Grooveshark Going Social with Revamp
Grooveshark has undertaken a major overhaul of their website and service to bring social elements to the forefront. The company says their first goal is to facilitate the creation of connections between music fans with increased social interactions. The next step will be to connect artists to fans. The revamped site includes artist pages that provide links to upcoming events drawn from a third party service, but in the future artists will be able to manage the content of their own pages. With the social-forward Spotify invading the States, it is no surprise that Grooveshark would be looking to tap into the power of social media, but I do wonder if Grooveshark’s vision of the future of their site doesn’t sound a bit like MySpace.
Grooveshark’s most recent iteration looked much like a cloud-based version of iTunes with a few social aspects added here and there. The relaunch puts social front and center by emphasizing community features and Facebook-like activity streams. Users can comment on each other’s activity and easily share playlists, songs or even complete albums with each other.