Grooveshark

What is Grooveshark?

Grooveshark is an online music sharing community that rewards you for sharing your music.

Grooveshark allows you to safely and legally download high quality MP3s.
Grooveshark is a peer to peer program with a massive library of songs.
Grooveshark allows you to interact with other music lovers like yourself.
Grooveshark rewards you for sharing your music, and gives you a cut of the profits for songs you sell.

How does Grooveshark work?

Grooveshark is an attempt by a team of enterprising college students to change the music landscape.
For every song sold in our network, we first pay the label (or artist), then we pay you, then we pay ourselves.
All of the profits from our songs are split with the user 50 / 50.

What type of music will be available?

On Grooveshark you will be able to find any song you can dream of, from a classic Rolling Stones albums to Colombian folk music.

Can I use my music with any music player, such as iTunes or Windows Media Player?

Yes. Music downloaded from Grooveshark can be used in any software that can play MP3s.

Can I use my iPod with the songs I download on Grooveshark? What about other mp3 players?

You can use your iPod, Rio, CD’s, computer, laptop, and just about anything else that plays music.
We put no restrictions on how you use -your- music. Any legal use of the songs you download is okay with us.

What is Sharkbyte?

Sharkbyte is the Grooveshark helper application that allows you to listen or download any song on the website.
It’s also what helps you accrue credit just by having music already on your computer, by allowing users to download your songs similar to other peer-to-peer networks.

Will I get sued if I use Grooveshark?

No, we not only respect the rights of copyright holders, but the writers,
publishers and all other parts of the value chain that is the music industry, and will compensate them fairly.

Is my information going to be safe, private, and within my control?

Yes. Your profile is only as public as you want it to be, and you are not obligated to share music if you dont want to.
We will never sell your information, and we wont use or view your profile data without informing you.
Our system contains no spyware, malware, adware, or other malicious programs.

Do I need an account to access Grooveshark?

Grooveshark is in private Beta, and an account is necessary to access Grooveshark.
You can apply for an account here for free and we’ll tell you when you’re in.

What is Grooveshark made with?

Grooveshark’s web interface runs on the
"LAMP" platform
of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, along with front-end web components in
standards-compliant XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The Grooveshark desktop application, Sharkbyte, is written in Java.

Can I use Grooveshark with Mac OS X / Linux?

The “Sharkbyte” client that facilitates P2P sharing will work on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Many of Grooveshark’s features only require a browser to operate.

How can I meet other people through Grooveshark?

Grooveshark features a social network for music lovers that will allow you to find other people around the world with similar music tastes,
other fans of your favorite artists, and even people within your local community that have musical interests that coincide to your own.
Of course, our privacy settings prevail above all else, and only users who allow public access to their profiles will be findable in the Grooveshark network.

Can I share all the songs I’ve downloaded so far in Grooveshark?

Yes. Your entire musical collection can be shared using Grooveshark. Just keep in mind that your songs have to live up to our quality standards;
incomplete or mislabeled songs are filtered out and will not end up being shared with other users.

Can I promote my own music in Grooveshark? Will I make money if I do this?

Yes, and yes! You are free to market your own songs within Grooveshark,
and sharing your music with others entitles you to a portion of the revenue generated for any song download.

How do the credits work in Grooveshark?

All users are ranked by their contributions to the community.
Contributions include song identification, verifying ID3 tags, moderating, reviewing and recommending music.
The higher your ranking, the more often users will download from your library.

How does Grooveshark handle payments?

Grooveshark will only ask you for your financial information when it becomes necessary -
you won’t need to enter any financial information to access most of the community features of the site.
If you’d like to download music, you can simply enter your credit card, Paypal, checking account, or other payment data into our secure database,
and you can enjoy simple one-click downloads from that point on.

What is DRM?

DRM or Digital Rights Management
is the technology that restricts what you can do with music files.

Labels or Artists

How can I license my music on Grooveshark?

Licensing your music on Grooveshark is a breeze. Head over to our label registration page,
fill out the contact form, download and complete the metadata spreadsheet, and await an email from our payment management team.

Do I need to send you my CDs and hard drives once my music is licensed?

No, the beauty of Grooveshark is that we are using peer-to-peer (p2p) networks to make the integration process as seamless as possible.
Users provide all of the songs, helping to eliminate your distribution costs and allowing you to maximize your bottom line.

What if I can’t find our music on Grooveshark?

In certain cases, if you have a particularly eclectic assortment of music, our users may not have your entire catalog.
By downloading and running the Grooveshark client, you can share your unique finds, and enable users to purchase these songs from your library.

How can I check the status of our account?

MoneyShark is the label interface that allows you to edit, customize, and manage all of your transactions within Grooveshark.
As the application is developed, you will be given deeper analytics tools to help you better manage your catalog.

Updates for MoneyShark will be coming soon, we will keep you posted.

Are you licensed to fully stream our music?

Grooveshark has licenses with ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC for the rights to fully stream all songs under their umbrella.
These streams are used as a promotional vehicle to increase sales of songs in our system. All song streams are encrypted and are not accessible to the end user.

How exactly do credits work?

Whenever you are running Sharkbyte any song in folders you specify are available to be downloaded by other users.
If a user downloads a song from you, part of the price of the song is deposited into your Grooveshark credit account.
You can use these funds to buy any other song on Grooveshark.

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