Stuff I use - Grooveshark

Before I start talking about Grooveshark, "Stuff I use" will be a category of posts where I intend to describe programs, websites, services... that I have used for some time now and have become an active part of my life.

Grooveshark


Grooveshark is by far the best music streaming service I know out there. Better than Last.fm, better than radio stations. Why?

• It's free (no account required).
• It's does not have geographical restrictions (at least not for Romania, never bothered to check if it works anywhere else).
• Library is updated by users (that means you can find basically ANY song... but sometimes the metadata is a bit off)
• You can play any song, anytime and even seek to any position in the song.
• You have a play queue which can have 200 (I'm not sure about the number, I might be WAY of, this I read in the FAQs and I'm not sure it related to this) which you can play in order, shuffled, repeat none, all or 1 song, and even add cross fade. It's your active playlist.
• You can go into Radio mode, which gives random songs that resemble what is currently in your play queue (like Last.fm does) or you can tune into preset genre radio stations.

Now I don't know details, but everyone there, every FAQ and every forum assures me it's legal even if users upload the music, which is awesome. But that feature list I said up there only scratches the surface. There are also free accounts which add even more great stuff.

• Personal library and Favorites section (5000 songs in library and 500 favorites for free accounts). This can be extended to 10 times the number for VIP accounts (3$ a month - 30$ a year).
• Keep track of user generated playlists. I have no idea how many one can have or how many songs can one contain, but the songs in those playlists don't have to be saved to the library.
• Create songs widgets that can be embedded on any website. (This could be available without an account, I'm not sure).
• Create playlist widgets the same way.
• Social features like friends and stuff.

The only thing I find it lacks is keyboard shortcuts. At least I don't know them. There are shortcuts for the downloadable app which runs on Adobe AIR (cross platform pluses : D) but it's for VIPs only : (.

The website is really too cool for music fans. Here's one of those widgets with a cool song I discovered last night.

Enjoy everyone, and have fun listening.