It’s impossible to doubt that social networking sites are poping up for our individual needs. There is no surprise to what Grooveshark is attempting with a strong focus on financial and social contribution among the artists and fans for students (source). What are the main differences between Amie Street, Beatport or ArtistServer? For one, it can be seen as an ‘upgrade’ of Last.fm and audible. But is that enough to be succesful? A venture that Escape Media Group started in October 2006, Grooveshark boasts itself as an online service that rewards you for sharing, reviewing, and discovering new music. Backed by a number of individuals and the University of Florida (source), it is no doubt that they are very confident in their service that will be launch by Fall 2007. Not to mention, the beta stage is next month!
So how serious are they? A group of 3 entrepreneurs with their UF friends, flashy websites, some financial backers, a few press releases, and more importantly, unique experiences in their field, it is without a doubt that they will go far. With Escape Media Group on their back, they are sure to be serious on this game. But how far will they go? How long will they survive?
In such a business where legal sharing is the primary focus, it is valuable to bring in record companies into the picture. No where in their sites or press releases have they mentioned about any form of relationship with, or action towards, establishing viable business with record copmanies. Could they be doing it secretly? Or are they going for the approach that YouTube faced, where they hope to attract record companies when they have grown big, publicly sued but signed a deal in the end? All we know is, they don’t have a backing from a record company, yet?
Not only do we raise questions on their future on the business side of things, we are also raising questions on their technical backend!
The most simple example is, how reliable will it be for us, as users, to upload content to their servers? Will they be using typical HTTP POST commands that may risk breakage? No file resumes? Simple non-tedious batch uploads? How about on the other end of the spectrum? How would they be able to reliably trace who has completed a download? Will the trace be able to ensure that money will go to the recording and publishing companies? Or at least, the artists? What are the procedures of such workflow? Could they really made this all happen within a year?
We are quite sure that Grooveshark will be a PHP-based application. A sound programming language and framework has its own right in places where it is made to fit for. Some argue that if Slashdot and Yahoo! can survive with PHP, then it’s the right tool to use. However, we see that many professional have the tendency to draw away from PHP for large sites. Edwin Martin wrote an article on What I don’t like about PHP that touched on the character of the language. Jonas Maurus looked in detail on why PHP sucks. And Aaron Crane has shared his Experiences of Using PHP in Large Websites. All of them have one common point, scalability can be an issue for PHP technology. But we are also sure that Yahoo! and Slashdot has overcome it. The main question is, how well can they bear the costs with their experience?
The main reason why MuSMo has not chosen PHP, even though it can delivery us a working site rapidly. It won’t be able to deliver us a stable and secure application. It can also divert ourselves from innovating. Worth of investment? Risky. Even though the idea and general direction is very promising. But who am I to say? All I know is, a strong foundation will take a company very very far. 
It will be interesting to see how Grooveshark develops to be one of our direct competitors.