“Although the site was supposed to be for discovery of new artists, that’s not what was actually going on there. All of the music I saw was copyrighted and was mostly from popular artists like Beyoncé, Pitbull, and Bruno Mars,” said Special Agent Cyrus Riley, Jr., of the FBI’s Atlanta Division.
Advertisers are mostly eager to work with Sargsyan because of his website’s popularity. At one point, Sargsyan’s website ranks in the top one percent of all websites in the world. Not only that, it captures the attention of the key 18-24 year old demographic. And unfortunately for Sharebeast’s success, it also catches the attention of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who approaches the FBI.
Recording Industry Association of America and The FBI
The RIAA repeatedly sends letters to Sharebeast to remove the music and advises the company of the copyright law violations. Each time, Sharebeast does not comply and merely changes the URLs for the songs without actually removing the songs from the site. Over three years, the RIAA e-mails Sargsyan more than 100 times asking him to remove copyright music from his website, but he does not comply.
