Grooveshark is a fun way to listen to, share and purchase music. The company has been around for a few months now, and in spite of a few growing pains here and there, it just keeps getting better and better. Here’s hoping the folks at Grooveshark manage to escape the clutches of the evil RIAA goon squad (RIP Muxtape).

When I first visited Grooveshark to review the service, it was in a private beta. I gave Grooveshark high marks for music files that worked with any player, the monetization of the service, the social aspects of finding friends and creating private or shared playlists, and the openness to having both signed and unsigned musicians have a place to sell their music. All of the glitches I mentioned in the initial review have since been fixed, showing that Grooveshark is backed by a team serious about its success.

Grooveshark has been making a splash around the social scene over the ensuing months, with an account on Twitter as well as other services like it to better connect with users of the Grooveshark service and other efforts to reach out and ensure the success of its product using the tools available online. That accessibility only adds to its success and enables the company to handle issues with ease.

Yesterday the company launched a fun AutoPlay feature that puts it a step above sites like Pandora. I had the chance to play with it in private beta all weekend, and it works so much better than Pandora or iLike for finding new artists that have a similar sound to what I like, and makes creating playlists from them one-click simple. The launch had a bit of a glitch at first, with a bit of system overload, but thanks to the company’s accessibility to its customers the staff heard about the problem right away and had it fixed quickly and efficiently.

Unlike Pandora, Grooveshark AutoPlay allows you to add or skip as many songs as you’d like on your AutoPlay list – no required slogging through a band that is nothing like what you hoped to hear because of missing some mystical music quota. A simple click of the “smile” or the “frown” lets the AutoPlay feature know how it’s doing in meeting your likes and dislikes. Even better, your AutoPlay list queues right up the next time you log in – convenient.

You can also save your AutoPlay list if you really love it. This means you can come back and find the same list any time you want. Once you have saved an AutoPlay list you can start a new one, or just obsessively listen to the one you saved for a while. This is a great addition to the original GrooveShark interface and it gives you a plethora of new ways to listen to your music and the music of your friends.

Grooveshark was already one of the few sites I made a point to visit a few times a week. The new AutoPlay feature puts Pandora and iLike to shame. It also bumps Grooveshark into my daily visit bookmark list. It’s so much easier to use than other sites for discovering new music, it’s fast becoming a new addiction. Heck, if they found a way to integrate Twitter so I could tweet while I listened I might not leave the site, I like it that much.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 11:45 am under Music, Social Media.

Read more entries by Leslie Poston.
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