Grooveshark Lite is a new ’sub-service’ launched by the innovative guys that brought us Grooveshark, a combination music store (iTunes) and music community (Last.fm), with elements drawn from each, billing itself as the world’s first ‘music library.’
One of Grooveshark’s main draws is the breadth of their library. They have over 6 million songs covering everything from obscure indies to major stars. With the launch of Grooveshark Lite, they have two major services running concurrently. The first, of course, is Grooveshark, which operates under a peer to peer model. You can stream songs from the web interface, but downloads are distributed across peers — in order to accomplish this you need to download a small desktop client.
On the other hand, Grooveshark Lite, developed on Adobe’s FLEX technology, is their latest application. It allows you to stream any song from the Grooveshark library without needing to run any external software. The product comes as a direct response from their user feedback. It is evident that they spent a lot of time creating an interface that users would find intuitive.
Another feature Grooveshark recently released is called tinysong (tinysong.com), which makes it even easier to search and share songs you love in Grooveshark Lite. Just type in the name of a song in the interface and you’re provided with a small url that you can paste into any of your favorite social media services.
I have been using Grooveshark for a few months now, and I am amazed at how easy the site is. There are few changes I find noticeable enough to suggest. The tinysong feature gives virtually anyone the ability to find the song they are looking for and play it on demand. Despite all the competition that is out there in the shared music space with sites like Imeem and Jango, Grooveshark proves to be a formidable player.
