If you’re looking for a music service that allows you to discover and stream unlimited amounts of music, upload your own tunes, and allows sharing via the popular social networks, you might want to check out Grooveshark. Today we give you an overview of the the service and what it has to offer. Grooveshark When you first go to Grooveshark you’re presented with an easy to use interface and can immediately begin searching for music, upload your own, create playlists, change themes and more. When you start using Grooveshark, it will popup various balloon tips to help use the service. You can select to not have them shown if they annoy you.
Without creating an account you can browse through different bands and artists and play the music. However, with out an account you won’t be able to upload your own music and access other cool features.
Play Lists The player works like you would expect a music player to. After creating an account you can create playlists and store your favorite tracks.
After searching for the music you want, click the plus icon next to the track and add it to your queue.
Then from your queue list you can drag and drop songs to your playlist.
Or you can save the entire queue to a playlist by either creating a new one or writing over and existing one.
From the songs in your queue you can email a link to your friends to share it with them. There is also an option to use the major social networks like Facebook and Twitter too.
Uploading Songs After signing up for the free account you can upload your music and take advantage of other features. This feature is cool because you can access your music wherever there’s an Internet connection. To upload your music you’ll need to have Java installed and then start through the uploading process. First you need to select the music you want to upload.
After you’ve selected the songs you want to upload, Grooveshark will scan the music for information.
When the scan is complete you can go through and double check the accuracy.
If everything looks correct the uploading process will begin.
After the upload process you’re shown a confirmation screen and a message about it might take up to 24 hours for the songs to appear.
Free Account With the free account you will be shown ads while using the service. Or you can become a VIP member for $3/month to remove them.
You also get a lot more as a Grooveshark VIP including access to new features, more music, direct support, custom themes, and more.
Other Features There are some other cool features like the Grooveshark Radio that works similar to Pandora. You can give a song a smiley or frown as it continues to pull up songs related to what you like.
You can choose from different themes for the page as well. VIP members get a choice of a lot more though.
If you find a song you really like, they offer a choice where you can purchase it from Amazon or iTunes.
If you are a musician and want to promote your band, they have a section for that where you pay a certain amount for so many plays. With this you also get a full dashboard with analytics, music catalogue and more.
There is also a simple Google Chrome extension you can get that add simple playback controls for it.
Conclusion In my tests this seems like a cool service, though the song selection was a bit limited based on my tastes. The songs play right away, and there's no loading time which is cool. There are also plenty of social features built into Grooveshark as well if you’re looking for that. If you can handle the ads shown on the side, this is a very cool and free solution for finding new music and sharing it online. For $3/month or $30 for a full year, they eliminate the ads and offer other perks as well. As Grooveshark continues to evolve it could turn into the “go to” music sharing and streaming service for music enthusiasts. In the near future we will take a detailed look at the VIP service and the benefits it has to offer. Have fun and let us know what you think of the service by leaving a comment below. Grooveshark Main SiteGrooveshark Google Chrome Extension
