Friday, February 17, 2012

Grooveshark: Painless way to try out tunes before you, er, buy 'em

I recently wrote positive things about Spotify. And I meant them.

But things change. I'm no longer using a Mac as a daily driver and Spotify's desktop app is not the most stable thing in the world on Ubuntu, the Linux OS I'm now using every day. So I'm not using Spotify anymore, either.

So naturally, I've been looking for alternative services to preview records. It's a pretty helpful thing to do when you're trying to keep up with a music blog. No need to do any more than dial up a record and listen to it a few times, free of charge.

Curious, I just recently tried Grooveshark. And so far, I have to say, it's been a real winner. I'm using a handy little web application called Nuvola Player for Linux (if you have Ubuntu, check it out), which does a real nice job of integrating online music services right into the desktop. But you don't need a web app to run Grooveshark. It will run in any reasonably modern browser.

Even better than that, you don't need to log in. That's right. No need to sign up with a Facebook account and broadcast your listening choices to all your "friends." ["Hey Dave... I see your listening to Gordon Lightfoot on Spotify right now... I had no idea!"] All you need to do is punch up the service and start listening.

And, to top it off, users can listen to music, for free, with no limits. The only imposition is a flash or banner ad every time you go to search for new music. But there's not even any audio interruption like every other music service I've ever used.

Hopefully, Grooveshark will help me get back on my blogging horse. I've listened to four or five new records today while working and at least one was really good -- the new Mark Lanegan Band album, Blues Funeral, which I will try to write about soon.

For everyone else, give Grooveshark a try. There's no reason not to.






No comments:

Post a Comment