Music – 43 mins ago

Photo credit: Spinrilla logo.

The days of hip-hop mixtape website Spinrilla are over. On Thursday (May 4), Billboard reported that Spinrilla founder, Jeffery Copeland, was ordered by a Georgia federal judge to discontinue the website, and pay music companies including Universal Music, Warner Music, and Sony Music for copyright infringement. The agreement, which stems from a six-year-old lawsuit, was settled this week.

“Judgment shall be entered in favor of Plaintiffs and against Defendants jointly and severally in the amount of $50,000,000, inclusive of any recoverable costs and attorneys’ fees,” the judgment reads.

Copeland, who founded the platform in 2013, has also been “permanently forbidden from operating Spinrilla or any other website, platform or similar projects anywhere in the world,” per the music publication. In 2017, the platform was sued by multiple RIAA-suppored labels, who cited illegal streaming and downloads of thousands of songs by artists like Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, and more. “Spinrilla specializes in ripping off music creators by offering thousands of unlicensed sound recordings for free,” RIAA said at the time.

It appears that the website has also been updated with a concluding date of Monday, May 8 after “ten incredible years.”

“Artists that got started on Spinrilla have gone on to get signed, perform on the world’s biggest stages, and even win GRAMMY Awards,” a statement on the website reads. “While we don’t like to boast, there is no denying that Spinrilla was paramount in breaking some of the biggest stars today. Thank you to each and every one of over 25,000,000 listeners and artists that made the Spinrilla community so special.”

The Spinrilla judgment comes after DatPiff, another mixtape website, announced last week that it would be pivoting to become an archival service for music. Similarly, many other mixtape sites have changed or closed. Peer-to-peer file-sharing website LimeWire returned as an NFT marketplace, Live Mixtapes rebranded as a professional tools distribution tool last month, and the file-sharing site ZippyShare closed for good in March.