Today's big news: EMI Music and EMI Music Publishing have come on board to "create a mutually sustainable deal which represents the future of digital music," said Grooveshark CEO Sam Tarantino.

In layman's terms: Grooveshark listeners now have access to EMI's massive catalog of tunes. In a brief phone chat with Grooveshark's Joshua Bonnanain, I got the distinct impression that this was just the start. While he didn't spell out any specifics for me (we love a good mystery anyway) I'm hoping that the ability to buy and download playlists is coming soon. I'd much rather use Grooveshark for my purchases than iTunes - Josh said stay tuned, wheels are turning.

Some added coolness for current VIPs: there are now half a dozen new themes available to use and added options for the now playing bar. You can choose either no cover art, or artwork in two different sizes. It's an awesome option, especially if you use Grooveshark on both small and large displays.

Reaching a deal with EMI is fantastic news - here's hoping other labels follow suit.

Grooveshark is an excellent streaming audio service, and one of our favorites here at Download Squad. Yesterday, they announced early access to a redesigned Grooveshark 2.0 for VIP users.

The interface has been revamped, and long gone are the days where I had to upload missing tracks. Grooveshark's library is massive, and I've been able to find bands that I once dug out of the Camelot Music sale bin. My long-lost Mind Bomb CD, missing since high school? No problem, Grooveshark's got it now.

Songs you locate via search can now be added to your library with a simple click (instead of having to upload them yourself). Drag-and-drop playlist editing makes re-ordering tracks a breeze. The player itself has been improved as well, with better caching and the ability to seek - just click the spot you want to skip to. Sorting options have also been added, and they make finding tracks and organizing your library and playlists even easier.

Currently there are four shiny, new skins available to choose from. The chalkboardish Tutorial provides helpful pointers for new users, though the new Grooveshark is intuitive enough to use that you probably won't need any help.

And it's still a great deal - $30 per year gets you a VIP account with no commercial interruptions, and even us geotarded Canadians can enjoy the goodness.

I'm a big fan of the streaming music site Grooveshark. It's a great way to listen to practically any song and share new music with friends. EMI doesn't have any love for Grooveshark, though: the label is suing the service. It's not clear what the claims in the suit are, yet, but Grooveshark's side of the story is that they were negotiating some kind of licensing deal with the major labels, and EMI sued as a negotiating tactic.

I can see why a label would want to sue Grooveshark. According to one small label that's done business with them, Grooveshark just uses the labels' content to pay its bills, and offers little to nothing in advertising revenue in return. On the other hand, I don't know too many people who use Grooveshark as a replacement for buying a legitimate digital download of a song. You need to be online to listen, and you can't put streaming tracks on your iPod, so it hardly seems like an equivalent product.

I selfishly hope Grooveshark survives this lawsuit, because I enjoy being able to preview full tracks before I buy them. I also enjoy sharing music with my friends by embedding Grooveshark widgets or using the Facebook plugin, and maybe those friends will hear something they like and go buy an album. If I were the music industry right now, I might take those sales where I could get them.

[via AllThingsD]

Grooveshark is my favorite quick way to listen to a particular song online. With an extensive library, easy sharing and embeddable widgets, it's a powerhouse in the music sharing arena. It's only getting better, too, with the recent addition of a Facebook application and a Wordpress plugin. The Facebook app lets you share songs directly to your wall, and the Wordpress plugin lets you quickly put together a playlist widget for your Wordpress blog.

The Facebook app, in particular, is the easiest way to share music on FB that I've run across so far. In addition to publishing a song to your profile, you can also select individual friends to share it with. With over 10 million songs in Grooveshark's database, it's likely you'll find whatever song you're looking for.

I'm a huge fan of Twitter, and I'm also a huge fan of the music site Grooveshark. Grooveshark has become the main way I share streaming music with friends, and it's handy for embedding in other sites. So, when I heard that some folks from Grooveshark had built a Twitter music mashup, I had to check it out. It's called Twisten.fm (rhymes with "listen") and it crawls Twitter for tweets about songs, and lets you listen to the songs people are talking about.

Twisten.fm is what would happen if every tweet about music had a play button next to it. It's not much more than that yet, but I'm already imagining features that would be make it even more awesome. I'd love to be able to see just what my friends are listening to, and maybe use Grooveshark's playlist generator directly from Twisten. A most-played chart for all of Twitter would be good, and a most-played chart for just the people you follow would be even better. There are plenty of pointless mashups out there, but Twisten.fm is one of the good ones.

