Mercora a P2P radio station has secured US$ 5 million in series B from Norwest Venture Partners.

"People can use a number of sites to exchange music freely through Internet file-swapping. However, Mercora says it is one of the first to do it legally by following the rules of a peer-to-peer radio broadcaster.

Its software lets people listen to songs off other people's computers. Like on other networks, users search by artist name or song title, and results will tell you where to go to hear it. But Internet radio broadcasting rules require that you can't download a copy to your computer's hard drive, or burn it to a CD. Also, you won't be able to hear more than three songs from the same artist in a three-hour period from the same source."

Mercora has been relabelling itself as a radio station in the recent past. I had written a longer review here in October 2003.