I’ve been raving about Grooveshark to anyone that cares to listen, and I finally took the plunge today to become a VIP member. At $3/month or $30 a year, it’s just dirt cheap, especially considering my penchant for blowing large amounts of money on seemingly useless things/causes, like destroying my liver!
Oh, right, I should probably mention what Grooveshark is for the uneducated. Or just let Wikipedia do that for me.
Grooveshark is an internationally-available online music search engine, music streaming service and music recommendation web software application, allowing users to search for, stream, and upload music free of charge that can be played immediately or added to a playlist.
What that actually means is:
- A gazillion songs. On demand. For me me me! And I’m not just talking album versions either. Plenty of funky live versions to be heard
- Playlists that I can create and access on any computer
- It’s free! Ad-supported, but free
I’ve been using the free service for months now, but as mentioned above, I thought, what the heck, I’ll pay the miniscule amount and support these crazy kids. Now that I have signed up, I get:
- No more pesky ads in that right hand column
- An Adobe AIR app
- A mobile app [all major platforms supported, inc. my Android] that is still a little buggy, but nicely synced with the site, great interface and a nifty “listen offline” feature [i.e. d/l songs to phone]
To me, services like Grooveshark and Spotify are pretty much the future of online music. It just makes sense to pay a subscription fee to access an entire catalogue of music across record labels, rather than buying individual songs / albums. I guess the big on-going issue with services like this are the legal issues surrounding the sourcing of all the music, and cooperation from the record companies. EMI filed a lawsuit against Grooveshark last year, but ended up dropping the lawsuit and licensed it instead.
Let’s hope that these issues get sorted, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next!
UPDATE:
“Part II / Six months later” of my Grooveshark journey is now up at Grooveshark, six months on. Mobile stability, community, scrobbling and search modifiers.
c0up 
Do you access it at work? I was disappointed to find that the dop filter blocked it when I arrived. I usually try my hardest to not pay for anything online but your comments have given me pause for thought.
I’ve been using the site for months now at work, and yep, just tried the Adobe Air desktop app and it’s working too.Oh, believe me, I’m pretty hesitant when it comes to paying for anything online too, but as I said, it is a relatively minuscule amount, and I can somewhat claim to be supporting the music industry now.Also, using the mobile app, it still is a bit buggy, so it depends what you want to primarily get it for. Also, those damn teeth ads were getting really annoying >.<
Awesome, you’re right – it’s working for me now. On a related note: how good is 2010 so far for new records?! New Massive Attack, Gorillaz and Joanna Newsom; upcoming: The National, Booka Shade. There are more but I keep forgetting. Huzzah!
I have been pretty lazy with my music discovery for this year. All I’m looking forward to is MGMT’s new album. Share your Grooveshark playlist!
I didn’t know about that one – *swiftly added to list*In the absence of actually having a Grooveshark playlist I just quickly searched for and created a version of my fave tracks playlist on iTunes:http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Songs+I+like/26350013Enjoy!
whoops, bad link:http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Songs+I+like/26350013
Cheers. Here’s my oh so random one http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/A+fresh+start/19186938
will have to check it out! I’ve been using a lot of other online music services such as spotify, lala, etc….. $3 a month is digestible. i just dont know about paying for music…
Yeh, and the mobile app is still a bit buggy. You’d be fine just using the free, ad-supported version for now, unless you’d use the mobile app a lot.
Late comer but – you’ll be glad to know when googling for ‘grooveshark playlist share’, this blog post is a page 1 result
:O /cheer Although I can’t seem to replicate these same results >.<
google’s formula is dynamic and always changes….but yes, i did see it there =p
can someone say the actual advantages of grooveshark for the iphone. would i need constant wifi or 3G connection to work because the main reason i’d use it would for the underground trains
The iPhone and Android version both have a "Listen Offline" feature, which pretty much allows you to download songs onto your phone. They’re saved as a weird .dat format though, so you can’t just transfer and play them on your pc or whatever; I tried renaming the files to .mp3, but nada.
I Thank you all,Grooveshark,very-much~You are So-reliable,and Very,Kind;Thanx!!!
You’re…welcome?!
this did not help at All!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!suck it bitches:)