I was informed by e-mail this weekend, and Brainwashed.com's Brain broke the story this morning and it's worth talking about. Apologies for reprinting their news item in full (taken from
here), but Greg Clow seems to invite distribution:
JETGROOVE ALERT
This is a warning about a new website that was lauched earlier this week called Jetgroove.com
The site is an MP3 sales site, something like iTunes, only concentrating mainly in electronic music. They appear to have a catalogue of thousands of titles available from labels big & small. They claim that "all our music content is properly licensed".
However, according to posts that are flying around on many music mailing lists, none of the artists and labels who are listed on the site have ever heard of them before the site launch. And when you try to buy anything on the site, nothing seems to actually be available - every title I selected went into a "Not Yet Available" section in my shopping cart.
Several labels who have contacted Jetgroove.com have received back a form letter which is quoted below. The gist of it is that they launched this site with nothing actually available for download, and somehow intended to get permission to sell releases after the fact. It's a very strange way of doing business, and quite frankly, it reflects badly on all of the artists and labels who are listed on their site.
I strongly ancourage EVERYONE to spread the word about this far and wide. If you are an artist or run a label, check to see if any of your titles are listed, and if so, send them a complaint and request that your titles be removed. If you are just a listener, contact them to complain about their misleading and shady business practices. Hopefully, we can cause them enough grief that they will either change their business model to one that is more upfront and honest, or they will just disappear completely.
- Greg Clow
response letter from Jetgroove:
Dear Sirs and Madams,
My name is Ulukman Mamytov and I am the attorney for jetgroove.com.
I bring you apologies from JetGroove for making you worry about your copyrights infringements and your music repertoire being presented on our website. I want to assure you that jetgroove.com having started a new Online Music Download Service pursues the objective of making your music more wellknown and accessible and ONLY BY LEGAL MEANS.
That means we DO NOT SELL any of your music without obtaining a proper permission (License) from you or other respective rightholders. You can easily check this by trying to purchase any of you music. Everything that you choose to put in your cart will have status: "Not Available For Purchase Yet". It could only be put "ON HOLD". And we do not change that status untill the contract is signed and your permission is granted. In this case all of your music will be given "Allowed for Selling" status and people who have it in their shopping carts will be able to buy it.
The experince of showing your music on our website without distributing aimed to draw your attention to us, with further goal to make contacts with you on friendly terms with a perspective of mutually beneficial partnership. We're glad to inform you that your music is getting popular indeed through our website and we can let you know at any time how many of your tracks were put on hold and which ones.
However, we deeply understand your concerns and would like to assure you, if you find our relationships impossible, we will IMMEDIATELY delete all of your music from our music collection.
Hope you'll find our offer to make your music more popular through us rather reasonable and we can start that mutually beneficial partnership.
Very Truly Yours,
Ulukman Mamytov
Jetgroove LLP
Legal Department
― (Jon L), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 02:28 (twenty-one years ago)
Music Mole, you are not wrong. However.
When you visit the website, it's clear that a lot a work has gone into it's design, there's a remarkable, and I might even say impassioned focus: you don't assemble this kind of site without caring about the music.
However, as one of the artists who's work has been offered up for sale (and believe me, neither I or the label that released it were consulted), the idea of charging for access is shocking.
However again -- Uhm ---
Real Audio files of every twelve inch & non-official CDR you can imagine. Things that aren't out yet, and -- disturbingly -- misattributed albums that probably aren't even real.
easy to make me into a sucker, through sheer force of effort -- yet what is the deal?
― (Jon L), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 02:41 (twenty-one years ago)
the master tapes are still in transit -- but Janne is the only person on the planet who could write those liners. hopefully he's found lodging and food in the meantime, rat sandwiches barely nutrify in the long term.
in any case if any of you ILMers & music journalists want to hear tons of todd edwards and art bears real audio files: at your leisure. I'm just disturbed at the thought of a future where artists are not consulted, or even authenticated, before their works are offered for sale.
http://www.jetgroove.com/release/68517/Koto-Masterpieces-N_A-CD.html
― (Jon L), Tuesday, 12 October 2004 03:54 (twenty-one years ago)
it's being run from tottenham court road, aim, association of indpendent music is well on the case as well as the bpi,
you can't buy music from it, and they didn't consult any of the labels , any enquiries get the email above, so it's illegal and also unlikely to become legal.
― degreg, Tuesday, 12 October 2004 16:50 (twenty-one years ago)