10 ms·

Grooveshark's new Javascript/HTML interface

254 points by codejoust 16y ago

ralphc 16y ago
Doesn't work on the Galaxy Tab. Tried Browser, Dolphin, Skyfire & Fennec. Best I get is the spinning pinwheel after I pick a search.
MykalM 16y ago
you have just became my favorite website :)
- jmtulloss 16y ago
  I would be interested why this is what did it for you? I work at Rdio, which is a competitor that has been HTML/JS/CSS with a flash player since the beginning. What about this makes you like Grooveshark more?
  - rorymarinich 16y ago
    Yay, customer surveys! I like those! I actually have an Rdio account, because I have a curious bias towards web sites with sexier names/subconsciously believe I am judged by the names of web sites I use. When I joined I had the impression that Rdio would only let me listen to unlimited songs if I paid you money. Now I see that's not the case, so I'll give your service a go. First thing I don't like is that you don't give me a big search bar. I'm not paying you money. I don't want to log in. I even resent Grooveshark's making me log in to share songs, that's how lazy I am. (I do have a Grooveshark account, which I rarely use.) So the fact that your front page looks more like a product than like an easy service, that scares me away. I think the two most common-looking site designs are: search bars and product pages. Product pages are universally ugly and I run away from them actively. Search bars I will type in something and see if the engine meets my whims. So Grooveshark's front page sells more. Rdio fails the Cardiacs test: http://www.rdio.com/#/search/cardiacs/ http://www.rdio.com/#/search/cardiacs/ returns nothing, whereas Grooveshark gives me almost their full catalogue. Cardiacs is my general test of band obscurity: If you have them you're bound to have most of what I want, and if you don't then I trust you less. (You both fail my Victoria Pipe Police Band test, which is pretty sad, because I request my fervent demand for pipe music be sated. >:( ) When I go to a band's page, I get something that looks like informational bullshit. Which is nice — I use Last.fm for my band-related nonsense — but when I want a music player I want small entries that show me as much music as possible. If I search a band I want three albums on my screen simultaneously. Grooveshark gives me a LOT of music, and fast. But here's the clincher: When I go to play music, you ask me to sign in or register. BAM! I'm looking for a new site. I don't like giving out my email address. I don't like picking new secure passwords. I will only do it if I think you're worth the effort. Right now I use three sites to listen to music. I use Grooveshark, or I use Bandcamp, or I use TheSixtyOne. Occasionally I use Pandora but that's WAY rare. Grooveshark's for general music hunting; Bandcamp is for searching for and buying music, and listening to musicians I know use it (like Sufjan Stevens); TheSixtyOne is when I want to explore random music. Each one is designed specifically to mimic my usage pattern. They look the way I want them to look. Rdio looks like a college design project. (I'm not saying it looks bad. I go to a design college.) While it's pretty, it's not very functional — you have a lot of design choices that go against the way I'm trying to use the site. Kind of like when search engines make gangly content-crammed designs that stop me from actually finding what I'm searching for. I'm going to stick to the stripped-down tool that does what I want when I want it. If you want to compete with Grooveshark, go slimmer, more efficient, and sexier. Make it easier for me to find the music I want than Grooveshark, easier to share, easier to — anything. If you don't, I have no reason to even contemplate switching. The good news is that I'm not loyal to Grooveshark beyond my affection for its design; because I don't have an account or use more features, I'm not entrenched. If you do something convincing I'd consider moving over. Feel free to discuss this more with me, either here or in email. I love discussing design philosophy.
codejoust 16y ago
It looks like they're utilizing js templates and localization along with a lot of jQuery and JMVC.
invisible 16y ago
This is an amazing rewrite from the Flash version - well worth the time they put into this one. They have some really dedicated staff members and some great talent on the team.
- tycoffee 16y ago
  i think this was a great move. much faster than the previous flash-based site. grooveshark just keeps getting better and better, every month.
- shock-value 16y ago
  It's nice and probably uses way less system resources, but it definitely isn't as "polished" as the Flash version was. Not sure if that's a limitation of the HTML5/JS/CSS combo or if they just need to work on it more. It's mostly just little things, like missing visual fade transitions or a UI that doesn't look like it's been repeatedly bleached. But they add up to a noticeable difference, I think--the HTML5 app just isn't as vibrant. That being said, I always thought their Flash app was amazingly slick and polished, so it's a tough act to follow I suppose. EDIT: Plus if they are going to go this far with HTML5 it'd be awesome if they could cut the Flash cord entirely. Not sure if that's technically possible though.
  - wwortiz 16y ago
