zookz

A couple of weeks ago, my favorite free music-streaming site, Grooveshark, began rolling out version 2.0. It's currently available to paying VIP customers only, but I managed to finagle a pass and can report that it's a solid upgrade, although nothing groundbreaking.

Grooveshark's selection of free songs compares favorably with big commercial download stores like iTunes and Amazon MP3, and the improvements in version 2.0 are mostly geared toward helping you sift through search results more efficiently. For instance, now you can organize results alphabetically by song, artist, or album, and with one click you … Read more

That didn't take long. Friday evening I blogged that the government of Antigua had issued a terse press release claiming that it had nothing to do with unlimited-download site Zookz. The Zookz legal team responded with an equally terse note saying that it didn't need the government's approval, and that its service was perfectly legal under its interpretation of a recent World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling.

It looks like the authorities won this round. This afternoon, Zookz disappeared from the Web. According to a statement by the company's director of communications, the site is "temporarily … Read more

Another reminder about music sites that sound too good to be true arrived in my in-box Friday.

Earlier this month, I blogged about Zookz, a new site currently in beta testing that allows users to download an unlimited number of MP3 audio files or MP4 video files for a single monthly fee ($9.95 for audio or video only; $17.95 for both). This seems to be an amazing deal compared with similar services--eMusic, for instance, offers a limited number of downloads for a monthly fee, and all-you-can-eat subscription services like the Zune Marketplace disable some portion of your … Read more