P2P music community site Grooveshark has entered a new phase with the launch of Grooveshark Lite, a Web based application to allow community users to share and purchase tracks. Grooveshark differentiates itself from other music Webtailers by giving community members credits every time a fellow user purchases a track from their music library.
Grooveshark lite allows you to organize your music and build playlists or makes recommendations on top tracks from other users to build playlists if you can't be bothered to build your own. Grooveshark also lets you stream entire tracks from other users before you make your purchasing decisions.
The Web site is the latest incarnation of a service that launched in beta as a P2P application that maps your music library and then allows you to share it with fellow community users, as Download Squad wrote last year. Music that is then made available through Grooveshark can be purchased by other users, and community members are rewarded with credits each time purchases are made from their library.
Speaking with us last year, Chief Technology Officer, Josh Greenberg detailed how the revenue sharing model will work:
"Grooveshark splits its profit with the users 50/50 after the royalties, fees, and other expenses for a given download have been paid out. For example, if a user downloads a $.99 track, we may have to pay $.60 in licensing fees and $.03 in transaction fees, leaving $.36 to be split evenly between Grooveshark and the user who is "recompensated" for the download. The system determines which user to recompensate based on things such as purchase history, community contributions, and number of songs uploaded."
According to Grooveshark's marketing director Josh Bonnain, the service now has over 1,000 independent labels signed up and is in negotiation with the majors to get them on board. So the service still lacks a significant amount of music that would be found on more mainstream sites, but has a fair amount of music that can be legitimately shared.
Grooveshark allows you to organize your music, build playlists and makes recommendations on top tracks from other users to build predictive playlists if you can't be bothered to build your own. Grooveshark also lets you stream entire tracks from other users before you make your purchasing decisions.
it's hard to know at this point how successful Grooveshark will be in competition with the likes of iTunes and Amazon, much will depend on the development of a substantial user base, but if you like the idea of getting rewarded for your music collection, try it now.
