11 ms·

No app store? No problem: Grooveshark rolls out full HTML5 site for all devices

212 points by zoowar 14y ago

simonsarris 14y ago
edit2: yeouch, I should have just stuck with my complaint that the page is still using Flash and canned the semantic whine. My bad. What's "full" HTML5? What's all devices? Is it this? <div id="homeFooter" class="container_footer main_background"> That's not an HTML5 footer tag. Oh what's this video front and center in the middle of the page? Flash. I click on the link to the website that's gone full HTML5 on all devices and am staring Flash in the face. I feel like I've been had. Much more so for the Flash video than the nit on semantic tags. Edit: Ah ha! By rolled out they meant sequestered away at http://html5.grooveshark.com http://html5.grooveshark.com, not http://grooveshark.com http://grooveshark.com. They should really be linking to the HTML5 version of the site from the article. It's also the page I get when I use my phone to access the site. There we have an audio tag, though <div id="page-header" ...> exists instead of a header tag. Ah well, these are super minor nits at the end of the day. I'm glad for any site that is trying to get away from app stores and go native. I still feel like the term "full HTML5" is a tad vague (and not yet true).
- gsabo 14y ago
  You're not the only one who's been had: much of the music on Grooveshark is shared against artists' wishes.
  - adgar 14y ago
    But entrepreneurism!
  - rogerchucker 14y ago
    Gonna go look for my tiny violin
    - citricsquid 14y ago
      you don't think it's absolutely unacceptable that Grooveshark makes money off of content they don't have the rights to?
      - Volpe 14y ago
        No, because it provides a useful service... It's like saying Uber is unacceptable because it may violate (the outdated) laws in New York.
        citricsquid 14y ago
        are you comparing laws and copyright infringement? Grooveshark takes content created by someone else and then profits from the distribution of that content without permission and without passing back any revenue to the rightful owner of the content. How does that compare to uber?
        Volpe 14y ago
        copyright infringement is also 'law'... so I'm comparing laws with laws. I'm not comparing the individual actions of the companies. Only that sometimes "the law" is not useful anymore. Which yes, I am saying that copyright needs to change, the notion of a 'rightful owner of content' needs to change. Having laws that are completely contrary to how society operates are generally doomed to fail.
        res0nat0r 14y ago
        I'm not sure where this type of opinion came from but it definitely has been becoming more prevalent in the last 5 years. I think it is just people are becoming more inclined to think they are entitled to someones else's creative content just because it has been easy to acquire free for years now. Just because it is easy to copy music online doesn't mean all music should be 'free' and every artist should just abandon what many of them rely on to make a living just because you want to save some money on your entertainment.
- eurleif 14y ago
  I take "full HTML 5" to mean that it doesn't use any technologies outside of the HTML 5 umbrella (which includes CSS, JavaScript, etc.), like Flash, not that it necessarily uses every HTML 5 feature to its full potential.
  - simonsarris 14y ago
    Sorry, I'm really just upset that Flash is still being used on their main page (the page that the article links to). I had to go to html5.grooveshark.com to get a version without Flash. I guess its silly of me to not take "all devices" as "all mobile devices", which is reasonable in the context of site vs appstore
    - rich90usa 14y ago
      I'm going to guess that you were using your computer at the time. If you're using a desktop browser you're going to be directed to the site which relies on flash. If you're in a Webkit browser you can use html5.grooveshark.com and get the html5 experience on your desktop. On a handheld device, we automatically direct you to the html5 site when you visit grooveshark.com
      - adgar 14y ago
        You didn't answer the question. The question being asked is why - if y'all are capable of delivering an html5 grooveshark for mobile - the main grooveshark app (your flagship product) still exclusively uses flash.
        wanderr 14y ago
        Time. We are a very small team. It will happen eventually, but at least now everyone has an option.
        adgar 14y ago
        That's a perfectly fair argument. For those who want to embrace HTML5, which flash-based features in the main site weren't ready to be ported to HTML5 due to technical limitations? As one of the few sites even trying, your use case could drive HTML5 audio.
- joethompson 14y ago
  Not using all the available new semantic markup is a little different than having a site that doesn't rely on Flash to serve audio.
- DigitalSea 14y ago
  Do you even know what HTML5 is? HTML5 doesn't enforce the use of header, section, article and all of the other tags. The tags you mention are merely for semantically marking up content and are block level elements like DIV's. The fact that Grooveshark is using things like HTML5 audio and whatnot without the reliance on 3rd party plugins like Flash to me is what HTML5 is all about.
  - simonsarris 14y ago
