Popular music streaming website Grooveshark permanently shut down its operations on Friday. The "friends at Grooveshark" posted a letter addressing "music fans", explaining the reason behind the move, adding that they had "made very serious mistakes".

The letter explains that the website was created to help music listeners "share and discover" music online. However, the music available on Grooveshark was not licensed and was the copyrighted work of various record companies.

"We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service. That was wrong. We apologise. Without reservation," the website said.

After almost a decade, Grooveshark gave in and made a settlement agreement with record labels which included giving up their intellectual property, website ownership, mobile app and their patents and copyrights.

"We have agreed to cease operations immediately, wipe clean all of the record companies' copyrighted works..."

a screen grab of the letter posted on the website.

To make fans feel better, the post adds that when Grooveshark started, there weren't many websites providing the service they provided. However, now there are a number of "affordable" music streaming sites such as Spotify and Rhapsody.

"If you love music and respect the artists, songwriters and everyone else who makes great music possible, use a licensed service that compensates artists and other rights holders."

The post went on to provide a link where music fans can explore and discover other music streaming websites and concluded with a "thank you for being such passionate fans".

A US judge ruled last week that Gainesville, Florida-based Grooveshark's copyright violations on nearly 5,000 songs were “willful” and made “in bad faith.”

Nine record companies including Arista Music, Sony Music Entertainment, UMG Recordings, and Warner Bros Records, sued Escape Media Group for infringement in 2011.

In court papers, they called Grooveshark a “linear descendant” of Grokster, LimeWire and Napster, all of which had been shut down because of copyright infringement.

Grooveshark fans took to Twitter to express their sorrow over the shut down. With the Youtube ban in Pakistan already in place, music listeners here also approached websites like Grooveshark and Sound Cloud to get their daily music fix.

Only recently, a music streaming website known as Patari was developed in Pakistan which provides music fans access to local Pakistani music, hosting a collection of 600 artists and 20,000 songs.

Read: Patari: This new Pakistani music site could be a game changer

Although Patari doesn't host Western music, it follows in the footsteps of websites like Spotify that provide music the legal way.