    The responsiveness is a much nicer feature than visual transitions and the such, and for a start of a new but similar design I quite like it.
    - SkyMarshal 16y ago
      I know the Grooveshark fans who are Linux users will appreciate the increased stability as well. On Ubuntu 10.04 x64 Flash is pretty stable for me, except when I've got 40 Firefox tabs open (yes I'm seeing a therapist about that) and then try to run some Flash app that's more complex than a mere Youtube video. No more popping htop to manually kill nspluginwrapper that's in some kind of infinite loop ftw.
mynameisraj 16y ago
Does anybody know what this is written in/on, specifically? JavaScript/HTML seems a bit vague to me.
- codejoust 16y ago
  As far as I can tell, it's written with PHP serverside, Javascript (jQuery JMVC) and HTML/CSS. The actual music player is a hidden flash widget, but the song selection, playback, and entire interface is in HTML/CSS not Adobe flash as previously. (And the adobe flash version had horrible performance on linux).
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
    - codejoust 16y ago
      I just looked at the code - I'm pretty sure grooveshark is calling a flash object through javascript to play the music.
      - zmitri 16y ago
        Its probably something similar to SoundManager2, which you can learn more about here: http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/ http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/ I've used it in a project of mine which allows you to upload and control your music library like iTunes using an html/js interface.
        cowpewter 16y ago
        It's an in-house player. I'm the author. We have a fairly complicated streaming setup, so it's written specifically to work with our internal API.
        nextparadigms 16y ago
pogos 16y ago
Great work! Linux users now officially love you :-)
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  Grooveshark has been working fine on Ubuntu for me. What were the issues people reported? edit: just tried the site in Firefox ; can't even get the sign-in form to react. :( Seems OK in Chrome, but at least the Flash version worked in FF for me.
  - makmanalp 16y ago
    Laggy as hell flash UI.
  - wyclif 16y ago
    I keep having to reload in the latest Chromium builds.
  - cowpewter 16y ago
    If you're really having trouble, the flash version is still available at http://retro.grooveshark.com http://retro.grooveshark.com We tested pretty extensively in Firefox, but there's always things that can go wrong. Also if you think you have any info that will help us fix it, hit up the Contact Us link at the bottom of http://help.grooveshark.com/ http://help.grooveshark.com/
    - jamesbritt 16y ago
      Well, if I run FF from a different account it seems OK, so my guess is that the scripting is not playing well with Greasemonkey or Firebug or some other add-on. So, on the one had, the trouble is at my end, but on the other hand most sites have no trouble with my add-on arrangements, so there's something that's at least a little sensitive in the GS scripting.
      - jamesbritt 16y ago
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
asnyder 16y ago
Apparently the latest version of Opera isn't modern enough. I'm really sick of projects blatantly not supporting Opera. There's nothing wrong with it. Update: Come on there's no reason to downvote this. At least explain why you're downvoting this, for example, Opera killed your puppy.
- emef 16y ago
  You can't blame projects for not immediately supporting your specific browser. Most teams develop for the standards. If your browser doesn't conform to the standards that work for major browsers, then it's just harder on the developers.
  - asnyder 16y ago
    Opera does conform to standards, it has for some time, sometimes better than the other browsers. For example, there's no need to prefix CSS3 attributes with -moz. What is unfortunately happening is rather than testing to see if the site will work in Opera, developers just exclude it. They've made lots of progress over the past few years to get their browser up to snuff. I just recently switched to Opera after Chrome started lagging during the 1.6 update.
    - emef 16y ago
      Okay well I didn't mean to insinuate that they don't conform to standards in general. But you can see that if the developers prioritize their time based on browser usage, Opera might be brushed aside at first. Idealy, developers could target one set of standards and their product would be functional across all browsers that implement them. In general, the bigger browsers all act relatively the same (not IE) when standards-compliant code is used, so if what works for them doesn't in Opera, then that's a problem.
    - sgk284 16y ago
      Chrome constantly runs tests against thousands of the most popular sites to make sure they render right. It's not the developers' jobs to make their sites work with Opera (especially when it works in IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari). It is Opera's job to make sure they render sites comparably to other leading browsers. If that means they rip out their rendering engine and replace it with Webkit, so be it.
ubojan 16y ago