Pandora may be on the brink of self-destruction, but upstart music download service GrooveShark clearly believes in its style of predictive music programming with the launch of its new service, GrooveShark Autoplay.

GrooveShark originally launched with a radical new model which proposed to commercialize P2P by allowing users to be rewarded for sharing songs that were purchased by other users.

Since the initial launch of GrooveShark the company has also launched a Web based download solution 'GrooveShark Lite' which features a substantial music library to compliment the service's P2P features which also allows for full previews of songs on the site.

The addition of the Autoplay service to GrooveShark Lite turns the site into a Pandora style radio station as it allows consumers to search for tracks, listen in and then click on Autoplay which will build a playlist based on your initial choice. Autoplay can then proceed to build a picture of your listening interests with then subsequent user feedback on the selected tracks which allows the user to give any particular track the thumbs up, thumbs down or add the track to your favorites.

With Pandora threatening to close down, it will be interesting to see if GrooveShark can avoid the royalty woes that have afflicted the Web radio giant and prove that Web radio and music downloads can both be made to pay.

[Via GrooveShark Lite]

Having an emotional moment but just can't seem to express yourself with words? Well send a TinySong and tell the World how you feel with music instead.

TinySong is a nifty new application from the folks at GrooveShark that allows you to search for a track on the GrooveShark database, then gives you a short link that you can cut and paste into into an email, instant message or add to a blog entry if you want to funk it up.

TinySong is the latest project from the folks at GrooveShark who have recently been aggressively marketing their service with dirt cheap music download offers such as their Mothers Day 49 cent download offer. TinySong links in to GrooveShark's' marketing efforts as it not only allows users to share songs, but also allows the TinySong recipient to purchase the track they are sent if they are getting into the groove.

The service has only had a soft launch, so you'll have to excuse any quirks, according to the good people at GrooveShark next steps include Twitter and Tumblr integration before a wider launch of the service.

Been so busy trying to buy Pope bobble-head dolls on eBay that you've fallen behind on the week's software news? We've got your back. Here are some of our favorite stories from the past week.

Comcast shuts down Dave Winer

Ever wonder if those unlimited bandwidth internet service plans are really unlimited? Tech analyst Dave Winer found out the hard way that there's unlimited, and then there's Comcast. The cable and internet provider cut him off for excessive use. Download Squad's Christina Warren interviewed Winer about his Comcast woes,

Amazon MP3 has little or no effect on iTunes

Amazon's MP3 download store might look like a great alternative to the iTunes store. It has a ton of music, it's well priced, and all the tracks are DRM-free. But it turns out that iTunes is still king. By a long shot. Less than 10% of Amazon MP3 customers are iTunes converts.

P2P music community site Grooveshark has entered a new phase with the launch of Grooveshark Lite, a Web based application to allow community users to share and purchase tracks. Grooveshark differentiates itself from other music Webtailers by giving community members credits every time a fellow user purchases a track from their music library.

Grooveshark lite allows you to organize your music and build playlists or makes recommendations on top tracks from other users to build playlists if you can't be bothered to build your own. Grooveshark also lets you stream entire tracks from other users before you make your purchasing decisions.

The Web site is the latest incarnation of a service that launched in beta as a P2P application that maps your music library and then allows you to share it with fellow community users, as Download Squad wrote last year. Music that is then made available through Grooveshark can be purchased by other users, and community members are rewarded with credits each time purchases are made from their library.

Grooveshark is a radical new service that attempts to fuse community services and P2P music file sharing with a product that will motivate users to share music files and simultaneously accrue credits towards music purchases from the process. Subscribing to Grooveshark turns your own personal library of music into a music store available to family, friends and any other passing consumers that you can draw in. The service is an ambitious attempt to commercialize a P2P distribution distribution with social networking model of distribution.

Grooveshark requires the user to download a Java app that interfaces between the Web service and your library of tunes. The site operates like a music laundering service, no questions are asked as to where the tracks came from, but when one of your contacts chooses to download the track from your computer, Grooveshark will bill your contact for the full cost of the track and then pay a share of the money to the label and credit a portion to your account against future purchases.