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Spotify vs the US Competition

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Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#21

Post by physcab »

earbitscom wrote: post #2

Can we subtract 1-2 points from Grooveshark for their questionable legal tactics? Awesome comparison, Chris. This should be the go to page used to respond to any question about these services.

How are our (I'm a grooveshark employee) legal tactics questionable? We sign deals with new labels all the time and our #1 company-wide goal is to help an artist make over $1M through our service. Here is a list of all our label agreements: http://www.grooveshark.com/labelslist. I don't think its updated though since we have a deal with EMI and I can't find it on the list. Yes, a few of the other majors are missing, but that is always an on-going conversation. We also fully comply with the DMCA in the same way YouTube and all other UGC sites work. Case in point: try searching for Beatles.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#22

Post by chrischen »

nc wrote: post #19
mmahemoff wrote: post #17

Spotify's discovery is better than a 4. Since a playlist can be represented by a URL, sites have emerged to share playlists, which is actually awesome, one of those living in the future moments. Even better, these can be dynamic, like a top 40 list, and also curated by everyone. That said, Spotify could certainly do much more in this area (a lot of their energies have been focused on getting the US launch, it seems).

This. See spotylist.com, discovery through non-friends playlists beats algorithms as you can understand why songs are grouped together and get a feel for a persons music tastes.

I'm not sure if any "social" type of discovery can beat algorithmic in quality. The added benefit of "social" is the socializing bit, not the discovery bit. Algorithms can always match you up with similar people faster and better.

But thanks for the link I'll re-consider the rating.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#24

Post by chrischen »

parbo wrote: post #15
chrischen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every service out there has related artists. But the US version of Spotify has only that.

There is also friend's playlists, which I find very useful to discover stuff.

Amounts to browsing random peoples' music. Compared to MOG's discovery features, MOG's is much better. You might get lucky if a friend just happens to find lots of new music you like though.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#25

Post by chrischen »

cmelbye wrote: post #8
earbitscom wrote: post #2

Can we subtract 1-2 points from Grooveshark for their questionable legal tactics? Awesome comparison, Chris. This should be the go to page used to respond to any question about these services.

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't rate Grooveshark 9/10. It's great, and I've happily used it for months, but it's no Spotify. Aside from the legal issues, the sound quality is generally pretty bad, the crowd-sourced music catalogue with incorrect song/artist/album names is maddening, and 9/10 for Mobile seems a high when you have to jailbreak before you can use it on one of the largest phone platforms.

I didn't take points off for having to jailbreak. I reviewed the app for the app, and the app is great. Plus, apparently jailbreaking is easy.

It's true the music player itself is inferior to Spotify, and the quality of search results is not as good. But it's free, I'm fairly certain it has more songs than Spotify, it's accessible from any computer, and it has other features like radio (which from personal experience is slightly better than Spotify's in term of recommendation quality).

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#26

Post by joeguilmette »

I signed up for Spotify and was pretty disappointed. I have years and years of Data in iTunes, and the only thing Spotify does is pull out tracks. It won't even sync my SmartPlaylists. So it's kind of like starting over. Not something I'm willing to do.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#28

Post by grimen »

Spotify "discover" 7/10 IMO, I find new music everyday via Spotify + Facebook integration.

Though discovery should not get high ratings in 2011 as there are so much that could be done using social and Music-DNA to discover music - so giving any of these services more than 8 is just a joke.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#29

Post by makmanalp »

physcab wrote: post #21
earbitscom wrote: post #2

Can we subtract 1-2 points from Grooveshark for their questionable legal tactics? Awesome comparison, Chris. This should be the go to page used to respond to any question about these services.

How are our (I'm a grooveshark employee) legal tactics questionable? We sign deals with new labels all the time and our #1 company-wide goal is to help an artist make over $1M through our service. Here is a list of all our label agreements: http://www.grooveshark.com/labelslist . I don't think its updated though since we have a deal with EMI and I can't find it on the list. Yes, a few of the other majors are missing,…

Hi, I'm a longtime grooveshark fan and user but I've also had similar questions to the grandparent. You let users upload music arbitrarily. You also add that music to your index and use it globally on the site (or I presume so, since some of your music has irregular tags or tags that say things like "radio rip"). How is this legal? I don't think you're allowed to upload music and keep it there as long as you don't get a complaint about it. That's basically the same thing as having an ftp full of mp3s. You can't even claim that you're not hosting the content. Maybe what you're doing is more similar to what youtube is doing.

Re: Spotify vs the US Competition

#30

Post by zavulon »

Where is Last.FM on this list? It's actually the best (in my opinion) service out there. Their "discovery" feature is the best, and simplest to use - just choose "Play artist/song/tag XXX radio", and it will play related songs for you. Their catalog seems immense, and I listen to some of the most obscure stuff out there (/hipster joke). And it's completely free.. the only thing it doesn't do is play music "on demand", but nobody else got that right either (for free).
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