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

http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/05/screw-app-stores-grooveshark-rolls-out-full-html5-site-for-all-devices/

by zoowar • 14 years ago

212 129 14 years ago

simonsarris2• 14 years 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, not 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• 14 years ago

You're not the only one who's been had: much of the music on Grooveshark is shared against artists' wishes.

adgar7• 14 years ago

But entrepreneurism!

rogerchucker2• 14 years ago

Gonna go look for my tiny violin

eurleif• 14 years 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.

simonsarris2• 14 years 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

joethompson• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

mediocregopher• 14 years 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.

jarcoal3• 14 years ago

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

rogerchucker2• 14 years ago

There is a dropdown button next to each song that exposes "Play Next" and "Play Last"

jarcoal3• 14 years ago

Yeah, but I want to be able to use my headphones or other accessories to control that.

mitjak3• 14 years 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.

jarcoal3• 14 years ago

Take another look; it is supported now. It's quite different than html5.grooveshark.com was.

elboru3• 14 years 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?

rich90usa5• 14 years 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.

mitjak3• 14 years ago

I don't see either, even after clearing the cookies now, which I did do initially as well. Perhaps not in Canada yet?

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

Flat out doesn't work. CM10, Nexus 7, Chrome.

caublestone2• 14 years 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.

adgar7• 14 years 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• 14 years 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".

caublestone2• 14 years ago

I was referring to the music industry in general, who did fail to adapt to the rise of the internet and focused on trying to stop pirating rather than create new avenues of consumption that appealed to the new generation of listeners. I think we can both agree on this point. I'm not really interested in arguing about the piracy industry as it opens up too many emotionally backed arguments that naturally disregard logic in favor of subjective terms.

jamesmiller5• 14 years ago

I personally upload tracks from indie artist that usually have there music for free or at very low cost on bandcamp.

nashequilibrium• 14 years 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.

cmelbye2• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

When that option is enabled, audio will not continue to play in the background.

cmelbye2• 14 years ago

Oh. That's... very annoying.

ammmir• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

According to 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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?

mbell• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

To be fair, is that a Safari problem or a Grooveshark problem?

Steko• 14 years ago

If Grooveshark is advertising that it works on "all devices" then it's a Grooveshark problem.

rich90usa5• 14 years 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.

mmahemoff3• 14 years 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.

rich90usa5• 14 years ago

Thanks for the bug report! This particular problem is actually decently high in the bugtracker so I'd think we'd have something within the next few bugfix releases.

paul92903• 14 years ago

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

mikelbring• 14 years ago

I have a lot of my playlists available offline, to save bandwidth and battery for on the road.

res0nat0r6• 14 years ago

Because the content on Spotify is all legal?

rationalbeats• 14 years 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• 14 years 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

lnanek2• 14 years 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.

prostoalex2• 14 years ago

Unless they make it into the top 30, why would there be huge amount of traffic?

zevyoura• 14 years ago

They would definitely make it into the top 30.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

I doubt that. Groveshark is not some new casual game. It is a well known site with a ton of users.

minikomi2• 14 years 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!

heretohelp2• 14 years 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)

mitjak3• 14 years 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.

minikomi2• 14 years ago

Is that true for the html5 app on iPhone? I can only see a list of songs, and add them to my queue.. No albums in sight. Tried with the aforementioned album, beatles - sgt peppers lonely hearts club band, "beatles" only..

Edit: looking at other comments it seems I may still be seeing the old version (still says beta at the top) here in Japan. Will try again later..

prostoalex2• 14 years ago

It's probably the desire to save on bandwidth. Rdio app does this too, and charges you for the honor of adding a song to playlist one by one.

heretohelp2• 14 years ago

Except that's not true at all, the Grooveshark HTML5, iOS, and Android apps all support queuing an album at a time.

cek2• 14 years 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))...

cageface2• 14 years 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.

jfornear6• 14 years 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.

StavrosK2• 14 years ago

That's true, except it's false.

notatoad2• 14 years ago

Android fragmentation is a reason not to use HTML5? That's about as backwards a statement as I can imagine - web apps are the great savior that abstract away all the device fragmentation. And windows phone's incompatibility as a sticking point? That's an easy one to overcome: nobody writes windows phone apps either. I don't have any experience with mobile IEs quirks, but if it's as bad as you make it sound, just sniff the UA and tell the user it is not compatible. Until I see a windows phone show up in my server logs, I'm not going to worry about it.

Overall, web apps as a platform have made a lot more growth than native mobile apps have aince the advent of the smartphone. There's no reason to look at the state of html5 now and say "it'll never work". Sure, there are some things that native is better for, but html5 is a very useful tool and can give a great user experience in a lot of cases, and it's only going to get better.

cek2• 14 years ago

> web apps are the great savior that abstract away all the device fragmentation.

I'm not sure if you are trying to be serious or not with this. Do you really believe this is true today? That you can build a mobile experience using HTML that compares to that of a native app?

Certainly there are SOME cases where it makes sense. But for MOST apps, it simply does not. For example, let's say I wanted to build an app that used location and could run in the background. How, exactly, would I build a "web app" that worked across iPhone, iPad, and say 75% of Android devices?

And how is whatever you come up with "HTML5"?

WORA has always been, and always will be a pipe dream. HTML5 gets closer but, unfortunately, due to the dynamics of mobile the target is moving further away.

scott_w• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, in practice, the fragmentation extends into browser incompatibilities. I have first-hand knowledge of this, to the extend that a broken WebKit from Android 2.2 had been forward ported to Android 2.3 on one of the mobile devices we tested.

untog• 14 years ago

Android is a good reason to not use HTML5, to be honest. It confuses me deeply that Apple has provided far more HTML5 webapp functionality that Google has- Google ought to be encouraging webapps whenever possible.

MatthewPhillips2• 14 years ago

I agree, to a point. I primarily work on mobile html5 apps. You actually can make an experience that compares to native in some cases. For example, I created the App.net client http://shrtmsg.com which I believe is on par with the native apps. If you target "latest and greatest" browsers, the subtle browser differences thing isn't that big of a deal.

What I don't get is how people direct their disappointment with the state of html5 towards "html5" as though the idea was to blame, or the idea has failed.

If you want to know why html5 is slow to roll out on mobile it should be blatantly obvious: there is almost no competition. Whereas on desktop competition is fierce. On iOS competition is outright disallowed. On Android it is allowed, but it is harder to get people to switch than on desktop. So this is why we see the "once a year" browser updates on the 2 major platforms.

fireflash382• 14 years ago

Have you actually used the html5 site? If not, why are you commenting on it? As far as html5 sites go on mobile, it works really damn well. The only issues I have with it are more a problem with the Grooveshark service as a whole (mis-named songs, incomplete albums).

mmahemoff3• 14 years 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

Ironically, Chrome for iOS behaves correctly, because it's running on the same engine as Mobile Safari, which gets HTML5 audio right.

jfornear6• 14 years 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_893• 14 years ago

That's kinda the point.

> No app store? No problem.

zobzu• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

WiseWeasel3• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

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

antihero• 14 years ago

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

rsynnott• 14 years ago

HTML5 audio can on iOS. Not sure about Android.

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

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