Grooveshark Introduction and Invites
Grooveshark is a new social music website that is currently in closed alpha stage. I was able to get an invitation to the system and would like to write about it here on Ghacks and also give out some invites to Grooveshark to a handful of lucky readers.
Grooveshark works basically the following way. You start an application on your computer and decide which music folders you want to share with the community. This application has to be running in the background so that you can share and listen to the music on the Grooveshark website.
The website is where all the action takes place. You are free to search for songs and albums, add users to your friend list, rate songs, play songs from users that are currently online, create playlists and also download songs from other users. Since Grooveshark is currently in alpha stage not all features have been implemented.
Features like editing song tags and the complete system that will reward users with credits (commissions) for uploading songs to other users have not been fully implemented yet. Contributions such as song identification, verifying ID3 tags, moderating, reviewing and recommending music will be rewarded with higher ranks that result in more exposure to the community and thus receive more download requests.
I can't really say that much about the downloading system because I have no credits at this time. Song playback is working fine though although there is the occasional hiccup during page loading time (the developers are working on this at the moment).
About the invites. I was able to get ten additional invites for Grooveshark. Six of the invites are reserved for the Chinese, Spanish and German sites at Ghacks while four will be given out here. Just reply with a comment and I will randomly select the four lucky ones. Regular readers will be given a higher chance of winning the invites.
I would also like to point out that it would be nice if users who won the invites will invite more users that have commented in this thread. Please add this in the comments if you intent to do that.
Update: Grooveshark is limiting access to users from specific countries. The service is still available for free though if it is still available in your country. It is now no longer necessary to share files to listen to them on the site.
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Hi there,
I would love to check out this website!
And of course I will invite other users :)
The premise sounds a lot like last.fm. Aside from having its own application for streaming music rather than requiring the user to have a player that supports WMV, though, I don’t see a lot of difference. Can you clarify?
Matt the main difference as far as I can tell is that users will get compensated if someone downloads (not sure about the downloads part, a referral could be enough probably) a song from them. Parts of this system are not live yet which makes it difficulty to judge how it really will work out.
Oh, I never used Last.fm, is it possible to download songs there ?
I would like an invite!
I’ll invite other users who comment in this thread also.
I enjoy exploring new communities,and expanding them,
I would love to check whats going on there.
AFAIK, it’s not possible to download songs from Last.fm directly. As a user, you can listen to a streaming radio station of songs based on artists you’ve select and, I believe, artists that other users with similar interests have selected. You can listen to other users’ stations as well. It works more like Pandora (http://pandora.com) than Last.fm in that respect.
Matthew,
Unlike LastFM, Grooveshark will allow you to stream any song on demand for free. Additionally, you can share and download music, then, to make it more interesting, you will be compensated for sharing and contributing to the community.
Similar to LastFM and Pandora, Grooveshark will create music and people recommendations for you.
Hi,
Well I would love to participate. Im very keen on music, basically I dont turn my ipod off. I keep looking for new artists from many genres and share my new discoveries with friends so thats what I would love grooveshark for.
Ofcourse I will invite people from here
Regards
Grooveshark is kind of like the iPhone. We’ve basically taken all of the best features from sites like iTunes, Limewire, iLike, last FM, MySpace, Facebook, etc., and put them all together. On top of all that, we have instituted a totally new concept of sharing the revenue for each song purchased on our true p2p network with the user the download came from. And did I mention that or songs will vary in price based on popularity?
Just so everyone knows that I know what I’m talking about, I’m James Davis, Director of Public Relations for Grooveshark.
To give you a timeline, we’re looking at mid-August for a Beta release. That means everybody gets to come in and play. Until then, we’ll be letting in people in stages just so we can sift through all the bug reports and suggestions, so please bear with us.
I’d also like to take this chance to thank the crew here at Ghacks for the write-up. We really appreciate it, and we owe you one.
Thanks James for the additional information about Grooveshark. Nathan was very helpful in answering my questions and as I can see you all seem really helpful.
I forgot to mention that Grooveshark is completely DRM free. One question though, did you receive any feedback from the Music Industry so far ?
I love music. Hope i get and invite… Grooveshark looks promising.
–“I forgot to mention that Grooveshark is completely DRM free. One question though, did you receive any feedback from the Music Industry so far ?”
We’ve signed Naxos, Magnatunes and V2 music since March along with several smaller labels and individuals, and we have several more in the pipeline. In other words, the labels’ response has been positive.
Another thing, you don’t have to be a big label to get paid for your music on Grooveshark. We’re almost done with the label/artist sign up page. When that goes up, anyone with recorded, copy written music can sign up to allow Grooveshark to collect royalties from each transaction on behalf of the artist. In other words, artists don’t have to wait for us to come to them, they can come to us. We did this because there are literally thousands of record labels in the U.S..
Hei! I’d love to get an invite. I’m a music junkie.
I’d love an invite- music is my life :P Sounds like an amazing idea though- when will it be available?
Still loving all the brilliant articles!
Hey, I would love an invite, if anyone has one. Just email me at [email protected] if you have one
ohh man I would love an invite :D and of course I’ll invite others ;)