I have to admit that I have some really, um… peculiar choices in my music. I’d like to think of it as being “open-minded” about music, but really I’m just a sucker for a good beat, a catchy tune, and anything with T-Pain in it. Unfortunately, all that music does to tend to build up, and being the pack-rat that I am, it’s hard for me to let go of something I’ve already downloaded, hence the entire N*Sync discography sitting on my old laptop before it met it’s untimely end. What’s a geek to do when he really has a hankering to listen to some pre-crazy Britney Spears?Naturally, I looked to the web for solutions. I had been a Last.FM user for years, but I never found the “radio” feature particularly useful and since you can’t stream most music at your will, it didn’t particularly fit my needs. I had heard great things about Pandora, but of course, like anything cool it’s not available in Canada.
After all but giving up my search, my discovery of the Web 2.0 last year also led me to discover Grooveshark, and I think I need to search no longer.
Hallelujah.
The best part of Grooveshark is that it just works. You choose a song, and it starts playing instantly. No ads, no interruptions , just the music that you chose, and there’s a seek-bar too. This right away set it apart from a few music streaming services.
The interface of Grooveshark is simple, elegant and clean, and it runs smoothly on both my laptop and netbook. There’s an ever-present iTunes-esque sidebar, which is used to navigate between your Library, Friends (I’ll get to this later), Favorites, and your playlists. The right is where you’ll find oh-so-helpful ads. The bottom bar has the playback controls, the seek-bar, and the Radio toggle, which is Grooveshark’s recommendation engine.
Grooveshark makes recommendations based on what you currently have in your playlist, and for the mist part, it makes fairly good suggestions. But if it does have a filtering system in place – you click a smiley face on a song to tell Grooveshark to recommend more songs like it, or the frowny face to do the opposite.
Once you have found songs you like, you can add them to your library for easier playback later on. You’ll be able to save 5000 songs to your library for the free account, and 50000 if you subscribe.
Grooveshark also has a social networking feature built in. You can search for who has made a song, album or artist their “Favorite” indicated by a pink heart icon, and discover people with similar tastes to you. Once you have made some friends, they too, can be added to your Favorites.
The greatest asset of Grooveshark, though, is the expansive library, all of which was uploaded by users. Everything from live recordings, mainstream hits, cult favorites, and even foreign music can be found on Grooveshark. If you do manage to discover something that is not in the catalog, you can fairly easily upload music of your own.
In addition, you also have the option of sharing a song via Twitter, StumbleUpon, Facebook, or a flash widget; the option to purchase a song through iTunes or Amazon; and the option of downloading a song as a ringtone (US carriers only).
A trivial, but very appreciated feature is the ability to theme your window, though the themes available to free users are fairly limited.
The biggest drawback of Grooveshark is perhaps its uncertain legal status. Currently, out of the big four record companies, Grooveshark only has a licencing deal with EMI, but the fact that it managed to sign a deal with one of the big four does give me hope that the others will follow. But for now, do know that any music you upload is subject to takedown through the DMCA. (Grooveshark’s copyright policies can be found here) Also know that you won’t get arrested for just listening to songs on Grooveshark, so no worries there.
Additionally, Grooveshark offers a subscription service at an fairly inexpensive 3 bucks a month. The VIP feature set includes a mobile app (available for Blackberry and Android, with support for iPhone and Palm Pre coming soon; for Windows Mobile users, there’s a unofficial app here), and desktop app built on Adobe AIR, ads are removed, more themes are available to you, you can save 50000 songs to your library, and you can resize the panes in the web version.
All in all, I would recommend the free level of the service in a heartbeat. The instant playback, the expansive catalog, the clean interface, and the fact that it’s available in Canada is just makes it something of a no-brainer.
As for the VIP service however, as inexpensive as it might be, may not be for everyone. I know of very few people who know, let alone listen to more than 5000 songs, the mobile and desktop apps are nice, but you may not need it since they both require a internet connection anyway, and the desktop interface is nearly identical to the web version (and slightly more sluggish), but it does have a “Genre Radio” feature that let’s you pick a genre and it will populate your playlist with songs from it. But to be frank, I would expect a few more extras as a subscriber. That being said, I did subscribe because I do genuinely like the service, I do not like ads, and I find being able to tailor the window to my small netbook screen very handy. Whether or not that’s worth $3 a month to you is up to you to decide. (My subscription was entirely paid for by me.)
FINAL LINE: I love Grooveshark, and I expect it to be my go-to music app from now on. I would give Grooveshark a 9.5/10.
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