Two new open source projects build on streaming music service Grooveshark, making it possible to download instead of just listen to high-quality MP3 files. Groovejaar and the Firefox plug-in Groove Shredder bypass the restrictions Grooveshark employs to keep on the non-lawsuit side of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Groovejaar is a very small program that requires Java to run, but otherwise requires few memory or power resources. It lists the most popular songs of the day or month, and users can personalize its appearance and functions. None of the music is stored or transmitted by Groovejaar, since the program simply downloads what’s being played on Grooveshark. It will even download the cover art if Grooveshark has it. Groove Shredder is even lighter, since it piggybacks onto the Firefox web browser.
Grooveshark, which has had its own discussions regarding what’s legal in a music service, is not happy about downloaders like these. Part of Grooveshark’s philosophy is to operate a service that eliminates the desire to steal since it lets fans listen to as much music as they want, according to Grooveshark’s director of content acquisition Aaron Ford.
The streaming service has the capability to detect downloaders, and Grooveshark will immediately and permanently block any IP address using one. “We‘ve created innovative monetization models that pay artists, producers, labels, publishers, writers, managers, and promoters the entire music ecosystem while letting users choose how they want to compensate them,” Grooveshark said on its blog.
Related Links:
Groovejaar – http://code.google.com/p/groovejaar
Groove Shredder –https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grooveshredder/
TorrentFreak – http://tinyurl.com/3dr9jdn
HypeBot – http://tinyurl.com/3b5sj4d
http://blog.grooveshark.com/Downloaders
Photo by flickr user acidpix, used under Creative Commons license
