GrooveShark Cloud Music Service

Click to visit GrooveShark.Com

GrooveShark is a cloud-based music service that works in two different ways. First, you can use it like a custom radio similar to Pandora and Slacker but with unlimited skips (yes, even in the free version). Second, you can upload your MP3s and maintain a cloud library of music that you can stream from any browser. There is a paid version of GrooveShark that eliminates visual ads on the web interface and includes apps for streaming your tunes to your smartphone.

There does not appear to be a quota on the size of a user’s library but I found the upload process which is entirely Java based to be very, very slow. (The uploader estimates my remaining 956 songs will take about 7 hours and 20 minutes to upload. Yikes!) If you choose to upload a song already in the collective GrooveShark library, it will appear in your personal library without actually uploading it. Also, uploaded songs augment the collective GrooveShark library.

Wikipedia speaks to copyright issues surrounding GrooveShark and points out that the EULA does not indemnify users from copyright violations. Nonetheless, many people feel comfortable using the service which streams 50 to 60 million songs per month and was growing at a rate of 2% to 3% per day as of April 2009.

Sound quality is very good over a cable internet connection. Not that I’m an audiophile but I couldn’t distinguish my streamed music from the original MP3s even on good speakers.

Although having cloud-hosted music is convenient, I wouldn’t use it as a substitute for a backup because music stored on GrooveShark can be streamed only, not downloaded. If you want to backup your music to a cloud, I recommend using Glide which offers 30 GB of free storage and can sync your music folders regularly. Files stored on Glide can be downloaded later.

[via Gerben van Erkelens on Google Buzz]

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