I've spent a couple of minutes searching for 'My Music' and 'Favorites' lists. Just click on your username and they are in menu bar left to the search field. Beside that, great interface and fast loading.
- ubojan 16y ago
  ooops, I used grooveshark ads-remover chrome extension, which was blocking side menu
tech_and_beyond 16y ago
I am a big big fan of grooveshark. I work in a user interface team for a large blue chip company. The amount of work, time, dedication, motivation that goes into developing an intuitive user interface is huge. This guys just make it look as if it was a breeze.... If you could do a blog post as you have done on the architecture part, it will be great :).
jdbeast00 16y ago
Is there any way to make a grooveshark desktop version that uses this same html5 interface? I love how the next/prev buttons on my mac work with that interface (using gs desktop helper)
- varaon 16y ago
  You could use a single-site browser like Fluid: http://fluidapp.com/ http://fluidapp.com/
- cowpewter 16y ago
  Porting the new site to AIR (with the same support for the desktop helpers) is on my todo list.
bbulkow 16y ago
Whatever you think of the user interface, please don't use Grooveshark. Their business model is either illegal or immoral. You will get mail from copyright owners telling you cease and desist from accounts that you've closed in the past - Grooveshark will claim that you're sharing the music, and you have legal responsibility, not them. Mails to close accounts go unanswered. And if you work there - shame on you.
- TallGuyShort 16y ago
  Can you elaborate on that? You make some very inflammatory statements, and you neither cite a source or properly describe your experience. A brief overview of the citations on the Wikipedia page show that they have dealt with legal problems directly and made arrangements with a lot of the concerned parties. As a long time user, what you say flies in the face of everything I've heard and experienced, so can you back up any of your statements?
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  Do you have any links or references to back this up? I've never heard this claim before.
  - CopyrightTroll 16y ago
    I think that there is a Copyright Troll, and we should ignore them. They're getting upset because they don't like that we can hear the music first before we buy it.
- invisible 16y ago
  You are entitled to your opinion, but if you use Youtube you have no place to talk (and Google seems to think Youtube is pretty legit). It's the same business model, just a different market.
  - lftl 16y ago
    While I don't think YouTube was nearly as explicit about it before Google owned it, it does at least now tell you on the upload page not to upload anything to which you don't own the copyright. In a quick glance at Grooveshark the only place I saw any mention of this issue was buried deep in their TOS. They in essence encourage you to upload copyrighted works so you can access your music anywhere, and from a first glance at the interface it's not even excessively clear that you're sharing your music with others by uploading (as opposed to it being a private library). This of course is all further complicated by the fact that they apparently have licenses with some labels, and not others. I would presumably be able to legally upload some music, but not all (I guess YouTube actually has the same issue there). Add to this the fact that the RIAA has shown it doesn't mind suing end users at all, and I wouldn't upload anything to Grooveshark. Incidentally I also wouldn't upload anything copyrighted to YouTube.
pvsnp 16y ago
One thing I noticed is now the ad blocker (on Chrome) catches the ads and doesn't show them. Since I don't have a VIP account with them and the ads aren't as intrusive as Pandora/Last.fm services, I decided to whitelist listen.grooveshark.com to show ads. It works beautifully though, Flash on Linux was such a pain.
zhyder 16y ago
How come the RIAA is okay with Grooveshark streaming any music at any time? Pandora has many more restrictions in their free version to qualify for "internet radio" licensing rates.
- imtyler 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure there's a legal loophole occurring here. All of the music on Grooveshark.com is uploaded by the users and Grooveshark is not responsible for the content. If the song is copyright it's user who broke the law, not Grooveshark. It's a similar concept to copyright videos on Youtube.
  - noarchy 16y ago
    I can't imagine that this will hold up, in the long run. Torrent sites get taken down without even hosting actual content, the way that Grooveshark does. So wouldn't it simply be a matter of time before they either cut some sort of deal with the RIAA, or get shutdown completely?
    - kevingailey 16y ago
      It worked for YouTube, it its heyday it was all illegal content. They've already got a deal with EMI and prolly Universal soon (they're suing Grooveshark,but that's the same way they got the EMI liscense) Also they supposedly put a chunk of cash in an escrow account for when the labels come knocking.
  - zhyder 16y ago
    You're talking about DMCA safe harbor provisions, which would only apply if Grooveshark promptly took down content when requested by copyright owners. Further, Grooveshark isn't even claiming the service is for "user generated music". (YouTube is different on both those points.)
