Grooveshark

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Grooveshark
File:GROOVESHARK LOGO.jpg
Type of site
Music, Search & Community
Available inEnglish, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, Pirate English (available for VIP Users only)
OwnerEscape Media Group Inc.
Created bySam Tarantino, Josh Greenberg, Andres Barreto
URLwww.grooveshark.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional

Grooveshark is an internationally available[2] online music search engine, music streaming service and music recommendation web software application, allowing users to search for, stream, and upload music free of charge that can be played immediately or added to a playlist. Grooveshark aims to help bridge the growing gaps between artists, consumers and those in between who distribute, market, and promote music.[3] Grooveshark streams 50 to 60 million songs per month, to more than 400,000 users. As of April 2009, its audience was growing at a rate of 2–3% per day.[4]

Features

One of Grooveshark's most notable features is its recommendation system called "Grooveshark Radio", which finds similar songs to those in a user's playlist and queues them for playback. Similar to Pandora's "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" feedback mechanism, users of Grooveshark can tell the recommendation system whether a particular recommendation was good or not by clicking a "happyface" or "sadpanda" icon.[5] When users are satisfied with the current list of songs in their queue, they are able to save the songs as a traditional playlist for later retrieval.

A Twitter-like social feature allows users to "follow" each other to make it easier to share songs by clicking a special heart icon which adds it to the logged-in user's list of favorite users. This list can be accessed by navigating to the user's profile on the service. Like users, songs and playlists can also be added to a favorites list. Music can be shared on Grooveshark by directly linking songs to other users within Grooveshark or by posting links to other social networks like Facebook and MySpace through a "broadcast" feature, or by creating music widgets (small, embeddable music players) that can be posted on external websites.

Grooveshark is a rich Internet application, written in ActionScript using the Adobe Flex framework which runs in Adobe Flash. Its design implements various sliding panels to categorize and display lists of information, similar in style to that of the Apple iPhone. A right-aligned black modal window also slides in to display more information for songs, playlists, and users. Grooveshark also lets users upload music to their online music library through a Java Web Start application. The upload program scans folders specified for MP3s, uploading and adding them to the user's online library on the service. The ID3 information of the uploaded song is linked to the user and the file is uploaded to Grooveshark which allows on-demand music playback. Collectively, each user's uploaded library is available to any user of Grooveshark. All content on the service is user-sourced.[6]

The website also allows users to upload music files on their hard drive to the search database, resulting in constant growth of its library. However, concerns have been raised (see legal issues) over the legality of this content with regards to copyright infringement.

History

File:Grooveshark Logo.svg
The main Grooveshark Logo

Grooveshark is a service of Escape Media Group Inc (EMG), a Gainesville, FL company.[7] EMG was founded in March 2006 by three University of Florida undergrad students.[8] Sam Tarantino, a "down-on-his-luck economics major", and now CEO of Grooveshark, was on his way to donate plasma when he passed a record store with a sign that said "buy/sell/trade CDs"[9], and had the idea to apply that to digital music.[10]

Grooveshark launched in private beta in early 2007, and was initially a paid music download service.[11] The music was sourced from their proprietary P2P network, facilitated by a downloadable client application.[12] Grooveshark offered a unique purchase model whereby upon purchase, the person who uploaded the transacted song was paid a portion of the total cost of the song. Grooveshark positioned itself as a legal competitor to other popular p2p networks like Limewire.[13]

As of December 2007, EMG employed around 40 people, many of which were students of the nearby University of Florida,[14] and had secured just under $1 million in seed funding.[15]

As of 2008, EMG has discontinued their paid download service and has repositioned itself as an online music jukebox, similar in functionality to services like Pandora and Last.FM.[16]

On October 27, 2009, Grooveshark introduced a new user interface, which provides a look similar to iTunes. Also, users are now able to skip forward and backward to any point in a song.[17]

Legal issues

Operating in similar fashion to other online services like YouTube and Vimeo, Grooveshark does not indemnify their users for any unlicensed uploaded content. Users have complained about the lack of indemnification protection found in their EULA.[18] Despite these concerns, no user to date has faced legal action from Grooveshark or third-parties. Parties in the USA claiming copyright infringement may use mechanisms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to request that their content be removed. Repeat offenders, users who have uploaded unlicensed content more than two times, have had their Grooveshark accounts suspended.[19] Grooveshark makes a Label List available of all record labels with which they have royalty agreements, though noticeably absent were any major record labels.[20] This changed on May 8, 2009[21] EMI filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Grooveshark,[22] which was dropped on October 13, 2009 and replaced with a licensing deal.[23]

In March of 2010, Pink Floyd sued EMI over the amount of royalties the band should receive for digital sales of their music, and as to whether tracks from their concept albums can be sold as singles.[24] Pink Floyd won, and almost all of their tracks have been removed from Grooveshark.

In Denmark Grooveshark have still not made an agreement with KODA, which is a non-profit rights society representing Danish and international composer/publisher rights. According to KODA Grooveshark is still a pirate service and should therefore not be used since Danish composers and songwriters do not receive enough money from Grooveshark.[25]

See also

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Lists of similar websites

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Similar websites

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Related concepts

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References

  1. ^ "grooveshark.com - Traffic Details from Alexa". Alexa Internet, Inc. Retrieved 2010-3-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  2. ^ "Grooveshark Autoplay". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  3. ^ "On-Demand Digital Music Service Grooveshark Selects Juniper Networks EX Series Switching Platforms to Build Scalable Cloud-Based Infrastructure and Improve User Experience", "MarketWatch", 14 June 2010. Retrieved on 08-11-10.
  4. ^ "Musicians Find Fans At Grooveshark Artists". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  5. ^ "Howard Clark Shownotes". Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  6. ^ "Widgets and Music Uploads". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  7. ^ "Escape Media Group". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  8. ^ "UF Startup Opportunity: Grooveshark" (PDF). Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  9. ^ "Google Maps: Hear Again CD's/DVD's". Retrieved 2010-02-27.
  10. ^ "Grooveshark Brings Legal Music Sharing to Gators and the world" (PDF). Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  11. ^ "Grooveshark Offers P2P Music Downloads But is it Legal?". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  12. ^ "The Renaissance Of File Sharing". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  13. ^ "Get Your Grooveshark On New P2P Service". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  14. ^ "Management: Second Opinions". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  15. ^ "Tradevibes Grooveshark Profile". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  16. ^ http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/15/grooveshark-launches-web-media-player/
  17. ^ http://gigaom.com/2009/10/26/grooveshark-has-a-new-look-but-its-still-streaming-unlicensed-content/
  18. ^ "Buzz Out Loud Lounge: Grooveshark....I'm not too convinced". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  19. ^ "Grooveshark DMCA". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  20. ^ "Looking for Napster 2.0". Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  21. ^ "Another Music Start-Up Sued: EMI Takes Grooveshark to Court". Retrieved 2009-06-19.
  22. ^ "EMI Sues Streaming Music Service Grooveshark". Retrieved 2009-06-19.
  23. ^ "EMI Drops Suit Against Grooveshark Music Service, Licenses It Instead". Retrieved 2009-10-16.
  24. ^ [1]
  25. ^ Grace Nguyen Suhadi, Media Department, KODA

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grooveshark&oldid=378383067"