Key information

Website    grooveshark.com
Type    Music search and streaming
Platform/s    Web (RIA), multi-platform desktop client, multi-platform mobile apps
Model    Freemium
Launched    2007
Owner/s    Escape Media Group Inc (2007 – current)
Status    Active (2007 – current)

Grooveshark

Grooveshark is a rich internet application+ that provides a music search and playback service. It is operated by Escape Media Group. Launch publicly in 2007 as a paid music service designed to bring to buy/sell/trade record store model to digital music, the site employed an innovative model that aimed to “…reward people for sharing their digital music by paying everyone in the value chain – from users to copyright holder” [1]. The service allowed users to upload music to Grooveshark’s proprietary peer-to-peer network+. These tracks would become available to other users at a cost of US$0.99 per track. Revenue was distributed on a profit-share model:

“Of the 99 cent charge, 70 cents goes to the record label, 25 cents to [the user who uploaded the file]  as a credit toward future music purchases, and the remaining 4 cents to Grooveshark.
(Later, the 29 cents left after the music label cut will be split 50/50 between the user and Grooveshark)” [2].

Features and services

It’s key features include:

  • music search and streaming playback including queuing songs;
  • organisation of music in playlists and mark preferred songs using the “heart button”;
  • community and personalisation  functionality (including user profiles that feature recent user activities such as creating playlists or “loving” a track, user networking by “following” other users, multiple interface backgrounds);
  • social media integration (including authentication via Facebook Connect and Google Federated Login, posting links to songs, artists and playlists to a number of social media platforms); and
  • music recommendation system (Grooveshark Radio) that plays songs in a selected genre or songs similar to a selected song. Users customise their recommendation experience by using the “happy face” or “sad face” buttons.

Other services

Grooveshark also provides: