which had search and play as well as offline caching, went live on the App Store on 11 August and was pulled down by Apple five days later to the company’s surprise.

“After over a year of diligently working, last week marked us leaping through all the hoops necessary to finally offer what is far-and-away our most-requested feature: a Grooveshark app for the iPhone,”said Grooveshark on the official blog.

The events leading up to the app being pulled included a complaint from Universal Music Group UK sent to Apple followed by a letter from Apple informing Grooveshark that the app had been pulled. The feeling amongst some dissapointed Grooveshark users, however, is that Apple may have pulled this streaming music service becasue it competes too closely with its iTunes music store.

“This comes as an absolute surprise to us, and we are not sleeping until we figure out exactly how to fix this – and get Grooveshark for iPhone back in the App Store. Above all, our biggest concern is damaging the service we provide to all of you guys – our loyal (awesome) users,” said Grooveshark.

While Grooveshark has registered surprise at this move the streaming music service has previously settled a lawsuit with EMI and Merlin. The lawsuits were based on the fact that Grooveshark doesn’t have a blanket licensing agreement but rather settles on a song-by-song basis, according to Cnet.com.