Hypebot reports that streaming stalwart Grooveshark continues to navigate the treacherous waters of the internet, this time by settling a longstanding lawsuit with EMI Publishing. There are still plenty of other record label predators actively attacking the service for copyright infringement, but the EMI deal is purported to lead to Grooveshark making royalty payments to EMI as early as this week.
How this will affect Grooveshark’s other ongoing legal battles is unclear. Since we don’t know the details of the deal struck with EMI, it’s hard to say if the other labels will want to take a similar settlement, or if Grooveshark will actually be able to make the promised payments given its track record of lying just to stay afloat. Not to mention the fact that their only revenue source is online advertising.
This seems more like a stopgap measure than anything else, much like Grooveshark’s attempt to create a tip-jar based revenue model. Grooveshark was recently added to Google’s black list of search terms to not auto-complete after they lost a different legal battle with Universal Music Group back in April. That’s like hacking off a shark’s fins for delicious soup and expecting it to go on swimming. In the real world, the shark is dead, but this is the INTERNET and things work differently out here. Unkillable web sites are a thing.
• Grooveshark: http://grooveshark.com