14 DAY TRIAL // Grooveshark seems to be sinking more and more, it is now being sued by all four major record labels. EMI has joined the fray with a new suit. The interesting part about this is that EMI and Grooveshark already have a licensing deal so this can't be over copyright infringement.
In fact, the new lawsuit is precisely over the licensing agreement, it seems that Grooveshark hasn't paid a single cent to EMI in the three years the deal has been active and hasn't provided any accounting details.
As such, EMI decided to sue Grooveshark to recoup its money. It's asking for at least $150,000, €116,000 in licensing fees, but it believes the true sum is much larger than that.
It will probably need access to some Grooveshark internal documents for it to be able to determine the appropriate sum.
EMI was the first to sue Grooveshark, several years ago. The two sides later reached an agreement and a licensing deal was reached. This meant that Grooveshark could legally distribute EMI music on its site.
EMI remained the only major label that reached a deal with Grooveshark. The problem is, from EMI's account, Grooveshark didn't hold up to its end of the bargain and didn't actually pay for any of the tracks.
Last year, Universal Music Group sued Grooveshark over copyright infringement. For a while, it seemed that the lawsuit would end up just like the previous one, with a settlement and a licensing deal.
That didn't happen and late last year, Universal filed another lawsuit in the light of new evidence which indicated that Grooveshark employees actually uploaded infringing tracks to the site, from the CEO downwards.
Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group joined that lawsuit soon after. With EMI filing a different lawsuit, all four major labels are now engaged in litigation with Grooveshark. Even if the music streaming site manages to fend them all off, the cost of fighting all of these lawsuits is going to leave a mark.