The key to any decent music player, at least as far as convenience is concerned, is none other than having access to keyboard shortucts. Using a Web-based service like Grooveshark can be a frustrating experience, if each time you want to skip or pause a song, you have to pull the site up to do it.
Now thanks to Groove Shark Control Centre, depending on your set up, you can take advantage of a few convenient keyboard shortcuts.
The little app, which sits in your menu bar, will come come in handy if you happen to be a Mac user, and if you happen to opt for Chrome as your browser. If you fulfill both of those requirements, you can start controlling all your Grooveshark listening through the dedicated Mac media keys, and a few extra shortcuts.
Not only can you pause, skip and like/dislike artists, you can also look up information about the song currently playing. Don’t get too excited though – the information is limited to artist name, song title and album cover. Still that’s better than nothing.
If you happen to use Grooveshark to listen to random playlists or genre stations, you’ll appreciate the final feature available in GSCC – the ability to blacklist artists, meaning that you’ll never have to hear another singer you’re not a fan of ever again. On Grooveshark at least.
Grooveshark is still dealing with its fair share of controversy and law suits. January saw it sued by EMI and forced offline in Germany, but the site is still forging ahead, and introduced its HMTL5 mobile app in the midst of all of that.
Third party developers, like those behind GSCC, have also been hard at work creating apps and sites to enhance the Grooveshark experience. You can find an interesting set of options available here.