Glides Into Online Music Sharing

Some of the best ideas come when they’re least expected. While on his way to donate plasma at DCI Biologicals for some extra money, Samuel Tarantino was inspired. He passed the strip of shops and fast food joints until his eyes caught a sign that read “buy, sell, trade CDs” at Hear Again CDs.

“Why doesn’t that work on digital?” the struggling musician thought. “I quickly realized how broken the industry was.”

At that moment, Grooveshark was conceived.

Grooveshark is a peer-to-peer file-sharing program created by three University of Florida students who were looking to change the way in which music is swapped online. Ever since the dark ages of Napster, file sharing has been identified as a highly controversial enemy to the dwindling music industry, which has yet to regain its strength in the face of online music.

Some of the best ideas come when they’re least expected. While on his way to donate plasma at DCI Biologicals for some extra money, Samuel Tarantino was inspired. He passed the strip of shops and fast food joints until his eyes caught a sign that read “buy, sell, trade CDs” at Hear Again CDs.

“Why doesn’t that work on digital?” the struggling musician thought. “I quickly realized how broken the industry was.”

At that moment, Grooveshark was conceived.

Grooveshark is a peer-to-peer file-sharing program created by three University of Florida students who were looking to change the way in which music is swapped online. Ever since the dark ages of Napster, file sharing has been identified as a highly controversial enemy to the dwindling music industry, which has yet to regain its strength in the face of online music.

Whether failing CD sales are completely due to the rise of easy, free online music is debatable; however, P2P sharing is at least partially responsible for the demise of packaged music.

In contrast to other programs like Kazaa or LimeWire, Grooveshark is not looking to be another illegal file-sharing community in the sea of banned Web sites. Instead, Tarantino has concocted an online system that makes P2P not only legal, but even appealing to those who are used to paying nothing for their music.

Grooveshark is tweaking the recipe of legal sites, such as iTunes, by integrating a social network and a credit system that allows some users to continue to download songs for free.

“What we’re doing is essentially Napster with a payment system,” Tarantino said.

Like iTunes, 99 cents buys one song. About 50 percent of the cost is given to the artist or record company and the remaining cents are distributed between Grooveshark and its users. Tarantino said he believes one of the reasons that the program will succeed is because users know that a large chunk of the payment is going directly to the artist.

By complying with the law, Grooveshark is able to have a central database with clean, high-quality songs. In order to remain running, illegal sites don’t have a central database that can be easily destroyed. This set up allows many versions of the same song or album with inconsistent quality, which may or may not include piggybacked spyware and viruses.

“Technology has had to degrade in order to evade the law,” said Tarantino.

Since Grooveshark relies so heavily on its users, those who actively better the program by providing files, song ratings, band biographies or even recommendations for similar artists, are rewarded with credits toward buying more songs. The give-and-take format gives users the power to shape the completeness of Grooveshark as not only a music provider, but also as a source of information and social networking molded for music lovers.

“Community contribution is the way to go,” said Andrew Wise, vice president of business development. “It’s coming from the grassroots level up. They personally are building it up for us.”

Tarantino hired UF students Josh Greenberg and Andres Barreto as co-founders to help with the growth of the project. Since its inception, they have reworked the site, and recently released their newest version.

“Our intention from the beginning is to bring all the world together to discover new music,” said Wise.

Ideas for changes and additions to the site come directly from its users. Forums are used for users to communicate with each other just as much as for users to communicate with those working with Grooveshark. New applications are added into the beta edition, such as a concerts application, which Wise said he thinks will be the most successful and challenging to maintain.

A Wikipedia-inspired area allows users to submit information about artists in the same way the online encyclopedia it is emulating does. By connecting people and their tastes, users can discover new music solely based on recommendations from others.

Grooveshark’s easy-to-use Web site is comparable with its fellow music sites; however, it improves certain features others fall behind in. Of those features is the ability to stream a sample of the song before it’s downloaded. Most (legal) sites only allow a 30 second sample, but Grooveshark provides a full listen before any song is bought. Also, once a library is uploaded onto the Web site users can use the library from any computer.

Grooveshark Beta was just released last month as the latest update to the Web site. As of now, it operates through invitations to the site from users already on it or by requesting an account, which takes a few days to process. The program operates without Digital Rights Management, which is the technology that restricts what can and cannot be done with music files. This means that files downloaded from Grooveshark can be shared through other mediums or simply uploaded into any mp3 player.

Although some may disregard Grooveshark since it is still charging for downloading for music, it is a step forward for the online music community and a compromise between the record companies and illegal downloaders.

“At the end of the day, the user gets what he wants, whether they pay for it or not,” Tarantino said.

Visit the site at www.grooveshark.com