I was pretty happy with anywhere.fm myself. Great user interface for four years ago, they let me upload my entire music library and listen socially with others. I had fun checking out TLB's extensive music collection and finding other people with interesting tastes and playing their music without even meeting them. Never experienced that kind of discovery before or since.
One of the most exciting YC companies and I could only imagine where they would have gone if they'd had a great funding round and participated in the Facebook platform revolution. They could've been everything Spotify already is before this letter was even written.
P.S. Congrats to Sachin on Connected being acquired earlier today!
I have found that Grooveshark actually has much better content selection, as well. Most of my listening is through Pandora One, but when I want a specific song I have never failed to find it on Grooveshark, but frequently cannot find it on Spotify.
Same here. Tried a friend's Spotify account, and I couldn't find any of the music I've been listening to recently. Most of the stuff I listen to is relatively new that I find through The Hype Machine. Seems to me like Spotify is going to be pretty slow to add new, non-mainstream music. /hipster
grooveshark is great but it could be better. What I like about Spotify compared to Grooveshark is their "playlist" feature where it shows top songs in the "US" or "UK". I know grooveshark offers that but most of the songs sometimes are really old while Spotify refreshes the list every so often. Also - I would use Grooveshark more if it had a better "ratings" feature for radio. When I thumb up/thumb down a song - it doesnt take into account why i did that (such as what Pandora does) and it keeps giving me music I dislike. I want to discover new music - Grooveshark allows this but a lot my friends don't have a Grooveshark account but still use the service w/o signin (now the ones who do use it - I love, since I can see what exactly they listen to and discover new music).
I have no idea if what grooveshark is doing is sustainable, but I've talked to others, and they concur.