Josh Greenberg, Grooveshark’s Founder, Found Dead At Home

Josh Greenberg, 28 years old, and co-founder of the online music streaming service Grooveshark, was found dead at home in Gainesville, Fla., on Sunday evening, declared the Gainesville Police Department on Twitter. He was first found in his bed by his girlfriend who came back from a weekend — she thought he was sleeping, but called the police when she realized he was not.

The police also mentioned there wasn’t any evidence of “foul play, injuries or drugs” on the death scene. Greenberg’s mother, Lori, told The Gainesville Sun her son didn’t have any health problems. The autopsy, which took place yesterday, is going to confirm — or not — these affirmations. Its results are expected to surface in two to three months. But Greenberg’s death seems to be a natural one, at first sight.

Knowing that Grooveshark had suddenly stopped its services in May, Greenberg’s death can sound a bit suspicious though. The streaming website was shut down following lawsuits with several record companies, such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment or the Warner — lawsuits that held Grooveshark’s founders responsible for copyright infringement. Earlier, it was revealed Greenberg had asked employees to upload copyrighted songs on the platform, that conducted Grooveshark to its end. The affair wasn’t mentioned by the police, who favored the natural death theory.

Grooveshark was founded in 2006 by Greenberg and his college mates Sam Tarantino and Andrés Barreto. Even though it was a paid service in the beginning, it quickly became totally free and had, in the end, approximately 40 million users in its database.

Since most of Grooveshark’s users lost their playlists from one day to the next, a few of them are trying to revive the service. Some of them saved large parts of the website’s database, and uploaded them again, like StreamSquid for example. But Greenberg’s entrepreneurial spirit can’t be revived, and the new projects he was working on won’t ever see the light of day. “He was relieved”, told his mother The Gainesville Sun, speaking about his state of mind after the lawsuit ended. “He was excited about potential new things that he was going to start”, she added.

Nor Tarantino nor Barreto have made any declaration about Greenberg’s death yet.