A lot of fuss has been made just recently about Grooveshark – especially the fact the adverts aren’t audible (i.e. they are onscreen) and the fact it has so much more on there than Spotify.
Well, I decided to try Grooveshark for a few hits and all I can say is I am thoroughly disappointed with it!
Yes, it has so much more on there, and yes you can find any song you like – but what a mess the entire system is!
Searching, for example, Queen II – the definitive album by the Rock Band Queen gives you about 40 versions of the album. Some of them have only half the tracks, some of them have tracks named wrongly, some of them have tracks in the wrong order. Just searching through to find a good version takes ages – and then you have to compile it yourself! The quality is hit and miss, and some of the tracks have jitter and skips where they have been poorly ripped. When you find a playlist called “For Dad” which happens to pop up, you can tell no-one is actually filtering this stuff!
Searching it in Spotify gives you one version. Queen II… the definitive version. The 2004 remastered version with bonus tracks. The bonus tracks are labelled as such, and the album is top notch quality because it has been submitted to Spotify as a WAV file and Spotify have done the processing.
So, in short;
If you want free streaming audio that’s about as tidy as a 12 year old’s MP3 player then Grooveshark is for you.
If you value music and want a clean collection that’s easy to find what you want in, then Spotify is the best way.