Thursday, November 3, 2011

Battle of the titans : Spotify vs Grooveshark Part 1


Here it is, Spotify vs Grooveshark. The epic battle between the two largest (correct me if I'm wrong) music streaming services online. I've used Spotify a few years now and out of nowhere I managed to stumbled upon the music service Grooveshark. So I thought I'd face these two giants in a battle. The review will be divided to a few different categories. Design/Interface, Content, price and Using the services on different devices which I will cover in part 2 of this review.


Design/Interface

Spotify

First off is Spotify. I really like its design. It got nice dark colours which makes it comfortable to browse in. At the top we have the search window to find all the songs, artist and albums. To the left the play list panel is located. Here you can quickly access your play lists and create new ones. In the middle we got the song window. It is here all the songs will be presented to you. At the bottom we have the play controls where you can adjust the volume , play, pause and shuffle. Very simple and clean design. Less is more!



 Score 8 out of 10

 Grooveshark

The design is quite similar to Spotify but with less appealing colours. As a matter of fact it looks like a web page coming straight out of the 90's. Even the text fonts looks dull and utterly boring. Grooveshark really needs to work on this

.



Score 4 out of 10

Content

Spotify


The content at Spotify is like a roller coaster. One week you got your play list filled with different songs and the next week some of them has mysteriously vanished. This is due to licenses which Spotify still are having problems with. Don't get me wrong it still got a huge library but sometimes I wish it had more especially if you compare it to Grooveshark

Score 7 out of 10

Grooveshark

It's here Grooveshark really shines with it's huge collection of music. I listen to a music style called Psytrance. It can be really hard finding music in this genre but Grooveshark suprised me a lot when I found out it had old classic psy tracks from the 90's that was impossible to find at Spotify. I spoke with my firend who's really into the band Tool. He said that not a single song were present at Spotify. I made a search on Grooveshark and the result ? See the picture down below. 



Score 9 out of 10


I made a list of some odd songs that might be a bit tricky to find on the services. Here are the result comparing them two. 

1. Total Eclipse - Transparent mind
2. The Delta - Travelling at the speed of thought
3. Laser Dance - Brain Mission
4. Dance 2 Trance - Power of american natives
5. UX - Master of the universe

The result

Spotify found track 2,3 and 4.
Grooveshark found all of them


Price

Spotify

Spotify has 3 account types. There's Premium which lets you play for unlimited amount time. No ads will be shown. Offline play lists and you can use the service on different devices. This costs 9.99$. But in Sweden we pay 99 SEK which is 14$. The unlimited account lets you play unlimited amount time and no ads. The price 4.99@ or 49 SEK. The third and final account is the free one. You will only be able to play for 10 hours a moth with this account. You can only play a song 5 times and there are ads. 

Score 6 out of 10

Grooveshark 

Similar to Spotify there are 3 account types as well. Anywhere, Plus and the Free account. The accounts has almost the same features.  Anywhere costs 9$ (62 SEK), Plus 6$ (41 SEK). So with these prices, Swedes will benefit if they choose Grooveshark.

Score 9 of 10


End of part 1. Next part I will cover "Using the services on different devices" So stay tuned. 

Part 2 can be found here >>  Battle of the titans : Spotify vs Grooveshark Part 2





6 comments:

  1. you fail to point out that whereas Spotify has the restrictions "You will only be able to play for 10 hours a month with this account. You can only play a song 5 times and there are ads" for its free access, Grooveshark has none of these conditions for its free access, including no Pandora style audio ads.

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  2. So the review is only done with the view of one genre of music ?

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  3. I don't know what browser you uses but your font on Grooveshark i awful and not anywhere near what I see.
    Also you have reviewed the old soon-to-be replaced interface of Grooveshark. The users that are paying already have the new interface. I guess you also can see it by clicking the "Let's do this" button.

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  4. Thank you all for your comments!

    Cassini: I didn't mentioned that no.I will have a conclusion in part 2 where I'll be more specific.

    Anonymous: I would say that I cover 3-4 styles of electronic genre in that test. Not only one. I picked these songs because I knew it would be tricky to find them.

    Rasmus: This is the default design I get when I log in. I've used Firefox,Chrome and Explorer, all of them with the same result. I reviewed Grooveshark how it is today. When the new design will be inserted I might do another review later on.

    Thanks!!

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  5. There's a CHRISTMAS PROMO RIGHT NOW WHERE GROOVESHARK PLUS and ANYWHERE is HALF OFF! unlimited musiccc anywhereeee for half the price! ($3/ mo or $30/yr for plus (no mobile app) or $5/mo or $60/yr for mobile access)

    ends january 1, 2012

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  6. Spotify is legal and Grooveshark IS NOT!!! Obviously the content in GS is bigger! But is ilegal! I can't understand how this site is not down yet!

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