Students turn to crowds to create the new iTunes
August 16th, 2007 • Music, Social
Social music sharing is nothing new (stand up and take a bow, Last.FM and Pandora), but there’s a new twist from a bunch of University of Florida students.
Grooveshark allows its users to upload and share their music files, for which the site pays both the artists and the uploaders. The result could be fascinating - a mash of iTunes and Last.FM, with a model in which everyone seems to win, with half of Grooveshark’s profits (after payments to publishers, artists etc) going to file sharers.
Of course, there’s money coming in the other end: users of the service will pay around $0.99 a track, with every file available in 192kb or 128kb MP3 and compatible with your iPod or any Windows-powered player.
Speaking to Read/Write Web, Grooveshark’s Josh Bonnain said: “Paying artists is one of the most complicated parts of Grooveshark. The process oftentimes involves sifting through huge amounts of untagged or mislabeled content that show up as a result of all the discrepancies in many MP3 files that are floating around out there, but we make it our job to dig through every track that is downloaded in Grooveshark and determine the appropriate rights holders.”
I’ve grabbed an alpha invite, and everything appears to be in order. Once you’ve installed the Sharkbyte client, you can listen to tunes through the website’s player. I’ve encountered easier sites to navigate, but there’s enough there today to make the trip worthwhile.
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