Mercora and Grokster Enable Free & Legal Internet Broadcasting

In another creative and potentially revolutionary way that the internet enables music discovery, start-up Mercora is offering peer to peer network users a free download that enables users to legally play (rather than download) music from other hard drives on the network.  Mercora tracks these internet broadcasts and pays all applicable royalties.  Yesterday P2P giant Grokster announced a co-branded version of the software.

Here is how the company describes itself on it’s web site,  "Mercora is the largest music radio network in the world! We have combined peer-to-peer and internet streaming technologies to create the ultimate and legal music search and discovery service for you. With Mercora P2P Radio, you can search, find and legally listen to hundreds of genres and thousands of artists in near-CD quality sound."  On a sample morning this week 7555 stations were online utilizing the company’s software. 

While Mercora should excite the music industry by creating an infinite number of opportunities for new music exposure, the idea that anyone with a broadband connection can arrange their music collection broadcast style and stream it to the world easily, legally, and free can not be good news for a broadcast industry already battered by satellite and internet radio.