    - cowpewter 16y ago
      http://grooveshark.com/dmca http://grooveshark.com/dmca
flexterra 16y ago
awesome job
n-named 16y ago
You guys are my number one favorite. I hope you don't get shut down. <3
sgt 16y ago
Apologies for my ignorance, but I've been listening to a couple of songs now, and I can't figure out how to purchase them?
- cowpewter 16y ago
  It is a streaming only website. We do have links out to Amazon mp3 and iTunes...if you right-click a song in the player, there should be a 'buy song' option, or if you are viewing a list of songs, there is a dropdown arrow on each row for options - 'buy song' is listed there as well.
  - vikramhaer 16y ago
    You should try and make it more obvious, I'm sure the additional revenue from itunes/amazon referrals would help!
quizbiz 16y ago
How do they hide the source code if it's all Javascript/HTML?
- aw3c2 16y ago
  Their backend (which you do not see) is much more important than the frontend.
Locke1689 16y ago
Fantastic -- I'm a Grooveshark VIP member and have been since shortly after launch. I still think it was one of the best investments I've made in the past couple years -- it's completely changed how I listen to music (especially with the mobile versions). I wish you guys the best of luck and thank you sincerely for continuing to innovate.
CopyrightTroll 16y ago
I switched back to http://retro.grooveshark.com http://retro.grooveshark.com It's more refined, runs fine on Windows, and it has more features. The Javascript version is too chunky for my taste. I can't see the song titles, overlays don't work, I'm not getting tips, etc.
kuldeep_kap 16y ago
This an awesome step for Grooveshark. Now let the greasemonkey or chrome extension customization scripts begin. Would love to see, what users come up with. I already coded new ad remover for my self. Couple ideas I have are as follows, 1. Last.fm scrobbler 2. Lyrics plugin (same as winamp has) 3. put 'now playing' list at the right sidebar 3. make 'now playing' list thinner. etc.
- sundarurfriend 16y ago
  > This an awesome step for Grooveshark. [...] I already coded new ad remover for my self. Shhhh... Don't make them regret doing it. :)
neuromancer2600 16y ago
Congrats on the design! Got me going intuitively. And there's even some rare songs up. Nice work!!
keyle 16y ago
Wow they've done an awesome job. Another massive blow for Adobe, losing the battle once again (and I'm a flash developer)
HaloZero 16y ago
Question for the developers. How was JVMC? Was it very useful using the MVC format in your JS, did you end up using it mainly for classes or did you do the whole MVC format? Why JMVC over something like Backbone? A write up on this in a blog would be awesome. Was Javascript templating useful? It seems to be me that it would be very slow (though faster than doing async request to servers I suppose).
- encoderer 16y ago
  Source? (EDIT: Nevermind, I see the GS devs on here mentioning it) As a project lead at my last job I championed jmvc for a new project. We had mostly good results but there was always a couple developers who were against it (and who IMO worked to undermine it). We were building a very ajax-heavy UI for an Ad network. Think.. Adwords UI meets MailChimp UI. In our case, my biggest worry was how easy it is to write spaghetti JS. A classic example is a page with several JS includes and they all are binding to the same event (or to different events on the same element). You're in one file working and you have funny results and you only then discover the event handlers in the other file and then you have to refactor the whole mess. We actually had that a lot in a previous project. Also, 2 things jmvc did that excited me: 1. Easier JS unit tests. 2. Fixtures! You can build and test the JS without relying on the server to send you the json you need.
decadentcactus 16y ago
I visited Grooveshark just yesterday, and I just thought it was a flash rewrite. I did like the theme a lot, but the only sad part was my playlist was gone >:( (didn't have an account, it was just saved as cookie or whatever)
VMG 16y ago
So what is the plan for Grooveshark Desktop?
- wanderr 16y ago
  It's getting cnverted too, but noy until we can port the API that allows global keyboard shprtcut helpers.
meese_ 16y ago
The Defacer Safari & Chrome extensions (http://babelstudios.se/defacer/ http://babelstudios.se/defacer/, https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ikfbfahhinbemojiloekflkfeeplnibe https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ikfbfahhinbemoji...) seem to break this (just shows up a blank page)... any way to fix this?
enanoretozon 16y ago
I love it! I can finally use middle-click to open stuff on another tab.
simonista 16y ago
Really weird scrolling on Safari 5.0.3 on snow leopard. The background flickers through the search results. Otherwise really cool.
lg 16y ago
Never used GrooveShark before but this is pretty cool. Wonder why they don't have playlist ratings though (as far as I can tell)? When I do a search for playlists I'd like to see what other people thought of them before I click through each one.
nik61 16y ago
This is a totally opaque interface that hardly works at all as far as I can see. Completely uninformative, dumb, not functional in any real way. What is going on? Why do all these other think it is great? It is not.

