Grooveshark To Offer Legal DRM-free MP3s

Grooveshark, a new music service set to launch fairly soon, claims it will offer DRM-free music over peer-to-peer networks. While there's nothing publicly available at the moment, judging by the two-page website, Grooveshark aims to be Last.fm meets iTunes.

For the iTunes component of that equation, Grooveshark is promising DRM-free MP3 downloads at under 99 cents a song. According to a press release the company put out a couple weeks back:

Visitors can browse songs uploaded by other members and pay to download MP3 files with no digital rights management (DRM) technology. Songs vary in price, but cost no more than 99 cents. Grooveshark will pay appropriate royalties to copyright holders by taking commissions from users' transactions and also compensate users with free music for community participation such as uploading songs, fixing song tags, flagging unwanted files or reviewing music. Members will be rewarded based on their level of contribution to the community

As I understand that, you can earn free downloads by getting your friends and the larger community to buy the songs you recommend. If there's a way to tie that into off-site links (i.e. blog sidebars, MySpace pages etc) Grooveshark could really be on to something. Either way, the idea of earning free songs is pretty cool.

As with Last.fm you create a profile complete with playlists and other info and then share it with your friends. You can join public groups and discover new music through listeners with similar tastes.

Grooveshark will begin beta testing sometime later this quarter.

Grooveshark sounds promising, but then so did that fat your body doesn't absorb and look how that ended. Hopefully Grooveshark won't suck, but we'll have to wait and see. I signed up for the beta so we'll be sure to keep you posted.

[found via Torrentfreak]