An Announcement from Grooveshark

For the past year, Grooveshark has been in talks with EMI Records and
other copyright holders to negotiate licensing agreements for the use
of their content. We are pleased to announce that over the past few
months Grooveshark successfully concluded mutually beneficial
agreements with artists, labels, and publishers that we hope to be a
template for other such agreements with additional copyright holders.

Recently, EMI Records chose to abandon the template we've built with
the help of other major copyright holders and opted for their
traditional intimidation tactic of filing a lawsuit as a negotiating
tool. We find the use of this negotiating strategy counterproductive,
as Grooveshark has been willing to conclude an agreement with EMI
Records that is economically sustainable for both EMI Records and a
start-up company the size of Grooveshark.

Grooveshark is run by a group of young and passionate musicians. We
love music, we make music, and we believe that the use of all music
should be paid for. We adopted this core philosophy at our inception
and to date have concluded agreements with hundreds of record labels,
major US performance rights organizations, and thousands of
independent artists who support Grooveshark's business model. (See:
Grooveshark Artists)

As musicians, we support the rights of copyright holders and strive to
sign sustainable agreements with all content owners, ensuring that all
artists get paid–or we agree to remove content from our system in
accordance with our DMCA Takedown Policy. We hope that EMI Records
eventually follows the lead of the many forward-thinking labels we are
already working with, who would rather get their artists exposure and
a fair share of our revenue than block content access and force
customers to illegal networks.

We understand that the economy of the digital music business is in a
state of flux, and we hope to help ease this transition by providing
the required new tools and services that lead to the next generation
of the music industry. We respect the ownership rights of the major
labels and publishers, and our core mission has always been to compete
with piracy by offering a service that is genuinely better than what
illegal networks offer, while also ensuring fair payment to copyright
holders. Our next important step on our road to success is to conclude
a mutually beneficial agreement with EMI Records that is sustainable
for both EMI and Grooveshark.