Music sharing and sales startup Grooveshark has launched Grooveshark Lite, a flash app that provides access to all the songs in Grooveshark’s library.
For those unfamiliar with the company, Grooveshark allows users to upload and share their music collection with friends, but with a twist: every song uploaded can be purchased DRM-free with the uploader getting a cut of each sale (the rest goes to the record companies, and the service is 100% legal).
The new Grooveshark Lite player is not dissimilar to what Last.fm offers, but without the silly restrictions like being able only play the single five times. It also helps that Grooveshark has a huge selection of music; I don’t have comparable numbers but Grooveshark returned better results on a couple of more obscure searches, where as Last.fm failed or only had 30 seconds of the song. Unlike Seeqpod, another service that allows you to search for and play music uninhibited (and until now my music service of choice), the music on Grooveshark is of a more reliable quality as it’s vetted for sale, although unlike Seeqpod you cant illegally download the track, if that’s how you like getting your music.
The player offers music by artist, album and song title, and is free to use and doesn’t require registration, although registration is required to use Grooveshark services such as playlists and sharing.
Their UI reminds me of old SmallTalk ClassBrowser from Xerox Alto. Good times.
I actually never heard of Grooveshark until just now but I just checked them out and they have a pretty cool concept. I like how they list they’re whole company on their about us too haha. Keep up the good stuff!
Peter Epstein
http://www.thewebwar.com
COOL
So if it’s 100% legal why bother with the p2p aspect, why not just host all the music on central servers like imeem.com does, then you don’t have to worry about the track you want being on the hard disk of some user who isn’t online right now. imeem abandonded its p2p component a couple of years ago.
Actually, isn’t imeem now the official game to beat, according to Dave Porter’s blog (http://davidpor....wordpress.com/) they’re now more than twice the size of the next biggest site in the web2.0 music game.
so, how the heck is this legal?
Grooveshark’s reality distortion field dwarfs even Apple’s. There is no way on earth that the service is legal; by their own admission they had only signed up a few indy labels at the time of their P2P “Sharkbyte” client launch and promised to hold in escrow the royalties for any unlicensed tracks that were copied.
Anyone who bothered to decompile the [Java] client would see that 1. there is no kind of fingerprinting technology (despite many a promise to add it before the client left beta) and 2. some GPL code has been borrowed.
UFlorida tutors take note, there may be some late assignments when GS dedicate today to flaming/trolling/fanboying this thread.
Is it just me or it doesnt work from outside the US?
Like everything works just fine until I try to play a song (the counter is stuck at 0:00, same with the duration).
At first glance, the ui looks pretty cool but if i have to keep tryin til i can hear some sound, there’s no way i come back on that site.
@Henry Crun, Really? You bothered to decompile and examine their code? Sounds like more than a passing interest to me. What’s your real problem here? I’ll take your word for it buddy ’cause I don’t really care.
You do, for some undisclosed reason.
@Keyser Soze: Same here.
@Frank
jar xf myfile.jar
jad -o -r -sjava -dsrc tree/**/*.class
Not difficult or very geeky. How else were AACS keys found and drivers reverse-engineered for Linux ports?
@Liar,Keyser
I got songs from the “popular” list to play fine in the Netherlands.
henry, i do wish you’d do stop flaming the poor students. they try their best,
The popular list seems to work, but nothing else.. strange…
@jojo,Henry,liar
Indeed, it has nothing to do with where you’re accessing the site from. I tried with Tor proxies, same result: only “popular” songs will play.
Maybe one needs to register in order to get any song.
Anyone else with the same pb?
How is this legal?
@10, interesting.
All tracks wfm. Even stuff that will be nowhere near the popular list.
Great, seems to be fixed now.
Gonna check this out. Just signed up for Last.fm yesterday. It took me about a day to realize its shortcomings, seems like this service fills the gap.
Cool application built with Adobe Flex.
http://flex.org/
Mike Potter
Adobe Flex Product Marketing Team
It’s an interesting concept but I highly question the “100% legal” assessment. That requires a real understanding of how the music is accounted for, requisitioned and distributed. I can’t see how that can be determined without knowing how they operate internally and with the copyright holders at large.
Doesn’t Grooveshark’s premise to “share music collection with friends” sound like every other one these days?
Creating the ultimate playlist is great, but everybody has their own unique tastes. As Chris Anderson alluded to in The Long Tail, everybody’s taste departs from the “mainstream” at some point. Understanding that, let’s keep it simple: how can I best discover MY favorite music? I think I have the solution..
Hey guys–thanks for the comments. I work here at Grooveshark, and hopefully I’ll be able to clear up some of the questions here.
@Henry Crun: You’re right, we do hold payment in escrow for transactions of unlicensed content. We don’t touch it; it waits happily for its owner to come claim it. As for “fingerprinting” in Sharkbyte, it’s unnecessary! Track information must be pulled anyway during a transaction, so all meta-identification occurs server-side. None of it currently takes place in the client itself, except for basic methods of identifying new content against existing content already in the system.
@Adam Wexler: We definitely don’t claim to hold patent on sharing music with friends. We just believe that people go on the internet to communicate, to share, and to collaborate–especially when it comes to their passions. You’re right that everyone has an individual taste in music and that the long tail applies to most everyone, which is the *exact* reason Grooveshark is based on P2P technology. Pulling those unique tracks and tastes from a large group of people and making them easily available to everyone else is what we’re all about, and we’re constantly working on new ways to help you find what you might not know is out there.
@legality: We have licensing agreements with hundreds of labels–larger and smaller–and one of our biggest priorities is working with as many more as possible. Aside from our existing streaming deals with ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI, there are always discussions with labels both large and small, and there’s nothing we want to convey more to them than the fact that we *want* to get them paid. And we just sent out our first round of royalty checks not too long ago
We’re working as hard as possible to keep everything fast, fun, and stable. The TechCrunch Effect is not to be underestimated! Thanks to all you guys, please bear with us while we try to be awesome for you.
-Ben
Ben – great to hear from you. Web 2.0/3.0 is all about personalization/exploration/recommendation so I will never turn my back to any of these new discovery mediums. My biggest question remains, how do I filter all of the results that are out there?
In my opinion, Pandora is the most useful tool we have at the moment, but that doesn’t mean others can’t help as well. I wish you guys the best of luck moving forward.
Aside from our existing streaming deals with ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI
How many of your ‘most popular’ tracks in the Lite player are owned by these three? And how does the full-track on-demand streaming of all that content available in the player get accounted for in the royalties? I understand how someone buying a track for $0.99 = a royalty – but the streaming?
It’s been 8 months, and Grooveshark has grown to well over 200,000 users.
Grooveshark is an amazing music player. I was so shocked when I saw that they had music from my favorite cartoon shows so long ago.
Grooveshark is awesome and HIGHLY superior to any other service of its kind…
Sorry – but this site is NOT legal at all in any way. Holding money in escrow is not the same thing as having the right to sell or even stream that music.
Imagine for a second that you’re an artist and you write and perform a song. And you don’t want it sold or streamed in any way. You want to sell CDs. That’s it. This is America, and you have the right to do that.
This hack web site seems to think they can sell your music regardless of your wishes. They take money from suckers, and say that the only way to get it, is to sign a deal with them. Well forget that. THEY don’t own the music. They have no right to hold any escrow on it. Any lawyer anywhere will tell you this site is SOOO illegal it’s hilarious. If you download from it, YOU absolutely may be sued as well. Fair warning.