Free Streaming Music Method #3: Grooveshark

One of the coolest free streaming music services to hit the internet lately is Grooveshark.com. Grooveshark takes the idea of free streaming music to a whole new level by offering music storage, playlists, “soundslike” stations – basically everything you’d get in a real media player except with free streaming music and in a portable online package.

You can listen to pretty much any song for free, view “most popular” charts, create playlists based on your favorite songs, upload your music library to Grooveshark’s servers, embed songs and playlists on blogs and other websites, and more.

The site offers free “sounds like” radio stations. It’s just like Pandora, only without the licensing restrictions. In my experience, the recommendations are just as good – if not even better – than Pandora’s. It usually takes a few songs for Pandora to understand what I want to hear, but Grooveshark was popping out music I loved within a couple clicks.

It’s easy to register at Grooveshark, but don’t do it if you don’t want to. You don’t need an account to listen to music on Grooveshark. The advantage of accounts, though, is that if you create one you can save playlists and upload your music library.

The website is entirely flash-based, which allows for a prettier interface but takes away from performance. It can be slightly clunky to navigate at times. On the other hand, the site’s design mimics the iPhones, so it’s clean and gorgeous.

So to wrap this up, Grooveshark.com is the cool new kid on the free streaming music block, but it’s got a ways to go before it lives up to its marketing: “The easiest way to discover, share, and listen to music online”? Not quite. But it is pretty cool. I definitely suggest you give it a look. Hopefully the RIAA won’t shut it down.