    Sorry, I'm really just upset that Flash is still being used on their main page (the page that the article links to). I had to go to html5.grooveshark.com to get a version without Flash. I guess its silly of me to not take "all devices" as "all mobile devices", which is reasonable in the context of site vs appstore
- mediocregopher 14y ago
  >It's also the page I get when I use my phone to access the site. That's how it's supposed to be. When you go to grooveshark.com on your phone you get the html5 app, from anywhere else you get the main (flash using) site. Using html5.grooveshark.com takes you to the html5 site no matter what.
jarcoal 14y ago
Works decently well on my iPhone. Looks like the OS play/pause functionality is there, but not back/next track.
- rogerchucker 14y ago
  There is a dropdown button next to each song that exposes "Play Next" and "Play Last"
  - jarcoal 14y ago
    Yeah, but I want to be able to use my headphones or other accessories to control that.
    - chrischen 14y ago
      This is actually a limitation of the web interfaces for Rdio, MOG, Grooveshark, and I'm assuming google and amazon's cloud player as well. EDIT: Just found this http://getfactotum.com http://getfactotum.com. But it'd still be better if there was some HTML5 support for it since the app only works on specific sites.
      - mmahemoff 14y ago
        Yes, I've implemented this kind of thing with http://player.fm http://player.fm and it's really a fundamental limitation of the HTML5 audio tag. iOS is actually very cool in this department as it treats HTML5 audio as a native audio track, so it works with bluetooth controls, the play icon shows up in toolbar, works in the background, etc. Everything native audio does. The reason next/prev doesn't work is because HTML5 audio has no concept of a playlist. It's just a dumb audio tag with exactly one source URL to play. So iOS really has no way to map what's going on in the browser into the usual concept of a playlist and it has no API to call to move to the next or previous track. It's still well ahead of the other mobile OSs though, in the way it does at least treat HTML5 audio as standard audio, to the extent that's possible.
mitjak 14y ago
This isn't news. I've been using the beta for at least a month now. The player is great, but the rest of the UI is severely limited. No logging in is supported, so you're stuck searching for every song you want to hear.
- jarcoal 14y ago
  Take another look; it is supported now. It's quite different than html5.grooveshark.com was.
  - elboru 14y ago
    Maybe it's not available everywhere yet, I can't log in either, actually I can still see the "grooveshark beta" header. Am I the only one who sees this?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - rich90usa 14y ago
      Try clearing your cache/cookies. Going to grooveshark.com directly on your mobile device should just work. Otherwise, you may want to try html5.grooveshark.com
- rich90usa 14y ago
  You may want to consider clearing your cache and cookies and reloading grooveshark.com on your device. The main features of this release are large screen (tablet) support and the ability to login to access your collection.
  - mitjak 14y ago
    I don't see either, even after clearing the cookies now, which I did do initially as well. Perhaps not in Canada yet?
    - 14y ago
caublestone 14y ago
Great example of how innovation can occur when new challenges (artificial or physical) arise. Ironically, this is happening in the same industry that failed miserably at adapting to new challenges. Rock on, Grooveshark. BTW - the mobile browser app is incredible.
- adgar 14y ago
  > the same industry that failed miserably at adapting to new challenges. I didn't realize the "users sharing tracks they pirated" industry had had trouble with adapting to new challenges. If anything, they have the most experience adapting to new challenges. Edit: Before someone says "not every single track on Grooveshark was pirated," think carefully about whether that's an intellectually honest argument to make.
  - moe 14y ago
    think carefully about whether that's an intellectually honest argument Don't lecture me about "intellectual honesty" after referring to file-sharers as if they were an uniform entity and likening them to an "industry".
    - adgar 14y ago
      > Don't lecture me about "intellectual honesty" after referring to file-sharers as if they were an uniform entity and likening them to an "industry". I was referring to services whose business models are designed to exploit file sharing behavior as an "industry." Not the file sharers themselves.
      - koide 14y ago
        What's the huge difference with YouTube besides Vevo and huge amounts of crappy user generated content? Please illuminate me.
        lmm 14y ago
nashequilibrium 14y ago
This is really cool, i can now use this at the gym instead of Pandora! It looks like there is still more functionality to be added but that will come with time. I like that it plays in the background while i am using my other apps as well.
cmelbye 14y ago
I don't think I'll ever understand why companies expend a ton of energy developing a decent web app, yet neglect to turn on the apple-mobile-web-app-capable meta tag which makes the app run fullscreen when it's saved to the home screen...
- betamike 14y ago
  When that option is enabled, audio will not continue to play in the background.
  - cmelbye 14y ago
    Oh. That's... very annoying.
  - ammmir 14y ago
