Grooveshark: a challenger to Spotify?

1 May 12, 2009

Anyone that has used Spotify will know that it is an incredible application - a liberation of music if you will. It has been launched barely six months but already there seems to be a worthy competitior. It’s called Grooveshark.

There are a number of differences between Spotify and Grooveshark, the first and most obvious being that Grooveshark is browser based rather than a downloadable client.

The Grooveshark interface is a little confusing to begin with but after a little use you realise it has a fairly intuitive tabbed-timeline based navigation. This means moving back is very easy - like a breadcrumb on a website.

It is also impressive when it comes to the bit that matters - the music. A brief search for some more ‘alternative’ types of music reaps plenty of rewards. I searched Bat for Lashes, Zero 7, Nightmares on Wax, Air, Oasis and Kings of Leon and it returned the majority of their albums plus loads of bonus tracks. In some cases the results may have been more plentiful than Spotify. I also did a cheeky search for My Piano by Hot Chip which is annoyingly missing from Spotify and it is there!

To summarise I’d say Grooveshark is more than a match for Spotify. Whether the team have the financial clout and can match Spotify in the long run is yet to be seen but I’d certainly consider it if you are after free music. Personally I won’t be switching my alliances because I am used to the Spotify interface and I prefer the desktop client rather than making sure I keep a browser tab open but I certainly give Grooveshark my seal of approval.