Grooveshark

Grooveshark is an online music streaming service available in all countries, except Germany. While listening to music through the service is ad-supported, and therefore free, Grooveshark additionally offers to pay for an 'Anywhere' subscription that brings a few features to improve the user experience.

One of the benefits of this subscription is the availability of this Grooveshark desktop application, which aims to achieve effortless integration with Windows, so that you can listen to music without running a web browser.

The Grooveshark application has exactly the same sleek interface as the Grooveshark web player. This means that you will not need to waste time on understanding how it works. This also implies that you will find the same exact features as the web application provides.

Furthermore, Grooveshark is easy to configure: after installing and launching it, you will be able to listen to music without any extra configuration. Yet, if you want to use keyboard shortcuts, you will have to download and install the 'Keyboard Helper' tool.

When music starts playing, a neat music widget appears on the lower right corner of your screen (configurable in the settings) to show you the title of the song playing and permit you to skip the track if you do not feel like listening to it. However, it vanishes after a few seconds, so you will still have to open the Grooveshark interface if you want to switch music.

The major drawback I could find in this application is the fact that it does not feature an offline mode, unlike most of alternative music players. This means that you will always need to be connected to the Internet for listening to music.

Another disadvantage I found is that Grooveshark requires Adobe Flash Player. I personally dislike this technology, since it is not reliable enough, and it is superseded by the new HTML5 technology.

In conclusion, Grooveshark is a well-designed desktop music player, yet it cannot play music when you are offline, which defeats part of its purpose.