14 DAY TRIAL // Grooveshark is undoubtedly a popular music streaming service and it owns its popularity to a few factors, it's free, it's available around the world and it has a rather comprehensive selection of music.
Unfortunately, the only way it can offer all of these is by not having licenses from the music labels, which led to its mobile apps being removed from the Android Marketplace and the Apple App Store.
But Grooveshark is not going down without a fight, it argues its legality again and blames the interference of music labels, bad press and tech companies scared of taking a stance, for the situation.
The Grooveshark app was removed for not conforming with the Android Marketplace Terms of Service, though Google would not go into the details.
"Google hasn't specified what it was in their 'Terms of Service' that we allegedly violated, but there does appear to be some confusion about whether Grooveshark is a legal service," Grooveshark's Paul Geller wrote on digitalmusicnews.com.
"So let's set the record straight: there is nothing illegal about what Grooveshark offers to consumers," he said.
"Yet some are confused as to how we are legal. First, there is a distinction between legal and licensed. Laws come from Congress. Licenses come from businesses. Grooveshark is completely legal because we comply with the laws passed by Congress, but we are not licensed by every label (yet)," he added.
Grooveshark argues that as a tech company, it's well protected by US law in what it offers and that it doesn't really need a license. Not that it doesn't want to license the music offered.
It already has deals with performing rights organizations and it claims it signed licensing deals with over one thousand labels. Unfortunately, only one of those is a major label, Warner Music Group.
Of the other three, Universal Music is actually suing Grooveshark. Warner Music first sued and only later reached an agreement as well. The issues come from the fact that Grooveshark enables users to upload their own music and make it available to everyone.
This obviously opens the company up to a lot of potential trouble, but Grooveshark says that it has a very robust DMCA notice system in place to remove infringing files.
"We've taken down over 1.76 million files and suspended upload privileges to 22,274 users. These are not the characteristics of a company 'dedicated to copyright infringement'," Geller continued.
In the meantime though, Grooveshark is offering its users a means to get the mobile Android app, bypassing the Marketplace ban, by offering it on its mobile website.