Hello Readers,
This post I'd like to talk about my first impressions of Spotify and Grooveshark, which are both music streaming services. I plan to eventually include a link in my website to one of them, so I took a look at both. Here are my thoughts:
Grooveshark is a music streaming service that runs in your web browser. The music player component runs using Adobe Flash. Each user gets a profile that can be switched between private and public access, with an option to hide music activity for the current streaming session. Grooveshark gives you the option to sign in with Google or Twitter, but the link to sign in with Facebook does not work. There is a radio feature.
Spotify is a music streaming service that requires a client application to be downloaded. there are downloads available for Windows (xp/7/vista) and Mac OS X operating systems (they are also working on a Linux version, but it requires some console work to download the preview). I only have experience with the performance of the windows version. There are also mobile clients available. You need to have a Facebook account to use Spotify. Songs in Spotify's music library can be sent to other users that you know, who are exposed to you using your Facebook contacts. Playlists that you create can be set to be published automatically, not published, or published on a case-by-case basis. There is a radio function that can be used when either selecting an artist or song to build a radio station of similar music to listen to.
Some of the things that I like about Grooveshark include: a simple interface that clearly articulates what you are looking at. It's clear of clutter. It is easily accessible for anybody with a web browser and you do not need to install any software to use it. A Google or Twitter account can be used to connect to Grooveshark without having to create a profile specifically for Grooveshark. Grooveshark's play queue is extremely easy to organize. You can drag and drop songs from one location on your play queue to another, remove songs and add songs either to the next position in queue, to the end of the queue or interrupt the current song and go straight to the one you want to queue next. Your individual song library is pretty easy to navigate. It is split into three columns: 1 for artist, 1 for album, and 1 for individual songs. This allows you to sort by all artists then choose any album, sort by 1 artist and choose any of their albums, or choose any artist and any album and search through your whole library with no filter. Another thing I like is that you sometimes find content unreleased on commercial albums. For instance, Grooveshark has quite a bit of content from Skrillex that I can't get on Spotify.
Some of the things that I dislike about Grooveshark include: While you do have the option to upload your own music, Grooveshark has no business connection with anything along the lines of Gracenote, so they can't verify the title artist or album of songs you upload. also, it appears that basically anybody can masquerade as an artist considering you'll have multiple listings for the same artist. some albums uploaded don't even have all the track titles. you basically have no guarantee that you are listening to the music you're looking for until you listen through the whole song. I am not sure whether or not I like the radio feature of Grooveshark because I have not used it very much. Even though I like the fact that groove shark is run in your web browser because you don't need to download anything, I also don't like it because I need to make an extra step to get there. I have to open my browser then go to Grooveshark instead of just opening a desktop application. The interface, because it is done in html is sometimes difficult to navigate between pages to get back to different things that you were looking at. Sometimes you can get a bit lost. Grooveshark has also had lots of legal problems. I don't mind music sharing, but I do mind shady business practices and it looks like they've taken advantage of some people's confidence-ish.
Some of the things that I like about spotify include: You can point Spotify to where you keep your local music files so that you can listen to music that you would listen to through something like Itunes using Spotify. Spotify also have multiple applications that you can integrate with it such as TuneWiki which I use pretty often. Spotify is also integrated with Last.FM. You also have the option to send music that you like to other Spotify users. since Spotify is integrated with , you can easily send music to all your facebook friends that are on Spotify. When you use Spotify you have a much better guarantee that the music comes from real artists because you can't just upload music to Spotify, I don't think. While I don't like spotify's play queue at all, which I'll explain below, one thing that it is good for if you just want to listen to like all of one artist's material. you just select a song hit play and the queue autopopulates with the rest of the material from that artist.
Some of the things that I dislike about Spotify include: You need a facebook account to log-in. This may be a particularly troubling requirement for people who's employers monitor the time that they are logged in to sites such as Facebook, because it effectively prohibits them from using the service during work. Spotify is downloaded as a desktop application meaning you need to reserve some space on your computer for its files. also this means that if your operating system does not have an installer, you're out of luck. They are working on a linux version, but my friend Tripp who runs linux says it's pretty buggy. I've experience the occasional crash of my windows version of spotify as well, so I guess it's not as stable as Grooveshark oddly enough. But then again they have to deal with all this application integration so maybe that's causing some problems? I really dislike the way the play queue is set up. basically what you do is you can click a song to play then the queue will autopopulate with all these things you can't get rid of. the only songs that you can remove are the ones you add manually to the play queue using the "queue" option. you can't reorder songs either. the only way to change the order is through scrambling the queue. in order to clear the play queue completely of all songs not manually added by you you have to start playing an empty playlist which is pretty ridiculous. To keep songs that you stream from spotify in your library you either have to star them or add them to a playlist, you can't just say add to library. since starring is supposed to be to distinguish songs and not say that you want them in your library, I find that to be a definite design problem, and on top of that you need to keep a playlist only for keeping songs on record.
One thing I don't have much experience with on either service is communicating with other people. I haven't sent anybody music or shared playlists on Spotify and I have not tried to follow anybody on grooveshark. so I can't really comment on how well those features work.
I did have time to take a look at the radio option for Grooveshark, but not a very in depth look. My friend Michael has been using Pandora music service for many years and feels that because Grooveshark and spotify are not primarily internet radio sources their recommendation engines are not as good. I have been doing some listening to Spotify radio lately and I have to say that their code for choosing songs is not very good. I might get a repeat of a previously heard songs in like 8 songs, which is ridiculous. They seem to really focus on the hits and don't do a very good job of exposing me to new things I feel, so what I've kind of done with Spotify is just chosen an artist and listened to them for a while in the play queue.
I think that the final verdict will be that I use Spotify to compose playlists and use for listening on my own, and I will use then go to Grooveshark and copy the playlists that I have created in Spotify. Go ahead and take a look at my public Grooveshark profile here. I'll be adding more playlists to it hopefully very soon. Enjoy!
-Tom Anesta
PS: be sure to comment if you have any advice or questions. I may make a new post with later impressions at some time in the future
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