254 points by codejoust 16y ago

Doesn't work on the Galaxy Tab. Tried Browser, Dolphin, Skyfire & Fennec. Best I get is the spinning pinwheel after I pick a search.

MykalM 16y ago

you have just became my favorite website :)

jmtulloss 16y ago
I would be interested why this is what did it for you? I work at Rdio, which is a competitor that has been HTML/JS/CSS with a flash player since the beginning. What about this makes you like Grooveshark more?
- rorymarinich 16y ago
  Yay, customer surveys! I like those! I actually have an Rdio account, because I have a curious bias towards web sites with sexier names/subconsciously believe I am judged by the names of web sites I use. When I joined I had the impression that Rdio would only let me listen to unlimited songs if I paid you money. Now I see that's not the case, so I'll give your service a go. First thing I don't like is that you don't give me a big search bar. I'm not paying you money. I don't want to log in. I even resent Grooveshark's making me log in to share songs, that's how lazy I am. (I do have a Grooveshark account, which I rarely use.) So the fact that your front page looks more like a product than like an easy service, that scares me away. I think the two most common-looking site designs are: search bars and product pages. Product pages are universally ugly and I run away from them actively. Search bars I will type in something and see if the engine meets my whims. So Grooveshark's front page sells more. Rdio fails the Cardiacs test: http://www.rdio.com/#/search/cardiacs/ http://www.rdio.com/#/search/cardiacs/ returns nothing, whereas Grooveshark gives me almost their full catalogue. Cardiacs is my general test of band obscurity: If you have them you're bound to have most of what I want, and if you don't then I trust you less. (You both fail my Victoria Pipe Police Band test, which is pretty sad, because I request my fervent demand for pipe music be sated. >:( ) When I go to a band's page, I get something that looks like informational bullshit. Which is nice — I use Last.fm for my band-related nonsense — but when I want a music player I want small entries that show me as much music as possible. If I search a band I want three albums on my screen simultaneously. Grooveshark gives me a LOT of music, and fast. But here's the clincher: When I go to play music, you ask me to sign in or register. BAM! I'm looking for a new site. I don't like giving out my email address. I don't like picking new secure passwords. I will only do it if I think you're worth the effort. Right now I use three sites to listen to music. I use Grooveshark, or I use Bandcamp, or I use TheSixtyOne. Occasionally I use Pandora but that's WAY rare. Grooveshark's for general music hunting; Bandcamp is for searching for and buying music, and listening to musicians I know use it (like Sufjan Stevens); TheSixtyOne is when I want to explore random music. Each one is designed specifically to mimic my usage pattern. They look the way I want them to look. Rdio looks like a college design project. (I'm not saying it looks bad. I go to a design college.) While it's pretty, it's not very functional — you have a lot of design choices that go against the way I'm trying to use the site. Kind of like when search engines make gangly content-crammed designs that stop me from actually finding what I'm searching for. I'm going to stick to the stripped-down tool that does what I want when I want it. If you want to compete with Grooveshark, go slimmer, more efficient, and sexier. Make it easier for me to find the music I want than Grooveshark, easier to share, easier to — anything. If you don't, I have no reason to even contemplate switching. The good news is that I'm not loyal to Grooveshark beyond my affection for its design; because I don't have an account or use more features, I'm not entrenched. If you do something convincing I'd consider moving over. Feel free to discuss this more with me, either here or in email. I love discussing design philosophy.

codejoust 16y ago

It looks like they're utilizing js templates and localization along with a lot of jQuery and JMVC.

invisible 16y ago

This is an amazing rewrite from the Flash version - well worth the time they put into this one. They have some really dedicated staff members and some great talent on the team.

tycoffee 16y ago
i think this was a great move. much faster than the previous flash-based site. grooveshark just keeps getting better and better, every month.
shock-value 16y ago
It's nice and probably uses way less system resources, but it definitely isn't as "polished" as the Flash version was. Not sure if that's a limitation of the HTML5/JS/CSS combo or if they just need to work on it more. It's mostly just little things, like missing visual fade transitions or a UI that doesn't look like it's been repeatedly bleached. But they add up to a noticeable difference, I think--the HTML5 app just isn't as vibrant. That being said, I always thought their Flash app was amazingly slick and polished, so it's a tough act to follow I suppose. EDIT: Plus if they are going to go this far with HTML5 it'd be awesome if they could cut the Flash cord entirely. Not sure if that's technically possible though.
- wwortiz 16y ago
  The responsiveness is a much nicer feature than visual transitions and the such, and for a start of a new but similar design I quite like it.
  - SkyMarshal 16y ago
    I know the Grooveshark fans who are Linux users will appreciate the increased stability as well. On Ubuntu 10.04 x64 Flash is pretty stable for me, except when I've got 40 Firefox tabs open (yes I'm seeing a therapist about that) and then try to run some Flash app that's more complex than a mere Youtube video. No more popping htop to manually kill nspluginwrapper that's in some kind of infinite loop ftw.