    even in safari on iOS 5, i can't get it to play the next track after the lock screen timer kicks in while something is playing.
- sainttex 14y ago
  This tag caused an issue on certain versions of Android for one of my mobile web apps. I'm able to consistently reproduce this on Android 2.3.3. When an input field is focused upon, and the on screen keyboard is initialized, focus on the input field is lost, causing input to not reach the input field. So just make sure it's only included on iOS devices.
- fastest963 14y ago
  According to http://openradar.appspot.com/8761419 http://openradar.appspot.com/8761419 apps that specify that tag cannot do background audio. I think that would be larger annoyance for users of Grooveshark.
- statictype 14y ago
  Besides the audio thing, the home screen app feature only works for single-page web apps. Any page change goes into Safari (which is reasonable I guess).
juxta 14y ago
I love the html5 version of grooveshark though it's limited I can still use it on my iphone. I really wish there was a directory which showed all html5 apps kind of app store style. Does anyone know if there are any?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mbell 14y ago
Hmm, it crashed the browser on me (iPad 3, safari). I went to the site, searched for a random band and picked a playlist (a large one ~500 songs if it helps). I went to the playlist view and started scrolling through the songs, relatively quickly. I noticed the "bar" at the bottom of the playlist view was flickering a lot, you could see the upcoming song rows through it when it flickered then 'bam' whole browser crashed. Relaunched safari, it still had the grooveshark tab open, almost instantly crashed again.
- cantankerous 14y ago
  To be fair, is that a Safari problem or a Grooveshark problem?
  - Steko 14y ago
    If Grooveshark is advertising that it works on "all devices" then it's a Grooveshark problem.
  - rich90usa 14y ago
    As another commentator replied, it's something that we have to deal with. I can't speak for sure, but I think what we're running in to here is too many elements on the page. I'm sure I'm glossing over the finer details, but I'd expect whatever bugfix is made will address that.
    - ftwinnovations 14y ago
      Worked great on my iPad. Suggestion: start on the Popular tab, not Search. There's already a dedicated search field, and when I got to the page the big empty search area made me think the page was broken. Starting on Popular also would give a one-click-to-experience factor. Very cool app!
  - mmahemoff 14y ago
    User doesn't know or care about whose fault it is. That makes it Grooveshark's problem to fix, since Apple won't anytime soon.
paul9290 14y ago
Remind me again why I am paying $10 for Spotify when I can just use this?
- mikelbring 14y ago
  I have a lot of my playlists available offline, to save bandwidth and battery for on the road.
- res0nat0r 14y ago
  Because the content on Spotify is all legal?
- rationalbeats 14y ago
  There is a reason this company has been banned from the major app stores. They are not paying the artist for the music they play. So they are stealing from people like me.
  - raverbashing 14y ago
    Please enlighten us to the proportion of money that goes to the artist vs. how much goes to the record label. 10% goes to the artist, maybe? Even less? I'm sincerely curious, I'm buying an album at iTunes right now
    - res0nat0r 14y ago
      Does it matter? The artist and label legally agreed to a contact between the two parties. Sure you don't like it and think that the label is making more money than you think it should, but the artist legally allowed that price difference to happen.
  - Baba_Chaghaloo 14y ago
    How is it different than YouTube? Besides nobody's losing a dime from Grooveshark, same as nobody is making a dime from Spotify. Including Spotify.
lnanek2 14y ago
Too bad they are kicked out of Google Play, so can't wrap the HTML5 in an app via PhoneGap, or publish a launcher app that just goes to the site inside a web view. They are missing the huge amount of traffic that comes from the app store by just being another web site like this.
- prostoalex 14y ago
  Unless they make it into the top 30, why would there be huge amount of traffic?
  - zevyoura 14y ago
    They would definitely make it into the top 30.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  I doubt that. Groveshark is not some new casual game. It is a well known site with a ton of users.
minikomi 14y ago
Interesting that they optimize for playing of songs rather than albums. It would be nice to be able to queue up a whole album to listen to, rather than having to select the tracks one by one (in the correct order!) .. particularly frustrating since the one thing I wanted to listen to at the time was a mix (DJ /Rupture - minesweeper suite) - order matters!
- heretohelp 14y ago
  The mobile app is a companion that assumes you're like me and have a large collection of playlists curated already from the desktop web app. I do, so it works great for me. Also, "playing" songs adds them to your run queue. you can also "play next" or "play last" to queue them appropriately. In the search results, if you scroll past the song results, you'll see an album list. Tap the album list. "Play now" will queue the entire album in order. They have the functionality, you're just not used to their terrible UX. (I'm a longtime paying Grooveshark and Spotify user, so I'm used to navigating this nonsense)
  - mitjak 14y ago
