In a report shared by RIAA, ShareBeast.com housed around 100,000 unauthorized files before it was shut down by authorities. With the option to stream music for free on services like Spotify, there is less of a need to download music illegally, but these websites will still exist. “Sharebeast operated with flagrant disregard for the rights of artists and labels while undermining the legal marketplace”, said RIAA chairman and CEO Cary Sherman.

The site’s largely inactive Twitter account is littered with old notices about newly available tracks from artists such as Big Sean, Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and A$AP Rocky. But the offerings on the site were sprawling, from music to soccer to TV shows. While it still certainly happens in doses, the rapid declination of the illegal industry has been noticeable over the past few years, which non-coincidentally comes with law forces taking many of the familiar piracy sites down for good, including entities like Grooveshark and MegaUpload.

Sharebeast’s related sites such as mp3pet.com and albumjams.com also now display the notice.

He went on: “This action will have enormously positive implications for our diverse membership, which includes not only labels and distributors whose artists are not paid by sites like these, but also physical and digital retailers who cannot compete with this type of illegal access”.

Of course the most famous file-sharing site, The Pirate Bay, is still engaged in a game of whack-a-mole with European authorities. In May the site posted a defiant logo depicting a many-headed hydra with different domain names above it in a clear message that it will continue to operate despite impending legal battles, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.