I’d heard of services like grooveshark, spotify & pandora before and i did go through a last.fm phase which didn’t last long but yesterday something led me to grooveshark, i started using it and fell in love with it…
What is Grooveshark?
It’s a free online music streaming service. About the only decent one open to Irish users. You can play pretty much any song you want, create queues, playlists and favourites and listen to full length songs, no strings attached. Well, almost no strings attached. Every 30 minutes you’re forced to listen to an advertisement but to be honest i don’t mind that… i’m used to watching TV ads and listening to ads on radio, so if i’m guaranteed a quality service, i can live with ads.
Grooveshark make their money by selling those ads but also by allowing members to remove them, for a small fee. $6 per month. Or $9 per month if you want a mobile version too. Up until yesterday, i used youtube to make playlists & queue up songs, then i’d play them in the background but nowadays most popular youtube videos have ads on them, plus youtube consumes more bandwidth than grooveshark because you don’t have an option to turn off video (which i think you should, i think youtube should allow you to play just audio or start their own music streaming service).
Anyway, it’s quick and easy to use and i like the way you can play a song, then sign up and run through multiple pages without the song stopping due to a page refresh. With youtube, if you play a video then try to favourite it mid way through the video, you’re asked to login which involves refreshing the page so the video starts playing from the start again. Stuff like that drives me nuts.
With grooveshark, i don’t have many complaints. Everything just works and it’s fairly simple to use.
Legal?
Grooveshark is totally legal, for now. Unlike napster or limewire or torrents, users don’t download anything so therefore they can’t be sued or banned by ISPs. It’s safer for us, the users. I wouldn’t be surprised at all though if Grooveshark find themselves in hot water with certain labels once it gets mainstream and becomes a household name. For now however, enjoy the service…
Why play music in the cloud?
Why don’t i buy CD’s? Why don’t i download music through itunes or illegally? Because it’s either too much hassle or expense. I don’t like either. Downloading stuff just takes up space and means i have to organise my files and folders. It’s easier to use a service like grooveshark to play music because it organises everything for me and even gives me a list of the most popular songs at the minute, so i don’t even have to search for music if i’m feeling that lazy.
Anything i can outsource for free sounds good to me and that’s what grooveshark does. It’s a free itunes in the cloud. All you need is a decent, guaranteed broadband connection otherwise all you’ll hear is silence.