EMI Sues Music Streaming Site Grooveshark

In our new issue, Rolling Stone calls music streaming site Grooveshark the "audio version of YouTube," adding that it's "the best service for now because of its great selection, but it operates in a legal gray area. Enjoy it while it lasts." Well, we hoped you enjoyed it: EMI is suing the Florida-based Grooveshark, which has gained a popular following since launching in November 2008, for copyright violation, AllThingsD reports. Grooveshark was reportedly in the midst of a licensing deal with the major label, but instead EMI — as it has with streaming sites SeeqPod and Sideload — turned around and instead sued Grooveshark.

"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," Grooveshark's operators said in a statement following the lawsuit. The music streaming site insists they do have deals worked out with publishers, labels and artists, but don't get into specifics.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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