A few months ago the site Grooveshark was brought to my attention (via one of my favorite music discovery sites.
According to Wikipedia, “Grooveshark is an internationally available online music search engine, music streaming service and music recommendation web software application, allowing users to search for, stream, and upload music free of charge that can be played immediately or added to a playlist.”
Grooveshark is my “go to” place when I absolutely need to listen to a particular track by a particular artist, like, right this instance! It seems to have everything. Because of the sheer number of copyrighted songs on the service I was a bit concerned about the legality of it. Again Wikipedia,
Operating in similar fashion to other online services like YouTube and Vimeo, Grooveshark requires users to indemnify Escape Media Group for any losses, liabilities, damages, costs or expenses arising from any breach of the Terms of Service or any allegation that user uploaded content violates intellectual property rights. Users have complained about the unbalanced indemnification protections found in Grooveshark’s EULA. Despite these concerns, no user to date has faced legal action from Grooveshark or third-parties.
That being said, share music that you don’t have copyright to at your own risk.
As I said, there’s a huge variety of music on the site and the good folks at Grooveshark provide an excellent way to embed individual songs and mult-track song lists into you very own web sites. I could image instructors in the humanities wanting to use songs to illustrate particular musical styles, concepts, etc. doing just that.
Here’s how:
1. Go to: http://widgets.grooveshark.com
2. Pick a widget style.
3. Choose a song.
4. Copy the code provided.
e.g.