Spotify too (allegedly) had bunch of pirated content to bootstrap the service. I guess the difference is that they (and YouTube) tried to pivot away from it, compared to Megaupload which seemed to have leaned into it instead.
Nope, I'm sure I'm thinking of Spotify. Grooveshark, AFAIK, didn't try to pivot and instead later got shutdown, compared to Spotify which seemed to have been able to navigate the pivot.
> When Spotify first launched several people noticed that some tracks still had tags from pirate groups such as FairLight in the title. Those are not the files you expect the labels to offer, but files that were on The Pirate Bay.
> Also, Spotify mysteriously offered music from a band that decided to share their music on The Pirate Bay, instead of the usual outlets. There’s only one place that could have originated from.
Yeah, I remember in the early days, when I installed Spotify it would scan my computer for music and upload everything it found. I imagine this is basically how they bootstrapped
I heard stories of how Spotify used to have obscure death metal records the staff would rip, but which were gone by the time the service gained traction.