    I'm not exactly sure why it assumes such primary use case though. There are many downsides to such a scenario: playlists are not searchable; their order is also fixed, which exacerbates the former problem when your playlists grow massive. From my understanding of the UI, the user's library is supposed to solve both issues, but it is not easily browsable on either iOS or Android (my unfortunate choices for consuming music). Perhaps, a workaround is to have "smart playlists" or optional tags for an album that you can come back to later. It becomes a bit frustrating because basically the only way to listen to an album is to search for it. I'm mostly OK with that workaround, but the problem is that many albums have duplicates. I specifically select particular tracks I want in the library to make sure I can maintain consecutive playback of entire albums that do require it; a selection process which is rendered useless when re-doing the search from ground up on the go.
    - fireflash38 14y ago
      In the general search field, the top section is Songs, the second section is Albums, and the last section is 'Playlists'. So they are searchable.
cek 14y ago
From the article: "I experienced minimal complications when using Safari on both the iPhone and iPad" minimal complications is a euphemism for "Any normal user would throw the thing against the wall in frustration." To me this is just further demonstration of the failure of HTML5 on mobile. It's been, what, 4 years we've been in the "HTML5 will save us all" hype bubble? Don't get me wrong; I am building a webapp and aspects of HTML5 have made my life far easier than if I were still in 2008. If I had hair I'd still be pulling it out due to the complexities of CSS (even with things like LESS) and subtle browser differences would turn the rest of it gray. But the current state of HTML+CSS+JS on the desktop is pretty good; compared. We appear to be years away from a similar state in mobile. Between Safari's problems with no JIT support within apps and the fragmentation of Android, coupled with the monstrosity known as IE on WP7 (and WP8 and Win8), it is just not possible to use "HTML5" to build a great mobile experience (and reach a large audience). My history in working with the W3C (I worked on HTML 3.2 and 4), and my understanding of the asymetric competitive nature of the major players (Apple, Google, Microsoft) makes me believe this situation is not going to radically improve anytime soon. The upside is dev tool vendors who can help ease the pain should do pretty well (e.g. things like Xamarin (C#) and MoSync (C/C++/JavaScript))...
- cageface 14y ago
  Yep. My money is on Xamarin. There's a huge opportunity for somebody to make native app development less painful and they seem to be the only player with the experience and talent and tech to make this happen.
- jfornear 14y ago
  > To me this is just further demonstration of the failure of HTML5 on mobile. It's been, what, 4 years we've been in the "HTML5 will save us all" hype bubble? Everyone is moving away from HTML5 (Facebook, etc.). Grooveshark is only moving toward HTML5 because what they do is fundamentally illegal and the app stores have shut them out.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    That's true, except it's false.
mmahemoff 14y ago
Chrome for Android unfortunately has a major bug which makes HTML5 audio impractical. It stops the audio when you turn off the screen, change tabs, or change from the browser to another app. It makes me weep a little for the web when browsers cripple HTML5 like this; there's enough intrinsic downsides of running apps inside a browser (e.g. no app store, no presence on homescreen, no background processing) without having to worry about things that should work but don't. I filed the bug here in case anyone wants to star it (someone mentioned Grooveshark just today in fact): http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=121898 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=121898 Ironically, Chrome for iOS behaves correctly, because it's running on the same engine as Mobile Safari, which gets HTML5 audio right.
jfornear 14y ago
So, Grooveshark keeps getting sued by all four major record labels, their native apps are banned from both the iOS and Android app stores, and we're sitting here talking about HTML5. Probably the worst case study ever for mobile strategy.
- rodion_89 14y ago
  That's kinda the point. > No app store? No problem.
zobzu 14y ago
I actually prefer the HTML5 version by far on the desktop It's light and fast. No flash annoyances. Also it doesn't have DPI issues. Now then again, it's streaming MP3/AAC so only Chrome and IE seems to work ok. Firefox for example just cannot play it. Thanks patents.
- mtgx 14y ago
  After what happened to MegaUpload and the lawsuits against Grooveshark, I'm a little afraid of making a username with Grooveshark. How private are they keeping that data in case the FBI or whoever storms their office? They should have a very tight policy for this to protect their users.
  - WiseWeasel 14y ago
    Unless you upload copyrighted music you don't have the rights to, you shouldn't be liable for anything even if the FBI or ICE does seize their servers.
Kiro 14y ago
Works as great as native on the S3 using the stock browser.
antihero 14y ago
Isn't this pretty much worthless unless HTML5 pages can be backgrounded?
- rsynnott 14y ago
  HTML5 audio can on iOS. Not sure about Android.

