

Just in case anyone is still using YouTube for music - noaharc
http://grooveshark.com/

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flankk2
It has been minutes and I've already found several new songs I absolutely
adore.

For me, this is groundbreaking. It's like last.fm done right. I feel the same
elation as when I first used Napster.

~~~
berntb
I was going to write the same thing.

Quick check. Lots of metal and folk. Some local stuff (Scandinavian). Seems to
be little jazz and world (balkan folk, arabic, etc. Had e.g. Natacha Atlas and
Susheela Raman.) Problems with Unicode.

Really really good start. Now just needs to add lots more esoteric stuff I can
find! (Unicode would be nice.)

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ashleyw
<http://www.spotify.com/en/>

Since using that, iTunes: "Last opened: Thursday, 26 February 2009 11:27"

It just feels like I'm browsing for music on iTunes, and listening to the
previews....except the previews are the full songs! It rocks! :)

~~~
rs
The problem with spotify is that its only supported on Windows and Mac, and
the only way to run it in Linux is via Wine. This is miles better and it just
embeds into the browser which is nice.

~~~
jrnkntl
And that it is "not available in your country"

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FalconNL
Very nice site, thanks.

In case anyone from Grooveshark is reading this, here are two minor UI
suggestions:

\- It's rather easy to miss the volume control since it's so far removed from
the other play controls. Perhaps it would be an idea to move it over there.

\- A button to queue up all the songs in a search result. If it exists already
I'm not seeing it.

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josefresco
Also the "delete from queue" button is tough to get to (being on the right of
that pop up div), I'd consider adding it either to the middle of that div, or
on the main thumbnail in the queue.

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jrnkntl
So, how long will this last? :)

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andreyf
<http://thefeelgood.com> seems to have been around for awhile, and it's full
of user-uploaded copyrighted content... so while they'll probably have trouble
raising money from VC's, as long as the ad revenue is sustainable, I'd venture
to guess "awhile"

~~~
endtime
<http://playlist.com> seems similar, but even links to (external) mp3
downloads, and has also been around a while.

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mapleoin
Wow, so no one knows about <http://deezer.com> ? It's been around for years.
It's lack of popularity probably stems from the fact that it's French, same as
<http://jamendo.com> (Creative Commons music)

~~~
vjt
Jamendo is quite a different beast, because it's a CC label, not a music
sharing/streaming medium.

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czstrong
I like the design and ease of use and it is definitely a site I would use.

The only problem for me, and the thing that it lacks that YouTube doesn't, is
music that isn't mainstream and hasn't been released by a label. Songs that
make it on mixtapes and other singles that artists use to promote themselves
and their future albums don't seem to be available from the searches that I've
run. But they are available on YouTube.

~~~
slackenerny
You may register an account then, and upload what you see missing.

Just like with YouTube. But with an Java app that would upload folders in
batches.

I did so back in september. At the time there was even some scheme in which
uploader would get money for uploading popular stuff, but I don't remember any
details.

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samueladam
EMG ( <http://escapemg.com/> , makers of grooveshark) has other nice services
like <http://tinysong.com/>

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joss82
This is, by far, the best music site I've been to. Mostly because of the
perfect UI, autoplay and no DRM. deezer.com, musicme.com pale in comparison No
flaw detected so far, have you found any ?

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jhatcom
Just curious, isn't that site violating music copyright laws? I would be
afraid to use it for fear of getting sued by the labels.

~~~
josefresco
They only people that would run afoul of the law would be the good folks at
Grooveshark. Use it (without worry) while it lasts.

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Markus
I'm really impressed by this site. Huge selection of music and a very friendly
UI. I like how when you add a song for immediate playback, it prepends it to
your queue instead of overwriting your queue.

Facebook Connect / OpenID would be nice. Also, when I signed up with a taken
username it gave me an "unexpected error" message, a bit sloppy.

~~~
redss
No way to fast forward. :(

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dc2k08
<http://www.playlist.com/> which was announced on HN a while back provides
this service too. It's worked quite well for me so far and their UI has
drastically improved since it launched.

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Markus
And it works in Canada!

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pj
Man, that sucks almost nothing works in Canada. Hulu doesn't work in Canada.
Netflix. But you have some good content on CBC.ca.

