Grooveshark, the amazing online music sharing service, has finally been approved by Apple and is now available to download from the AppStore. After allowing the release of apps such as Spotify, Rdio or Pandora, letting the last one of the gang in was only a question of time.
The best thing about the Grooveshark app is that you can test it free for 30 days – even if you don’t have a VIP account. All you need is to log in to the service with your current Grooveshark account (or create one on the spot) and start enjoying mobile music streaming anywhere. After the trial period is over, having a VIP user will be a requisite to continue using the app.
Grooveshark works great on the iPhone. The app is neatly designed and really easy to use. The main screen is Grooveshark’s search engine, where you can start typing your favorite bands and songs right away. At the bottom you have buttons for Favorites, Playlists and Queue, all pretty self-explanatory. The currently playing song screen features a few playback controls, as well as buttons to mark the song as Favorite and turn the Grooveshark radio on or off.
There are many interesting features in Grooveshark, such as being able to make a song available when you’re offline and having a link to buy a specific song directly from iTunes. All of these contribute to make Grooveshark a serious competitor to other similar apps, at a more competitive price (just $3/month for a VIP account) and without the territorial restrictions of Spotify or Pandora, for example. On the downside, Grooveshark doesn’t support multitasking yet, but apparently they’re working on implementing it really soon.
The only question left is then which of all mobile streaming music apps has the best catalog. For me, this is just a question of each user’s musical taste. Mine’s pretty standard, so I’ll probably be happy with Grooveshark. Other people with more refined taste, or who like not so popular bands, will prefer apps with a more extensive catalog. In any case, with Grooveshark being free for 30 days, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t download it and give it a go!