mynameisraj 16y ago

Does anybody know what this is written in/on, specifically? JavaScript/HTML seems a bit vague to me.

codejoust 16y ago
As far as I can tell, it's written with PHP serverside, Javascript (jQuery JMVC) and HTML/CSS. The actual music player is a hidden flash widget, but the song selection, playback, and entire interface is in HTML/CSS not Adobe flash as previously. (And the adobe flash version had horrible performance on linux).
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - codejoust 16y ago
    I just looked at the code - I'm pretty sure grooveshark is calling a flash object through javascript to play the music.
    - zmitri 16y ago
      Its probably something similar to SoundManager2, which you can learn more about here: http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/ http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/ I've used it in a project of mine which allows you to upload and control your music library like iTunes using an html/js interface.
      - cowpewter 16y ago
        It's an in-house player. I'm the author. We have a fairly complicated streaming setup, so it's written specifically to work with our internal API.
        nextparadigms 16y ago

pogos 16y ago

Great work! Linux users now officially love you :-)

jamesbritt 16y ago
Grooveshark has been working fine on Ubuntu for me. What were the issues people reported? edit: just tried the site in Firefox ; can't even get the sign-in form to react. :( Seems OK in Chrome, but at least the Flash version worked in FF for me.
- makmanalp 16y ago
  Laggy as hell flash UI.
- wyclif 16y ago
  I keep having to reload in the latest Chromium builds.
- cowpewter 16y ago
  If you're really having trouble, the flash version is still available at http://retro.grooveshark.com http://retro.grooveshark.com We tested pretty extensively in Firefox, but there's always things that can go wrong. Also if you think you have any info that will help us fix it, hit up the Contact Us link at the bottom of http://help.grooveshark.com/ http://help.grooveshark.com/
  - jamesbritt 16y ago
    Well, if I run FF from a different account it seems OK, so my guess is that the scripting is not playing well with Greasemonkey or Firebug or some other add-on. So, on the one had, the trouble is at my end, but on the other hand most sites have no trouble with my add-on arrangements, so there's something that's at least a little sensitive in the GS scripting.
    - jamesbritt 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

asnyder 16y ago

Apparently the latest version of Opera isn't modern enough. I'm really sick of projects blatantly not supporting Opera. There's nothing wrong with it. Update: Come on there's no reason to downvote this. At least explain why you're downvoting this, for example, Opera killed your puppy.

emef 16y ago
You can't blame projects for not immediately supporting your specific browser. Most teams develop for the standards. If your browser doesn't conform to the standards that work for major browsers, then it's just harder on the developers.
- asnyder 16y ago
  Opera does conform to standards, it has for some time, sometimes better than the other browsers. For example, there's no need to prefix CSS3 attributes with -moz. What is unfortunately happening is rather than testing to see if the site will work in Opera, developers just exclude it. They've made lots of progress over the past few years to get their browser up to snuff. I just recently switched to Opera after Chrome started lagging during the 1.6 update.
  - emef 16y ago
    Okay well I didn't mean to insinuate that they don't conform to standards in general. But you can see that if the developers prioritize their time based on browser usage, Opera might be brushed aside at first. Idealy, developers could target one set of standards and their product would be functional across all browsers that implement them. In general, the bigger browsers all act relatively the same (not IE) when standards-compliant code is used, so if what works for them doesn't in Opera, then that's a problem.
  - sgk284 16y ago
    Chrome constantly runs tests against thousands of the most popular sites to make sure they render right. It's not the developers' jobs to make their sites work with Opera (especially when it works in IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari). It is Opera's job to make sure they render sites comparably to other leading browsers. If that means they rip out their rendering engine and replace it with Webkit, so be it.

ubojan 16y ago

I've spent a couple of minutes searching for 'My Music' and 'Favorites' lists. Just click on your username and they are in menu bar left to the search field. Beside that, great interface and fast loading.