212 points by zoowar 14y ago

edit2: yeouch, I should have just stuck with my complaint that the page is still using Flash and canned the semantic whine. My bad. What's "full" HTML5? What's all devices? Is it this? <div id="homeFooter" class="container_footer main_background"> That's not an HTML5 footer tag. Oh what's this video front and center in the middle of the page? Flash. I click on the link to the website that's gone full HTML5 on all devices and am staring Flash in the face. I feel like I've been had. Much more so for the Flash video than the nit on semantic tags. Edit: Ah ha! By rolled out they meant sequestered away at http://html5.grooveshark.com http://html5.grooveshark.com, not http://grooveshark.com http://grooveshark.com. They should really be linking to the HTML5 version of the site from the article. It's also the page I get when I use my phone to access the site. There we have an audio tag, though <div id="page-header" ...> exists instead of a header tag. Ah well, these are super minor nits at the end of the day. I'm glad for any site that is trying to get away from app stores and go native. I still feel like the term "full HTML5" is a tad vague (and not yet true).

gsabo 14y ago
You're not the only one who's been had: much of the music on Grooveshark is shared against artists' wishes.
- adgar 14y ago
  But entrepreneurism!
- rogerchucker 14y ago
  Gonna go look for my tiny violin
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    you don't think it's absolutely unacceptable that Grooveshark makes money off of content they don't have the rights to?
    - Volpe 14y ago
      No, because it provides a useful service... It's like saying Uber is unacceptable because it may violate (the outdated) laws in New York.
      - citricsquid 14y ago
        are you comparing laws and copyright infringement? Grooveshark takes content created by someone else and then profits from the distribution of that content without permission and without passing back any revenue to the rightful owner of the content. How does that compare to uber?
        Volpe 14y ago
        copyright infringement is also 'law'... so I'm comparing laws with laws. I'm not comparing the individual actions of the companies. Only that sometimes "the law" is not useful anymore. Which yes, I am saying that copyright needs to change, the notion of a 'rightful owner of content' needs to change. Having laws that are completely contrary to how society operates are generally doomed to fail.
        res0nat0r 14y ago
        I'm not sure where this type of opinion came from but it definitely has been becoming more prevalent in the last 5 years. I think it is just people are becoming more inclined to think they are entitled to someones else's creative content just because it has been easy to acquire free for years now. Just because it is easy to copy music online doesn't mean all music should be 'free' and every artist should just abandon what many of them rely on to make a living just because you want to save some money on your entertainment.
eurleif 14y ago
I take "full HTML 5" to mean that it doesn't use any technologies outside of the HTML 5 umbrella (which includes CSS, JavaScript, etc.), like Flash, not that it necessarily uses every HTML 5 feature to its full potential.
- simonsarris 14y ago
  Sorry, I'm really just upset that Flash is still being used on their main page (the page that the article links to). I had to go to html5.grooveshark.com to get a version without Flash. I guess its silly of me to not take "all devices" as "all mobile devices", which is reasonable in the context of site vs appstore
  - rich90usa 14y ago
    I'm going to guess that you were using your computer at the time. If you're using a desktop browser you're going to be directed to the site which relies on flash. If you're in a Webkit browser you can use html5.grooveshark.com and get the html5 experience on your desktop. On a handheld device, we automatically direct you to the html5 site when you visit grooveshark.com
    - adgar 14y ago
      You didn't answer the question. The question being asked is why - if y'all are capable of delivering an html5 grooveshark for mobile - the main grooveshark app (your flagship product) still exclusively uses flash.
      - wanderr 14y ago
        Time. We are a very small team. It will happen eventually, but at least now everyone has an option.
        adgar 14y ago
        That's a perfectly fair argument. For those who want to embrace HTML5, which flash-based features in the main site weren't ready to be ported to HTML5 due to technical limitations? As one of the few sites even trying, your use case could drive HTML5 audio.
joethompson 14y ago
Not using all the available new semantic markup is a little different than having a site that doesn't rely on Flash to serve audio.
DigitalSea 14y ago
Do you even know what HTML5 is? HTML5 doesn't enforce the use of header, section, article and all of the other tags. The tags you mention are merely for semantically marking up content and are block level elements like DIV's. The fact that Grooveshark is using things like HTML5 audio and whatnot without the reliance on 3rd party plugins like Flash to me is what HTML5 is all about.
- simonsarris 14y ago
  Sorry, I'm really just upset that Flash is still being used on their main page (the page that the article links to). I had to go to html5.grooveshark.com to get a version without Flash. I guess its silly of me to not take "all devices" as "all mobile devices", which is reasonable in the context of site vs appstore
mediocregopher 14y ago
>It's also the page I get when I use my phone to access the site. That's how it's supposed to be. When you go to grooveshark.com on your phone you get the html5 app, from anywhere else you get the main (flash using) site. Using html5.grooveshark.com takes you to the html5 site no matter what.

