One of the websites I'm enjoying right now is
Grooveshark.com. In a nutshell, it is a Winamp-like web application, allowing you to listen to your favorite music hits and you don't even need to register. Just search for your favorite song, and if it is in their database, you will be able to enjoy the tunes on the fly. You don't even need to download or install anything for their app to work. I guess this is all thanks to HTML 5.
"Why would I use my browser to listen to music?", you might ask. Well, the main reason I can think of is exchanging storage space for available bandwidth. If you are low on hard disk space, but you have an internet connection that is idle, then you can opt to search for your favorite songs on Grooveshark and stream it. Some say that it affects your torrent downloads significantly when you are streaming, so this might not be the right app for computers assigned as heavy down-loaders.
Another reason I can think of is that if the song isn't on your storage device, a new hit perhaps, there is a higher probability that that particular song is on Grooveshark. If you like a song, but want to hear an acoustic version, you can probably find one on Grooveshark. Indie artists are probably using this site as a platform for marketing their music. I'm not sure if this is also part of Grooveshark's revenue model, but who knows - in the future, if you're a music artist that wants exposure, you might pay Grooveshark to showcase your songs.
Speaking of earning money, Grooveshark does that by displaying three banner ads on their web application. These ads refresh fairly frequently as an individual song plays along. But even if you shift tabs on your browser, you should be able to enjoy the tunes without the ads. But for those who want an ad-less service, Grooveshark offers premium accounts that disable these ads. I'm not sure if the ads are part of Google's adsense program, or if the advertisers approach Grooveshark and pay them directly for the ads to be displayed on the app. It's a pretty cool business model and will outright beat the blogging model since the people who want to listen to a particular song will probably outnumber the number of people who want to read a certain article or post. (There may be exceptions, like the time that big virus hit and a lot of people on the web were affected, and started looking for online solutions, but again... exception).
In terms of piracy issues, I'm not sure where the songs on Grooveshark come from. Perhaps some have been uploaded by their own users, while others may have been uploaded by the artists (or their representatives) themselves - again for exposure. If you can already enjoy the song freely by streaming it legally, then
I don't see any reason why you should try to "gain" the song furthur, I would encourage listeners to respect the rights of the music artists.
Grooveshark also helps streamline your playlist. Ever play an album and wish you didn't have to re-program your playlist every time to skip particular songs? If you have an account on Grooveshark, then your favorite arrangement of songs should be set to go anywhere you have internet access.
Hats off to the developers of Grooveshark - a web app that's highly recommended.
