Let’s be clear on this, I love Grooveshark. I have professed my love several times on this blog, and I’ve championed it to the extent that quite a few people have signed up and paid for the yearly membership [SORRY]. The promise of Grooveshark was to give me easy access to the music I love, anytime, anywhere. This has been broken lately.
Duplicates of songs and albums, incomplete listings and ID3 information. I noticed these blemishes long ago, but hey, no one’s perfect, and the relationship had way more ups than downs; platform independence, access anywhere, and a shared collection of music. Its ease of use was unparalleled, and it wasn’t that much of a stretch to cobble an album or playlist together.
Grooveshark has always skirted a legal grey area, but as of late, their legal woes have caught up with them. All four major record labels are suing them, and its outright blocked in Germany, last I heard. I haven’t bothered reading up on whatever other troubles they’re in.
And then songs started disappearing.
I’d open up a playlist, and track 4 would be missing. No bother, I’ll go search for the song. Oh, the song doesn’t exist anywhere on Grooveshark. That took it from inconvenience to annoyance.
Last week, I opened Grooveshark, eager to play Destroyer’s Kaputt [amazing album, by the way!]. It was gone. All of it.
Coincidentally, I was trying out the Rdio Android app, and thought since I’ve got the 7 day unlimited trial, I’ll open up the website.
I searched for “kaputt”, and was shocked to see just one album listing, and a complete one at that. Yes, this simple given for any of you came as a pleasant surprise to me.
I played the album in its entirety, at 320kbps, with the blessing of the record company. Amazing! Is this how an affair feels? Ok, I really shouldn’t have attempted to weave this analogy through the post…
To Grooveshark (aka soundtrack madness) is my greatest creation on Grooveshark. A 1141 song franken-playlist of musicals and soundtracks. I won’t be able to recreate this on Rdio. Then again, most of the OSTs that I do listen to on there on a regular basis are on Rdio.
See where my mind is at, and how I’m justifying the breakup in every paragraph? Yeh, I think I’ve just about left.
c0up 
Why complain? They need to take out songs if a copyright holder complains.
If more and more of the songs I like are being removed because of the legal grey area they live in, AND there are similar services that don’t tread in that grey area, but provide a superior service, why wouldn’t I complain?!More importantly, complaining is what the Internet is all about.
Good post. I still find myself using it from time to time, usually for random one-offs, or sudden flashes of stuff I used to listen to when I was younger and haven’t heard in awhile. And it’s still pretty good for discovery.The 320kbps issue is a big one though, as is having to coddle together albums from a barrage of search results. And yeah, randomly missing songs – even if it’s like ‘Fitter Happier’ from OK Computer or something (not really a song) – it’s still part of the album that feels missing and like you’re not getting the full experience.
Cheers, Timbaland. Having gone on that lengthy rant, I’ve still gone crawling bsck to it since rdio has some holes in it from a content perspective in Australia -_- At least Destroyer’s ‘Kaputt’ is back…Still no one perfect way. Sigh.
They used to have a lot of Disney stuff from the older movies and kid songs but the last few months I can hardly find anything. Why did the Disney songs vanish? It’s not like they are ripping stuff from modern Movies that would hurt industries. This is older stuff like Snow White or Beauty And The Beast music I am after.
@Kyle: They’re getting owned by every record label and those labels are probably putting through bulk requests to remove a heap of stuff. Movie soundtracks are definitely suffering as a result; old and new.
Thank you for this post. I have been having some serious Grooveshark Issues as of recently when they introduce this new design.I favorite a song, ten minutes later or so, I close the browser tab only to have the songs disappear when I return. Easy Bug to Replicate, all you do is enjoy your music, and watch your songs disappear when you return.This is clearly not a copyright issue because I can find the exact copy of the song I previously favorited. I tried spotify once and hated it, but retaining my songs is by far the most important thing for me in a music streaming service. As a long time premuim grooveshark member it pains me to say that I they are seriously dropping the ball.
I understand that songs may become inaccessible. My frustration is that the playlist loses the information regarding what artist and title I added or favorited. I wish the information remained even if the link to the song was broken.
I understand that songs may become inaccessible. My frustration is that the playlist loses the information regarding what artist and title I added or favorited. I wish the information remained even if the link to the song was broken.
I have a similar issue. I keep my songs not in my music but in a playlist (i think its because a 500 song limit or something like that that is not applicable to a playlist), I keep adding songs every now and then but lately I’ve noticing that the counter keeps going down dispite the fact that I keep adding songs. the latest songs added are still there so I don’t know what song I’m now missing and I hate that, whish there was some type of notification of a song being removed or something.
@BMT, francisco: I switched to Rdio a month ago and have never been happier! It’s such a great feeling to listen to whole albums without worrying about sorting songs or duplicates, and never losing songs from your playlists.Their Android app is a lot better too.
i can understand songs being taken down, and grooveshark has grown recently giving a huge selection, but my only problem is when a specific song on my playlist is taken down and i cant find which one. I just want a notification when a song (from my playlist) gets removed. usually i can replace it when i can find which one it is.
I found a possible solution! but don’t just go and do your happy dancing just yet, the solution is not perfect, you’ll see.
Alright… I love gs.. I don’t feel like going anyway as I’m bcasting now 24h (as long as the browser doesn’t crash).. so I’ve been dealing with this announce for some time now and I’ve been looking for some alternatives to maintain some consistency even if songs get deleted from my beloved playlist which have taken months to build up.. finally today.. a less than ideal solution I was stumbled upon:
http://groovebackup.com/
this site was implemented to backup your playlist and your music currently on you grooveshark collections, (I guess the site is now new and might have been there for some time but I just found out about it, so please don’t judge) this has now at least giving me the chance to attempt to figure out what song was taken down so I can then find a replacement. before it was impossible unless you know exactly what you were looking for and you’d see it as missing.
I know it’s less than ideal, you still have to do the leg work of comparing and old backed up playlist with a newly backup generated with groovebackup.com but at least you have now something you can compare. and with a little bit of know how and excel.. it shouldn’t take too long before you can easily spot the differences: your missing songs!
I thought I’d share this as I know there are some of us out there looking to maintain our playlist of songs at all cost in grooveshark…
I had over 1000 songs in my 2 playlists I mess around in grooveshark with so I was not ready to start creating these same playlist on another online music platform.
cheers