Matt Van Stone

Grooveshark is a web based streaming music service quite similar to Pandora or Last.fm. However, unlike most streaming music sites you can upload your music collection so you can stream it from anywhere. Grooveshark is free with banner advertising or you can pay $3USD per month to remove the advertising and get access to the newest features before everyone else.

I have been using Grooveshark a lot lately since I decided to get rid of all of the music from my library that was not paid for. I decided to pay the $3/month for the vip service. The legality of Grooveshark is still up in the air, so if you upload unlicensed music to Grooveshark you may be breaking the law. Also, Grooveshark only has licensing deals with a handful of record labels, EMI being the only major one. I would like to know that when I listen to a song on Grooveshark the band I am listening too is getting paid. However, that is most likely not the case given none of my favorite bands are on EMI.

The interface is very iTunes like and is quite easy to use. There are a bunch of different themes you can choose from to personalize the look. Grooveshark claims that you can find any song in the world and listen to it instantly. If you only listen to mainstream music this is probably true. With my preferred genre of music being Melodic Death Metal there have been a few times where I have not been able to find what I was searching for. Also, since the library is mostly user built there are a lot of incomplete albums and duplicate songs.

Grooveshark also has a suggestion engine. If you add a few songs to your playlist and then hit the Radio button Grooveshark will continue to play similar songs once your playlist ends. In my experience the suggestions were pretty similar to what I like.

If you don’t want to keep your browser running you can install Grooveshark Desktop which is based on Adobe Air. Also, Grooveshark Mobile has just been released an is available for Blackberry and Android phones. Their website says that the iPhone and Palm Pre apps are coming soon (pending approval probably).

Grooveshark is sleek, fast, and is constantly being improved. However as it gains in popularity it is getting a lot of attention from the music labels which could be good or bad. The labels will either decide to partner with Grooveshark or crush it. As it stands now Grooveshark is my favorite streaming music site. I have pretty much given up Last.fm, and Pandora has not been available in Canada for quite some time. I am going to continue purchasing music that I love, but for me Grooveshark is a great way to discover new music and listen to music I already own when I am away from my own library.

Has anyone else been using Grooveshark? What are your thoughts?

Last weekend I completely cleaned out my music collection. I removed all of the music I had on my iPhone and computer and I started from scratch with only music I have purchased. I ripped all of my CDs (about 35 in total) into iTunes. I also purchased a few albums that I didn’t already own and couldn’t live without (Sylosis The Supreme Oppressor $6.93, and Casting Shadows – EP $3.99).

I have been wanting to do this for a long time now but for various reasons (excuses) I hadn’t. Music is a huge part of my life and I believe it is important to support the music you love by going to concerts, purchasing merchandise, and of course paying for music.

Over the next few months I will be slowly purchasing all of my favorite albums. Music is cheap these days and there is no excuse not to pay for it. I have always been weary about purchasing music from iTunes due to the DRM and the fact that you don’t receive anything physical. But these days all of the music on iTunes is DRM free and if I want a physical copy I’m free to burn one myself. I am also going to be exploring online streaming music sites like Last.fm which I already use.

Sylosis is without a doubt the best metal band of 2008. I challenge anyone to show me a band with better riffs, drums, vocals, and song composition. I can name a handful of bands that excel in one or two of these areas, but Sylosis is the full package. The main verse and chorus riffs for this song are pretty simple technically, but the melody is ridiculous. Anyone can write a metal riff with a little practice, but that melodic rhythm is where the true writing happens. It’s ironic that I love this band so much considering their song composition talent makes me feel like less of a man.

Vocals are really important as well. You can have a band that is instrumentally awesome, but has a really lame vocalist. Vocals can take as much away from a song as they can give it. Mikael Stanne from Dark Tranquillity still holds the number one place in my books for metal vocals. But Jamie from Sylosis is giving him a run for his money. Jamie’s ability to go from a deep long growl to a high pitched scream within a single line and make it sound so amazing is brilliant. His singing voice is just as insane, as you can hear in the chorus of Transcendence.

I usually post music videos, but this is off of a brand new album. Check after the break for my second favorite song from the album Conclusion of an Age.

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Here’s another video from the same band I posted last week. This is the second song from their latest album. The opening riff in this song is pretty wicked as well as is the pre-chorus riff. Again, this song has the perfect mix of singing and screaming.

I just got into this band a few weeks ago, but I’m hooked. They have some pretty sweet riffs and the vocalist has hit the sweet spot with his mix between singing and screaming.

I saw these guys live a couple months back. They are pretty good live. They came out after and were signing peoples merch, so that was pretty sweet. The bigger bands never do that.

I haven’t done this in a while, so here is Slaughter of the Soul from At the Gates. This is my current favorite song.

My girlfriend turned me onto this sweet horror video site called TerrorFeed. It has lots of original clips from horror movies old and new from mainstream to cult. Not much more to say about it, go and get your horror fix.

Last.fm has introduced a new feature called widgets. These little web apps let you put a little window into your last.fm profile on your website or MySpace page (Facebook coming soon).

I really like last.fm, however beyond automatically submitting my played tracks through Amarok I rarely use it. I made this widget in about 5 minutes. I just went through my most played tracks and added a few (minimum 15) songs to a playlist. Then creating the widget is all done through a wizard on the webpage. This playlist I created to the left has all metal music in it. Now you can listen to my music right from my webpage. Last.fm has even conveniently placed a little Buy Album link in there for you too.

If you like the music, but you want to browse away from the page you can click the icon in the bottom right hand of the widget to launch the playlist in a separate window. Then you can listen and move along on your merry way.

In addition to playlists you can also build a widget that shows a list of your last played songs or a quilt of your most popular albums. There is a radio widget too. This one is sort of like the playlist, but it picks tracks automatically based on what you have listened to in the past.

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