Spoiler alert: It doesn’t go so well for the musician.

It started when I tried searching for songs I’ve cowritten. Amazingly, I found almost every song I’ve ever released – even songs in Swedish. Now, to clarify, Grooveshark does not have a licence to feature any of these songs, and they don’t pay me anything. It’s essentially a filesharing site, with users uploading music libraries to be streamed by other users. Much like YouTube, Grooveshark says its service is legal as they have a DMCA takedown procedure in place.

via Behind the music: Why won’t Grooveshark remove my music? | Music | guardian.co.uk.

Judging from internal emails, Grooveshark opted for forgiveness. In a April 27, 2010 email to Sina Simantob, a Escape Media Group director, Andrew B. Lipsher, then a partner at private equity firm Greycroft Partners, explained that he understands "the ask forgiveness and not permission strategy. It is a hard one to swallow as an investor knowing what I know, but the labels have been so horrible and naïve that I think it is the only one that makes sense."

via Internal Emails in Grooveshark/Universal Case Show Grooveshark Opted to Post First, Ask for Permission Later | Billboard.biz.

Ultimately, we’ve all been stuck in some collaborative hallucination believing ad-supported music can work. It’s yet another indictment of the ad-supported model — the one Last.fm and Pandora have found problematic. Many have tried, yet nobody has really managed to make it work, because advertising isn’t enough to pay licensing fees across millions and millions of on-demand tracks.

via Spotify Shift Signals the End for Ad-Supported Music: Tech News and Analysis «.

“Criminal activity online is everyday eroding the work of America’s economy and workforce,” said NMPA President and CEO David Israelite. “Songwriters and music publishers stand with the millions of Americans whose work depends on our nation’s founding principle of intellectual property rights to support efforts to address this illegal activity.

via Mi2N.com – Music Publishers Support Congressional Call For Enforcement Tools To Combat Digital Theft.

Grooveshark is gone from the Android Market. The popular music streaming service was removed from the Market yesterday because it violates Google’s terms of service. The exact terms were not revealed, but CNET notes that Grooveshark’s ongoing dispute with record companies over music streaming – and Google lawyer Kent Walker testifying before the U.S. House Judiciary committee on copyright violations – may have had something to do with Grooveshark’s removal.

via Androinica » Grooveshark gets ganked from Google Android Market. Should Amazon Cloud be nervous?.

So here’s my question: Does this even matter? Since the Android Marketplace is not the only place you can get apps for an Android device, this may make little or no difference in the long term. In fact, from my experience so far, the Amazon App Store is a superior experience to the Google Android Marketplace.  Obviously Amazon can sell / give away their cloud player app through their own marketplace, right?

Either way, what happens to Grooveshark is of little bother to me. They’ve been notorious for breaking copyright – as I explained in my book, Starving the Artist.

It appears that the major music labels are upset with Amazon for not securing licenses for their cloud music player system. I honestly don’t really understand what the issue is here – it’s really no different from having a portable hard drive you take with you everywhere you go, is it?

Amazon argues that Cloud Drive and Cloud Player are just services that let users upload and play back their own music, just like “any number of existing media management applications.” After all, licenses shouldn’t be necessary for users to play their own music, right? The labels seem to disagree — they expressed shock following Amazon’s announcement, with a Sony Music representative implying that the company was looking into legal options.

via Music Industry Will Force Licenses on Amazon Cloud Player — or Else | Epicenter | Wired.com.

And by the way, if you’re looking for a cheaper solution that so far isn’t under any scrutiny I’m aware of, check out Winamp Orb. Basically it allows you to make your music collection on your home computer available for you to access anywhere. I’m assuming it is a bit more complicated for casual users than Amazon’s cloud is though.

As digital services like Pandora and satellite radio increase in popularity, the payouts are getting bigger. In 2010 the average payment for artists increased 80% to $2,800 last year. The average payment to rights holders rose 39% to over $14,000.

via SoundExchange Paid Out $252 Million In 2010 | Billboard.biz.

Throughout the year though, there were also a lot of great new releases. In particular, albums like Sleigh Bells’ Treats, Yeasayer’s Odd Blood and Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach pushed music forward another couple of steps and were quite impressive.

For me, this year, however, really was the year of T. Bone Burnett. His production was all over some of the year’s best music, including Ryan Bingham’s (of “The Weary Kind” fame) Junky Star, the revival-of-the-genius-everyone-forgot-about duet album The Union from Elton John and Leon Russell, the first record on his own label from the this-is-real-country-music duo of The Secret Sisters and, my personal favorite album of 2010 – Jakob Dylan’s Women and Country.

Back in the 1990s I had been a moderate fan of Jakob Dylan’s band, The Wallflowers, having picked up their first two albums. They were decent, but really hadn’t been anything remarkable (which is probably why they no longer exist).  I’d heard a few years back that Dylan was putting together a solo album, so I took a listen and promptly forgot about it. So, when Women and Country came out this year I really didn’t pay much attention – until I saw that T. Bone Burnett was producing – then my interest was piqued.

So, I gave it a listen and fell in love. With the sparse arrangements, Dylan’s songwriting and singing really get to be showcased here and the influences from his father are beginning to show through. This, along with some great backing vocals from Neko Case, pushed this album to the top of my stack time after time, and every few weeks I’d have a new favorite song from it.

I’d shelved the disc finally a few months ago after I kind of overdosed, but brought it back out the other day and fell right back in love.  If, like me, you’d written Jakob Dylan off years ago, or if you just skipped over this release, do go back and give it a listen or two.  You’re probably not going to find it on many (or any) major “Best of 2010″ lists this year, but if I were still running Music-Critic.com it would have been our #1 pick for 2010.

Or, if you do want to go the personal route, go ahead with the mixtape idea, but be sure to buy each song from iTunes or another legal source like Amazon MP3 and use those when you burn the tracklist. While you’re doing this, be sure to buy as many copies as you are planning on burning.

Basically, this Christmas, if you want to share the gift of music with someone, remember that musicians need to be able to get gifts for their loved ones as well. Please support them by purchasing their music legally during your holiday shopping.

It may not be the cheapest route, but its definitely the most thoughtful one.

What do you think? Should the music industry forgive and forget, instead taking this opportunity to try to monetize the immense userbase of Limewire users?  Is it even possible to convert them to paying customers?  Or are Limewire users just going to move on to another service?  Seeing as how it takes years for the music industry to stop a service like Limewire, maybe another can hop in for a bit (maybe dupe a few users) and make a couple million $. Or, perhaps due to the precedence set by this case the next one will fall all that much faster.

It will definitely be interesting from here on out.