ubojan 16y ago
ooops, I used grooveshark ads-remover chrome extension, which was blocking side menu

tech_and_beyond 16y ago

I am a big big fan of grooveshark. I work in a user interface team for a large blue chip company. The amount of work, time, dedication, motivation that goes into developing an intuitive user interface is huge. This guys just make it look as if it was a breeze.... If you could do a blog post as you have done on the architecture part, it will be great :).

jdbeast00 16y ago

Is there any way to make a grooveshark desktop version that uses this same html5 interface? I love how the next/prev buttons on my mac work with that interface (using gs desktop helper)

varaon 16y ago
You could use a single-site browser like Fluid: http://fluidapp.com/ http://fluidapp.com/
cowpewter 16y ago
Porting the new site to AIR (with the same support for the desktop helpers) is on my todo list.

bbulkow 16y ago

Whatever you think of the user interface, please don't use Grooveshark. Their business model is either illegal or immoral. You will get mail from copyright owners telling you cease and desist from accounts that you've closed in the past - Grooveshark will claim that you're sharing the music, and you have legal responsibility, not them. Mails to close accounts go unanswered. And if you work there - shame on you.

TallGuyShort 16y ago
Can you elaborate on that? You make some very inflammatory statements, and you neither cite a source or properly describe your experience. A brief overview of the citations on the Wikipedia page show that they have dealt with legal problems directly and made arrangements with a lot of the concerned parties. As a long time user, what you say flies in the face of everything I've heard and experienced, so can you back up any of your statements?
jamesbritt 16y ago
Do you have any links or references to back this up? I've never heard this claim before.
- CopyrightTroll 16y ago
  I think that there is a Copyright Troll, and we should ignore them. They're getting upset because they don't like that we can hear the music first before we buy it.
invisible 16y ago
You are entitled to your opinion, but if you use Youtube you have no place to talk (and Google seems to think Youtube is pretty legit). It's the same business model, just a different market.
- lftl 16y ago
  While I don't think YouTube was nearly as explicit about it before Google owned it, it does at least now tell you on the upload page not to upload anything to which you don't own the copyright. In a quick glance at Grooveshark the only place I saw any mention of this issue was buried deep in their TOS. They in essence encourage you to upload copyrighted works so you can access your music anywhere, and from a first glance at the interface it's not even excessively clear that you're sharing your music with others by uploading (as opposed to it being a private library). This of course is all further complicated by the fact that they apparently have licenses with some labels, and not others. I would presumably be able to legally upload some music, but not all (I guess YouTube actually has the same issue there). Add to this the fact that the RIAA has shown it doesn't mind suing end users at all, and I wouldn't upload anything to Grooveshark. Incidentally I also wouldn't upload anything copyrighted to YouTube.

pvsnp 16y ago

One thing I noticed is now the ad blocker (on Chrome) catches the ads and doesn't show them. Since I don't have a VIP account with them and the ads aren't as intrusive as Pandora/Last.fm services, I decided to whitelist listen.grooveshark.com to show ads. It works beautifully though, Flash on Linux was such a pain.

zhyder 16y ago

How come the RIAA is okay with Grooveshark streaming any music at any time? Pandora has many more restrictions in their free version to qualify for "internet radio" licensing rates.

imtyler 16y ago
I'm pretty sure there's a legal loophole occurring here. All of the music on Grooveshark.com is uploaded by the users and Grooveshark is not responsible for the content. If the song is copyright it's user who broke the law, not Grooveshark. It's a similar concept to copyright videos on Youtube.
- noarchy 16y ago
  I can't imagine that this will hold up, in the long run. Torrent sites get taken down without even hosting actual content, the way that Grooveshark does. So wouldn't it simply be a matter of time before they either cut some sort of deal with the RIAA, or get shutdown completely?
  - kevingailey 16y ago
    It worked for YouTube, it its heyday it was all illegal content. They've already got a deal with EMI and prolly Universal soon (they're suing Grooveshark,but that's the same way they got the EMI liscense) Also they supposedly put a chunk of cash in an escrow account for when the labels come knocking.
- zhyder 16y ago
  You're talking about DMCA safe harbor provisions, which would only apply if Grooveshark promptly took down content when requested by copyright owners. Further, Grooveshark isn't even claiming the service is for "user generated music". (YouTube is different on both those points.)
  - cowpewter 16y ago
    http://grooveshark.com/dmca http://grooveshark.com/dmca

flexterra 16y ago

awesome job

n-named 16y ago

You guys are my number one favorite. I hope you don't get shut down. <3

sgt 16y ago

Apologies for my ignorance, but I've been listening to a couple of songs now, and I can't figure out how to purchase them?

cowpewter 16y ago
It is a streaming only website. We do have links out to Amazon mp3 and iTunes...if you right-click a song in the player, there should be a 'buy song' option, or if you are viewing a list of songs, there is a dropdown arrow on each row for options - 'buy song' is listed there as well.
- vikramhaer 16y ago
  You should try and make it more obvious, I'm sure the additional revenue from itunes/amazon referrals would help!

quizbiz 16y ago

How do they hide the source code if it's all Javascript/HTML?

aw3c2 16y ago
Their backend (which you do not see) is much more important than the frontend.

