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