jarcoal 14y ago

Works decently well on my iPhone. Looks like the OS play/pause functionality is there, but not back/next track.

rogerchucker 14y ago
There is a dropdown button next to each song that exposes "Play Next" and "Play Last"
- jarcoal 14y ago
  Yeah, but I want to be able to use my headphones or other accessories to control that.
  - chrischen 14y ago
    This is actually a limitation of the web interfaces for Rdio, MOG, Grooveshark, and I'm assuming google and amazon's cloud player as well. EDIT: Just found this http://getfactotum.com http://getfactotum.com. But it'd still be better if there was some HTML5 support for it since the app only works on specific sites.
    - mmahemoff 14y ago
      Yes, I've implemented this kind of thing with http://player.fm http://player.fm and it's really a fundamental limitation of the HTML5 audio tag. iOS is actually very cool in this department as it treats HTML5 audio as a native audio track, so it works with bluetooth controls, the play icon shows up in toolbar, works in the background, etc. Everything native audio does. The reason next/prev doesn't work is because HTML5 audio has no concept of a playlist. It's just a dumb audio tag with exactly one source URL to play. So iOS really has no way to map what's going on in the browser into the usual concept of a playlist and it has no API to call to move to the next or previous track. It's still well ahead of the other mobile OSs though, in the way it does at least treat HTML5 audio as standard audio, to the extent that's possible.

mitjak 14y ago

This isn't news. I've been using the beta for at least a month now. The player is great, but the rest of the UI is severely limited. No logging in is supported, so you're stuck searching for every song you want to hear.

jarcoal 14y ago
Take another look; it is supported now. It's quite different than html5.grooveshark.com was.
- elboru 14y ago
  Maybe it's not available everywhere yet, I can't log in either, actually I can still see the "grooveshark beta" header. Am I the only one who sees this?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - rich90usa 14y ago
    Try clearing your cache/cookies. Going to grooveshark.com directly on your mobile device should just work. Otherwise, you may want to try html5.grooveshark.com
rich90usa 14y ago
You may want to consider clearing your cache and cookies and reloading grooveshark.com on your device. The main features of this release are large screen (tablet) support and the ability to login to access your collection.
- mitjak 14y ago
  I don't see either, even after clearing the cookies now, which I did do initially as well. Perhaps not in Canada yet?
  - 14y ago

caublestone 14y ago

Great example of how innovation can occur when new challenges (artificial or physical) arise. Ironically, this is happening in the same industry that failed miserably at adapting to new challenges. Rock on, Grooveshark. BTW - the mobile browser app is incredible.

adgar 14y ago
> the same industry that failed miserably at adapting to new challenges. I didn't realize the "users sharing tracks they pirated" industry had had trouble with adapting to new challenges. If anything, they have the most experience adapting to new challenges. Edit: Before someone says "not every single track on Grooveshark was pirated," think carefully about whether that's an intellectually honest argument to make.
- moe 14y ago
  think carefully about whether that's an intellectually honest argument Don't lecture me about "intellectual honesty" after referring to file-sharers as if they were an uniform entity and likening them to an "industry".
  - adgar 14y ago
    > Don't lecture me about "intellectual honesty" after referring to file-sharers as if they were an uniform entity and likening them to an "industry". I was referring to services whose business models are designed to exploit file sharing behavior as an "industry." Not the file sharers themselves.
    - koide 14y ago
      What's the huge difference with YouTube besides Vevo and huge amounts of crappy user generated content? Please illuminate me.
      - lmm 14y ago

nashequilibrium 14y ago

This is really cool, i can now use this at the gym instead of Pandora! It looks like there is still more functionality to be added but that will come with time. I like that it plays in the background while i am using my other apps as well.

cmelbye 14y ago

I don't think I'll ever understand why companies expend a ton of energy developing a decent web app, yet neglect to turn on the apple-mobile-web-app-capable meta tag which makes the app run fullscreen when it's saved to the home screen...

