Grooveshark co-founder Josh Greenberg found dead at 28

Josh Greenberg, who co-founded the embattled Grooveshark music streaming service, was found dead on Sunday according to The Gainesville Sun. He was 28. Greenberg was discovered by his girlfriend, who had been away for the weekend, in the apartment they shared. Police have found no signs of foul play, injuries, or drugs in their preliminary investigation, and Greenberg’s mother told the Sun he had no pressing medical concerns. So there are a whole lot of unknowns at this stage, but it’s a shocking and tragic end for Greenberg, who founded Grooveshark at the age of 19 along with Sam Tarantino at the University of Florida.

Greenberg’s death comes several weeks after Grooveshark reached a final settlement with the record labels that sued it out of business over copyright violations. To avoid a damages trial that could’ve awarded those labels hundreds of millions of dollars, Grooveshark agreed to wipe away its entire existence, erasing all servers and giving ownership of its web domain, mobile applications, and all intellectual property to the labels.

At its peak, the service tallied between 35 million and 40 million users and employed 145 people. But it always operated without the necessary licensing rights from labels and music publishers, giving users an unrestricted ability to upload and stream copyrighted music files. An autopsy is being conducted today and should uncover any immediate ailments with Greenberg’s heart or brain; failing that, toxicology results could take up to three months.