In an interesting turn, one of the most successful (relatively speaking) self-made, unsigned artists, Birdmonster signs a record label deal with Fader, as in the magazine turned A&R.

Chris Anderson of The Long Tail fame has a great interview with him in which he asks a number of interesting questions, especially considering on his last interview, Birdmonster was so unabashedly unsigned and loving it:
Q: Last time around, you had plenty of interest from indies and majors, but ultimately decided to self-release. Why did a label seem more desirable this time around? …

Things are really starting to pickup in 2008, and in our label relations department, we have a LOT of work to do. There are approximately 3,000 record labels in the world, and Grooveshark wants to license all of them!
Of these 3,000 labels, there are hundreds of thousands of un-signed artists which we are also looking to bring onto the Grooveshark team.

To make things a little easier on our end, Grooveshark has developed an automated label/un-signed artist signup process, which spells out:

The terms of the relationship in the licensing agreement
A …

Grooveshark is developing new packages for all of their label partners, and our wonderful designer John has come up with a couple of mockups.
This card (front/back) is meant to illustrate our team, and how we’re offering a completely radical, different product for consumers and record-labels alike.
The front side shows our team, how we are young, fun, whatever, and also has a brief rundown of our features:

The back side has a comparison chart, yet to be completed, contrasting us with our competitors:

For more great pics, be sure to check out the …

We’re constantly working on ways to promote our licensed labels and artists, and one of our biggest promotional pieces is our blog.
So in that fashion, we’re going to work on regular schedules of staff and fan favorites. Right now we’re not positive on the schedule of how we’re doing things, but we’ve got the idea, so we’re going to run with it.
Because listening to the songs we’re talking about is really an essential feature, we’re also testing streaming outside of our closed Beta community.
Here is Heartbeats by The Knife:
[audio:http://www.ogburn.net/amanda/Amanda/Knife/The%20Knife%20-%20Heartbeats.mp3]
Update: …