Dragon's Den is fun to watch.

~~~
dhughes
...no Pandora either, guess her box is closed for us in Canada.

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ilamont
Neat site. I got it to work in IE6 but like an earlier poster think that the
volume control should be in a more logical/visible place.

Some of the metadata appears to be messed up, as well. I clicked on what I
thought was a Lemonheads album and got Presidents of the United States of
America covering "Video Killed The Radio Star" instead.

And the billion-dollar question: How can this possibly be a sustainable
business model? Ads for Verizon surely won't cover the development, licensing,
and operating expenses for this site, will it?

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Raphael_Amiard
I just wonder, what on this site is done in flash that couldn't be done with
plain AJAX/Html, appart from the obvious streaming part ?

Just wondering, they may have some reasons

~~~
vjt
Actually it uses the flex framework (as you can see by looking at the
scrollbars and the tooltips) that then produces an edible binary .swf for the
flash player :).

Back to the topic, as a music site developer myself, I can assure you that
everything (except streaming[1]) you see on grooveshark can be implemented
using XHTML, a JS framework (I love jQuery über alles) and an HTTP backend.
Wheter or not do it depends mainly from the target of your audience and the
browsers they use, because to achieve 100% browser compatibility, especially
when dealing with older IE versions, imposes a bit of headbanging over their
quirks and issues. Another point is performance: on older machines, animating
big elements on the page (like grooveshark does) causes flicker and a clumsy
experience for the user. The last point is maintainability and integration:
after all, flash software is another piece of the stack you have to
coordinate, implement, integrate and deploy.

So, it's a bit controversial which path to choose; on our project we're
following a mix of the two, by reducing the flash implementation to the bare
minimum to accomplish streaming, upload (ajax upload via iframe is a bit of a
mess) and a set of JS interfaces to implement the rest of the interface via
XHTML. Similar to <http://playlist.com> 's approach.

The last consideration that comes to my mind is purely ethical/political: I
prefer to use open standards and contribute back to open projects via source
code, and not be forced to use closed technologies and tools and contribute
back via cash, having to read clumsy documentation, little opportunity to
improve anything, and the list could go on and on.. :).

[1] Luckily this is gonna change with HTML5!

~~~
Raphael_Amiard
Thanks for the complete answer !

I found the moving elements on grooveshark to be quite a bit annoying anyway.

Also the database is much less complete than the one of www.deezer.com as of
now.

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ujal
Use fizy.com as a lightweight/mobile alternative.

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defied
I actually prefer using <http://www.hypem.com>

Been using that site for months, all the other ones (even grooveshark) lack
certain alternative songs which you can find on hypem.

The list with popular songs on hypem is also better, but that might just be my
personal taste.

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ComputerGuru
I like.

Surprised to find some nice international selections on there; usually have a
hard time locating some non-Western music so it's refreshing to find some good
World genres out there especially in such high quality and with such a nice,
clean interface.

(Y)

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jonas_b
Wow, this is amazing stuff. On par with Spotify in ease of use.

After a while it gets a bit too "flashy" though.

Would like to see some social/discussion functionalities.

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Silentio
<http://www.seeqpod.com> does something similar, though it isn't as well
designed.

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dforbin
Rachel likes bacon. I like Rachel. <http://grooveshark.com/about>

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xiaoma
Yeah. I've been on Grooveshark for over a year and I love it! The clean
interface really makes a difference.

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kp212
Sick, sick, I got some of my lesser known progressive house songs queued up
while I work...thanks!

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cool-RR
I get an empty page.

~~~
cubicle67
Are you using a flash blocker (like I am)? The entire page is flash

~~~
paul7986
May I ask when you run flash blocker what benefits it provides you? Are you
able to enjoy Youtube, Hulu and other flash video sites without configuring
the plug-in?

~~~
jws
I use clicktoflash...

1) It protects me from any security, privacy, and correctness flaws that might
exist in the Flash implementation on my computer.

2) It makes my computer snappier by not letting poorly written Flash ads eat
my CPU, RAM, and battery.

3) It keeps the blinky flashy ads to a minimum while I read content.

It is one click on the content area to load and run a flash, so if I go to a
web site and really want to see the flash content that isn't too high a price
to pay. (modifier click to white list).

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randomtask
I was. Thanks!

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Oxryly
Awesome!

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keltecp11
Kinda reminds me of Mixturtle... but this is AWESOME!

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josefresco
Blog link doesn't work, just opens a new window and loads the main GS page.

