Jump the Shark

When good TV shows turn bad, it’s said they “Jump the Shark”. This term comes from the 70’s sit-com, Happy Days. In its prime, Happy Days was one of the best shows on TV at the time. When the show eventually got stale and writers were desperate for storylines to keep the show on the air, they came up with the ill-fated episode where “The Fonz” jumped over a shark on water skis. From this point on the show steadily declined until its inevitable cancelation. Forevermore shows that cross that threshold from good to cheesy, Jump the Shark.

Yesterday one of my favorite websites was forced offline. Technically this isn’t a “Jump the Shark” event, but since the website was called Grooveshark, I thought it was somewhat appropriate. Grooveshark was a site where you could build a music library and listen to it any time you wanted. You didn’t actually download the songs onto your computer. The website stored your library and it could be accessed from any computer, any time, anywhere. I spent a long time building a massive library of all my favorite music and now it’s gone. Without warning the site was taken down and it is no more. Apparently the site failed to acquire proper licenses and violated some copyright laws. As part of the deal with the record companies to pay for the wrongdoing, the site was ordered removed immediately. Alas, Grooveshark is gone and the music died yesterday.

Goodbye, old friend. Thank you for the many hours of free (and apparently illegal) listening pleasure.