betamike 14y ago
When that option is enabled, audio will not continue to play in the background.
- cmelbye 14y ago
  Oh. That's... very annoying.
- ammmir 14y ago
  even in safari on iOS 5, i can't get it to play the next track after the lock screen timer kicks in while something is playing.
sainttex 14y ago
This tag caused an issue on certain versions of Android for one of my mobile web apps. I'm able to consistently reproduce this on Android 2.3.3. When an input field is focused upon, and the on screen keyboard is initialized, focus on the input field is lost, causing input to not reach the input field. So just make sure it's only included on iOS devices.
fastest963 14y ago
According to http://openradar.appspot.com/8761419 http://openradar.appspot.com/8761419 apps that specify that tag cannot do background audio. I think that would be larger annoyance for users of Grooveshark.
statictype 14y ago
Besides the audio thing, the home screen app feature only works for single-page web apps. Any page change goes into Safari (which is reasonable I guess).

juxta 14y ago

I love the html5 version of grooveshark though it's limited I can still use it on my iphone. I really wish there was a directory which showed all html5 apps kind of app store style. Does anyone know if there are any?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mbell 14y ago

Hmm, it crashed the browser on me (iPad 3, safari). I went to the site, searched for a random band and picked a playlist (a large one ~500 songs if it helps). I went to the playlist view and started scrolling through the songs, relatively quickly. I noticed the "bar" at the bottom of the playlist view was flickering a lot, you could see the upcoming song rows through it when it flickered then 'bam' whole browser crashed. Relaunched safari, it still had the grooveshark tab open, almost instantly crashed again.

cantankerous 14y ago
To be fair, is that a Safari problem or a Grooveshark problem?
- Steko 14y ago
  If Grooveshark is advertising that it works on "all devices" then it's a Grooveshark problem.
- rich90usa 14y ago
  As another commentator replied, it's something that we have to deal with. I can't speak for sure, but I think what we're running in to here is too many elements on the page. I'm sure I'm glossing over the finer details, but I'd expect whatever bugfix is made will address that.
  - ftwinnovations 14y ago
    Worked great on my iPad. Suggestion: start on the Popular tab, not Search. There's already a dedicated search field, and when I got to the page the big empty search area made me think the page was broken. Starting on Popular also would give a one-click-to-experience factor. Very cool app!
- mmahemoff 14y ago
  User doesn't know or care about whose fault it is. That makes it Grooveshark's problem to fix, since Apple won't anytime soon.

paul9290 14y ago

Remind me again why I am paying $10 for Spotify when I can just use this?

mikelbring 14y ago
I have a lot of my playlists available offline, to save bandwidth and battery for on the road.
res0nat0r 14y ago
Because the content on Spotify is all legal?
rationalbeats 14y ago
There is a reason this company has been banned from the major app stores. They are not paying the artist for the music they play. So they are stealing from people like me.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  Please enlighten us to the proportion of money that goes to the artist vs. how much goes to the record label. 10% goes to the artist, maybe? Even less? I'm sincerely curious, I'm buying an album at iTunes right now
  - res0nat0r 14y ago
    Does it matter? The artist and label legally agreed to a contact between the two parties. Sure you don't like it and think that the label is making more money than you think it should, but the artist legally allowed that price difference to happen.
- Baba_Chaghaloo 14y ago
  How is it different than YouTube? Besides nobody's losing a dime from Grooveshark, same as nobody is making a dime from Spotify. Including Spotify.

lnanek2 14y ago

Too bad they are kicked out of Google Play, so can't wrap the HTML5 in an app via PhoneGap, or publish a launcher app that just goes to the site inside a web view. They are missing the huge amount of traffic that comes from the app store by just being another web site like this.

prostoalex 14y ago
Unless they make it into the top 30, why would there be huge amount of traffic?
- zevyoura 14y ago
  They would definitely make it into the top 30.
tomjen3 14y ago
I doubt that. Groveshark is not some new casual game. It is a well known site with a ton of users.

minikomi 14y ago

Interesting that they optimize for playing of songs rather than albums. It would be nice to be able to queue up a whole album to listen to, rather than having to select the tracks one by one (in the correct order!) .. particularly frustrating since the one thing I wanted to listen to at the time was a mix (DJ /Rupture - minesweeper suite) - order matters!