Locke1689 16y ago

Fantastic -- I'm a Grooveshark VIP member and have been since shortly after launch. I still think it was one of the best investments I've made in the past couple years -- it's completely changed how I listen to music (especially with the mobile versions). I wish you guys the best of luck and thank you sincerely for continuing to innovate.

CopyrightTroll 16y ago

I switched back to http://retro.grooveshark.com http://retro.grooveshark.com It's more refined, runs fine on Windows, and it has more features. The Javascript version is too chunky for my taste. I can't see the song titles, overlays don't work, I'm not getting tips, etc.

kuldeep_kap 16y ago

This an awesome step for Grooveshark. Now let the greasemonkey or chrome extension customization scripts begin. Would love to see, what users come up with. I already coded new ad remover for my self. Couple ideas I have are as follows, 1. Last.fm scrobbler 2. Lyrics plugin (same as winamp has) 3. put 'now playing' list at the right sidebar 3. make 'now playing' list thinner. etc.

sundarurfriend 16y ago
> This an awesome step for Grooveshark. [...] I already coded new ad remover for my self. Shhhh... Don't make them regret doing it. :)

neuromancer2600 16y ago

Congrats on the design! Got me going intuitively. And there's even some rare songs up. Nice work!!

keyle 16y ago

Wow they've done an awesome job. Another massive blow for Adobe, losing the battle once again (and I'm a flash developer)

HaloZero 16y ago

Question for the developers. How was JVMC? Was it very useful using the MVC format in your JS, did you end up using it mainly for classes or did you do the whole MVC format? Why JMVC over something like Backbone? A write up on this in a blog would be awesome. Was Javascript templating useful? It seems to be me that it would be very slow (though faster than doing async request to servers I suppose).

encoderer 16y ago
Source? (EDIT: Nevermind, I see the GS devs on here mentioning it) As a project lead at my last job I championed jmvc for a new project. We had mostly good results but there was always a couple developers who were against it (and who IMO worked to undermine it). We were building a very ajax-heavy UI for an Ad network. Think.. Adwords UI meets MailChimp UI. In our case, my biggest worry was how easy it is to write spaghetti JS. A classic example is a page with several JS includes and they all are binding to the same event (or to different events on the same element). You're in one file working and you have funny results and you only then discover the event handlers in the other file and then you have to refactor the whole mess. We actually had that a lot in a previous project. Also, 2 things jmvc did that excited me: 1. Easier JS unit tests. 2. Fixtures! You can build and test the JS without relying on the server to send you the json you need.

decadentcactus 16y ago

I visited Grooveshark just yesterday, and I just thought it was a flash rewrite. I did like the theme a lot, but the only sad part was my playlist was gone >:( (didn't have an account, it was just saved as cookie or whatever)

VMG 16y ago

So what is the plan for Grooveshark Desktop?

wanderr 16y ago
It's getting cnverted too, but noy until we can port the API that allows global keyboard shprtcut helpers.

meese_ 16y ago

The Defacer Safari & Chrome extensions (http://babelstudios.se/defacer/ http://babelstudios.se/defacer/, https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ikfbfahhinbemojiloekflkfeeplnibe https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ikfbfahhinbemoji...) seem to break this (just shows up a blank page)... any way to fix this?

enanoretozon 16y ago

I love it! I can finally use middle-click to open stuff on another tab.

simonista 16y ago

Really weird scrolling on Safari 5.0.3 on snow leopard. The background flickers through the search results. Otherwise really cool.

lg 16y ago

Never used GrooveShark before but this is pretty cool. Wonder why they don't have playlist ratings though (as far as I can tell)? When I do a search for playlists I'd like to see what other people thought of them before I click through each one.

nik61 16y ago

This is a totally opaque interface that hardly works at all as far as I can see. Completely uninformative, dumb, not functional in any real way. What is going on? Why do all these other think it is great? It is not.