Grooveshark is launching a new online music streaming service called Grooveshark Lite today that aims at creating a better all-around experience than what you'll find on Last.fm and Pandora. And although it has some issues, it's a service that you'll definitely want to check out that may make you think twice about using its competitors' services.

If Pandora had a love child with Last.fm, its name would be Grooveshark Lite. Grooveshark's service lets you input an artist's name or song and it immediately searches its bank of millions of tunes to find what you're looking for. Once you pick the song you want to hear first, you can click the 'Autoplay' button afterward and Grooveshark Lite does the rest by playing songs that you might like based on your original preference. On Pandora you can't replay a song you just listened to and are limited to the number of tracks you can skip. But during my time with Grooveshark Lite, I was able to replay any song I wanted — it shows a cover flow of albums to trace your steps — and I skipped a slew of songs without any dialog box telling me I couldn't. On top of that, I could also decide if I liked or disliked a song, much like Pandora, so I could keep the songs for later in my queue or get rid of them entirely if they weren't so great.

Grooveshark Lite does a fine job of finding songs that you might like and after searching for a range of artists from Dean Martin to Bob Dylan, I was extremely pleased with the ability to jump from Nat King Cole to Bruce Springsteen and back without a hitch. And although the site is designed to let you enjoy the songs you love, but also find songs you may love and don't even know, it's the first that makes it extremely easy to search for and listen to all the songs you already enjoy.

But not everything Grooveshark Lite offers is great. It's not nearly as social as a site like Last.fm and it's lacking the kind of interaction you would normally find on Last.fm like messaging and friend monitoring. Aside from that, Grooveshark Lite doesn't create "stations" the way Pandora does. That said, you can save any song you listen to and you can create a playlist of songs, which actually makes it easier to find your favorite songs anyway. On top of that, it's not hard to create a station that plays songs that are similar to your favorites — just input the name and let it go.

As much as I tried, it was hard to find faults in Grooveshark Lite. It's extremely well-designed and is easy enough to use for those that are tech-savvy and those that haven't seen a computer in months. More importantly, it gives you full control over the songs you listen to in a way that's simply unprecedented.

While using Grooveshark Lite, I decided to find some songs from every decade and add them to my Queue to be played later. Instead of clicking my way through junky songs that may be somewhat like my favorites, I was practically a DJ and populated my Queue with a group of songs that I really enjoy. After that, I simply let this service go and it played them one after the other.

Grooveshark Lite also lets you buy songs through its own music downloading service. And although it's not nearly as user-friendly as iTunes or Amazon's MP3 service, which makes it extremely easy to search and find songs, it does the trick. After enjoying a song, you can click the "Buy This Song" link on the right pane of the page and it brings you to Grooveshark's store, which then allows you to buy the song in seconds.

When I first heard about Grooveshark Lite, I was skeptical of how useful it was. Wasn't it just jumping into a pond that's already dominated by companies that have left little room for improvement? But after spending some time with this service and getting a feel for just how well it's designed and implemented, it became quickly apparent that being late to the game isn't such a bad thing after all.

In my opinion, Grooveshark Lite is better than both Pandora and Last.fm and it's one of the most exciting and entertaining services I've used in a while. And for someone like me who doesn't tend to like too many new offerings, that's saying a lot.