Grooveshark

Part streaming music service, part peer-to-peer network, Grooveshark is one of the most unique music sites on the Web. Grooveshark lets its users upload MP3 files and stream them to others, engage in social networking, and receive music recommendations. It has big aspirations, but in the end it feels like a mish-mash of good ideas that have yet to gel.

Interface and Navigation
Grooveshark's interface, like Spotify's, resembles a music player?Windows Media Player, specifically. It features an interface with dark tinges, a main content area, a playback area, and a sidebar that lists your upload music, playlists, and stations. It isn't as attractive as Slacker (Free, 4.5 stars) or Spotify (Free, 4 stars)'s (in fact, it looks a hair amateurish), but it's easy to navigate. When you first visit Grooveshark, the service presents you a small diagram that points out the various area of note within the interface, such as the community icon that lets you see what other Grooveshark users are listening to. You can follow other users as you would on Twitter or other social networks, and even stream music from their uploaded music libraries.

Advertisements are sprinkled across the interface, but you can remove them by shelling out $6 per month for Grooveshark Plus, or $9 per month for Grooveshark Anywhere, which not only strips out ads, but also lets you play back tunes on Android, BlackBerry, Nokia, WebOS, and jailbroken iPhones (due to a dispute with Universal, the app was yanked from the iTunes App Store). Both subscriptions give users exclusive access to the Adobe Air-powered Grooveshark desktop application, Video Mode (which lets you watch YouTube videos for songs in your queue), Visualizers (a visual experience powered by your music), Power Hour Mode (which automatically skips from song to song very 60 seconds), crossfade between songs, share songs via social networks, and premium skins (there are also free ones that you can use).

The Grooveshark Experience
Logging into Grooveshark either with a Grooveshark, Facebook, or Gmail account is a good way to begin the Grooveshark experience as that lets you favorite songs for playback at a later time playlists. The biggest benefit is that you can upload music from your hard drive to the cloud, so you can stream your favorite audio tracks from any Web-connected computer. Uploading tracks to Grooveshark was far more limited than I had anticipated. It didn't automatically upload my audio files (which Spotify did with aplomb), and I couldn't upload any iTunes (Free, 4 stars) tracks?a potentially large downer for those with large libraries purchased from Apple's music store. Amazon MP3 purchased tunes, however, went into the cloud without a hitch. The uploaded tunes lived in the "My Music" section along with songs I'd flagged as favorites.

Naturally, you can search for songs, musicians, or album by keying a query into the search field. Results are returned on the fly as you type, so I only had to key in "The Dir" to see a listing for one of my favorite live acts, The Dirtbombs. Selecting the band sent me to a page that featured dozens of the band's songs pulled from several albums. Unfortunately, due to Grooveshark's peer-to-peer nature, duplicate song entries appear in the search results?a problem Slacker, Spotify, and other services do not suffer. Highlighting a track revealed additional options to Favorite it, add it to a playlist, purchase it from either Amazon MP3 or iTunes, and open a page that lets you buy band-related t-shirts and other merchandise.

To the right of the song title is a button that, when clicked, lets you add a song to the "Now Playing" strip at interface's bottom. Mousing over a song gives you the same aforementioned options, plus the ability to either play or delete the track. Clicking a track opened a dedicated page for that particular song that listed all the people who fanned it on Facebook or left comments.

But that's ancillary to Grooveshark's more tantalizing features. Unlike the Editors' Choice award-winning Slacker, Grooveshark lets you rewind tracks?Slacker lets you either completely skip to the next song or reserve to the previously song. This is huge plus for guys like me who like to analyze guitar riffs and breakbeats by playing them over and over again. You also have the option to loop an individual song, or the entire lineup in the Now Playing section?very nice.

Audio Quality and Music Recommendations
Grooveshark's audio is on a par with Slacker's, as it features crisp, hiccup-free audio with a solid bottom end on both the desktop and mobile app. Grooveshark contains a very solid recommendation based on the songs in your playlists. Unlike Slacker, Grooveshark's music analyzer is turned off by default, and it's not easily spotted. It's unintuitively named "Radio" and is found in the far-right portion of the Now Playing strip. The implementation isn't as seamless as Slacker's, but it did serve up songs by The Gories when I loaded my The Dirtbombs playlist (rocker Mick Collins fronted both bands), so I was happy. As with other recommendation-based streaming music sites, you can vote songs up or down to customize the experience, but the service lacks lyrics.

Should You Tune Into Grooveshark?
Grooveshark does a lot right in terms of social networking, audio quality, and song rewinding, but sprinkles those positives with an equal amount of quibbles that tarnish the experience. Slacker still reigns as our Editors' Choice stream music service pick for its slick interface, lyrics implementation, and non-brainer music-discovery features, but Grooveshark is a solid streaming music service that those looking for a different music listening experience.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/gIETVAXFj58/0,2817,2389158,00.asp

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