PaulGeller

From a very young age, music was my community. I released my first record at 15, went on my first tour at 16, and worked and played in the music industry for the next 20 years.

Though I was always a computer kid, it wasn’t until 2009 that I merged the two when I joined Grooveshark, years before Spotify came to the U.S. I headed their big data team, and we were responsible for building the products that we would sell into the music industry to help them find and break artists.

The music streaming wars turned out to be dramatic, and I ended up on the receiving end of one of the biggest music licensing lawsuits of all time. Though Grooveshark grew to nearly 175 countries, was translated into 24 languages, and was serving billions of streams a month, we were just a little bit ahead of our time. And so by 2015, having employed more than 200 people at our peak, we disbanded.

Thus began my education in open internet activism, watching advocacy organizations fight legacy media and every once in a while, win.

Along the way, I chose to contribute my time to the groups that defend the free and fair use of the internet: the Consumer Technology Association, Engine Advocacy, and support groups like the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.