heretohelp 14y ago
The mobile app is a companion that assumes you're like me and have a large collection of playlists curated already from the desktop web app. I do, so it works great for me. Also, "playing" songs adds them to your run queue. you can also "play next" or "play last" to queue them appropriately. In the search results, if you scroll past the song results, you'll see an album list. Tap the album list. "Play now" will queue the entire album in order. They have the functionality, you're just not used to their terrible UX. (I'm a longtime paying Grooveshark and Spotify user, so I'm used to navigating this nonsense)
- mitjak 14y ago
  I'm not exactly sure why it assumes such primary use case though. There are many downsides to such a scenario: playlists are not searchable; their order is also fixed, which exacerbates the former problem when your playlists grow massive. From my understanding of the UI, the user's library is supposed to solve both issues, but it is not easily browsable on either iOS or Android (my unfortunate choices for consuming music). Perhaps, a workaround is to have "smart playlists" or optional tags for an album that you can come back to later. It becomes a bit frustrating because basically the only way to listen to an album is to search for it. I'm mostly OK with that workaround, but the problem is that many albums have duplicates. I specifically select particular tracks I want in the library to make sure I can maintain consecutive playback of entire albums that do require it; a selection process which is rendered useless when re-doing the search from ground up on the go.
  - fireflash38 14y ago
    In the general search field, the top section is Songs, the second section is Albums, and the last section is 'Playlists'. So they are searchable.

cek 14y ago

From the article: "I experienced minimal complications when using Safari on both the iPhone and iPad" minimal complications is a euphemism for "Any normal user would throw the thing against the wall in frustration." To me this is just further demonstration of the failure of HTML5 on mobile. It's been, what, 4 years we've been in the "HTML5 will save us all" hype bubble? Don't get me wrong; I am building a webapp and aspects of HTML5 have made my life far easier than if I were still in 2008. If I had hair I'd still be pulling it out due to the complexities of CSS (even with things like LESS) and subtle browser differences would turn the rest of it gray. But the current state of HTML+CSS+JS on the desktop is pretty good; compared. We appear to be years away from a similar state in mobile. Between Safari's problems with no JIT support within apps and the fragmentation of Android, coupled with the monstrosity known as IE on WP7 (and WP8 and Win8), it is just not possible to use "HTML5" to build a great mobile experience (and reach a large audience). My history in working with the W3C (I worked on HTML 3.2 and 4), and my understanding of the asymetric competitive nature of the major players (Apple, Google, Microsoft) makes me believe this situation is not going to radically improve anytime soon. The upside is dev tool vendors who can help ease the pain should do pretty well (e.g. things like Xamarin (C#) and MoSync (C/C++/JavaScript))...

cageface 14y ago
Yep. My money is on Xamarin. There's a huge opportunity for somebody to make native app development less painful and they seem to be the only player with the experience and talent and tech to make this happen.
jfornear 14y ago
> To me this is just further demonstration of the failure of HTML5 on mobile. It's been, what, 4 years we've been in the "HTML5 will save us all" hype bubble? Everyone is moving away from HTML5 (Facebook, etc.). Grooveshark is only moving toward HTML5 because what they do is fundamentally illegal and the app stores have shut them out.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  That's true, except it's false.

mmahemoff 14y ago

Chrome for Android unfortunately has a major bug which makes HTML5 audio impractical. It stops the audio when you turn off the screen, change tabs, or change from the browser to another app. It makes me weep a little for the web when browsers cripple HTML5 like this; there's enough intrinsic downsides of running apps inside a browser (e.g. no app store, no presence on homescreen, no background processing) without having to worry about things that should work but don't. I filed the bug here in case anyone wants to star it (someone mentioned Grooveshark just today in fact): http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=121898 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=121898 Ironically, Chrome for iOS behaves correctly, because it's running on the same engine as Mobile Safari, which gets HTML5 audio right.

jfornear 14y ago

So, Grooveshark keeps getting sued by all four major record labels, their native apps are banned from both the iOS and Android app stores, and we're sitting here talking about HTML5. Probably the worst case study ever for mobile strategy.

rodion_89 14y ago
That's kinda the point. > No app store? No problem.

zobzu 14y ago

I actually prefer the HTML5 version by far on the desktop It's light and fast. No flash annoyances. Also it doesn't have DPI issues. Now then again, it's streaming MP3/AAC so only Chrome and IE seems to work ok. Firefox for example just cannot play it. Thanks patents.

mtgx 14y ago
After what happened to MegaUpload and the lawsuits against Grooveshark, I'm a little afraid of making a username with Grooveshark. How private are they keeping that data in case the FBI or whoever storms their office? They should have a very tight policy for this to protect their users.
- WiseWeasel 14y ago
  Unless you upload copyrighted music you don't have the rights to, you shouldn't be liable for anything even if the FBI or ICE does seize their servers.

Kiro 14y ago

Works as great as native on the S3 using the stock browser.

antihero 14y ago

Isn't this pretty much worthless unless HTML5 pages can be backgrounded?

rsynnott 14y ago
HTML5 audio can on iOS. Not sure about Android.