Just in case anyone is still using YouTube for music

http://grooveshark.com/

by noaharc • 17 years ago

121 56 17 years ago

grooveshark.com

cool-RR2• 17 years ago

I get an empty page.

cubicle67• 17 years ago

Are you using a flash blocker (like I am)? The entire page is flash

CalmQuiet2• 17 years ago

Thank you for the explanation.

Life is too short for Flash pages (without graceful alt's degrading to html).

paul7986• 17 years ago

May I ask when you run flash blocker what benefits it provides you? Are you able to enjoy Youtube, Hulu and other flash video sites without configuring the plug-in?

cool-RR2• 17 years ago

No I'm not

jonas_b• 17 years ago

Wow, this is amazing stuff. On par with Spotify in ease of use.

After a while it gets a bit too "flashy" though.

Would like to see some social/discussion functionalities.

flankk2• 17 years ago

It has been minutes and I've already found several new songs I absolutely adore.

For me, this is groundbreaking. It's like last.fm done right. I feel the same elation as when I first used Napster.

berntb• 17 years ago

I was going to write the same thing.

Quick check. Lots of metal and folk. Some local stuff (Scandinavian). Seems to be little jazz and world (balkan folk, arabic, etc. Had e.g. Natacha Atlas and Susheela Raman.) Problems with Unicode.

Really really good start. Now just needs to add lots more esoteric stuff I can find! (Unicode would be nice.)

randomtask• 17 years ago

I was. Thanks!

jrnkntl2• 17 years ago

So, how long will this last? :)

andreyf• 17 years ago

http://thefeelgood.com seems to have been around for awhile, and it's full of user-uploaded copyrighted content... so while they'll probably have trouble raising money from VC's, as long as the ad revenue is sustainable, I'd venture to guess "awhile"

endtime• 17 years ago

http://playlist.com seems similar, but even links to (external) mp3 downloads, and has also been around a while.

FalconNL• 17 years ago

Very nice site, thanks.

In case anyone from Grooveshark is reading this, here are two minor UI suggestions:

- It's rather easy to miss the volume control since it's so far removed from the other play controls. Perhaps it would be an idea to move it over there.

- A button to queue up all the songs in a search result. If it exists already I'm not seeing it.

birdman• 17 years ago

I agree. I had assumed there wasn't a volume control until I read this.

pavel_lishin• 17 years ago

It would also be nice to list the song duration in the search results.

josefresco3• 17 years ago

Also the "delete from queue" button is tough to get to (being on the right of that pop up div), I'd consider adding it either to the middle of that div, or on the main thumbnail in the queue.

jaytee_clone• 17 years ago

Also, the animation transition going for one tab to the other is cool, but it's too much, it will soon get on people's nerve.

ujal• 17 years ago

Use fizy.com as a lightweight/mobile alternative.

czstrong• 17 years ago

I like the design and ease of use and it is definitely a site I would use.

The only problem for me, and the thing that it lacks that YouTube doesn't, is music that isn't mainstream and hasn't been released by a label. Songs that make it on mixtapes and other singles that artists use to promote themselves and their future albums don't seem to be available from the searches that I've run. But they are available on YouTube.

slackenerny• 17 years ago

You may register an account then, and upload what you see missing.

Just like with YouTube. But with an Java app that would upload folders in batches.

I did so back in september. At the time there was even some scheme in which uploader would get money for uploading popular stuff, but I don't remember any details.

Raphael_Amiard2• 17 years ago

I just wonder, what on this site is done in flash that couldn't be done with plain AJAX/Html, appart from the obvious streaming part ?

Just wondering, they may have some reasons

vjt2• 17 years ago

Actually it uses the flex framework (as you can see by looking at the scrollbars and the tooltips) that then produces an edible binary .swf for the flash player :).

Back to the topic, as a music site developer myself, I can assure you that everything (except streaming[1]) you see on grooveshark can be implemented using XHTML, a JS framework (I love jQuery über alles) and an HTTP backend. Wheter or not do it depends mainly from the target of your audience and the browsers they use, because to achieve 100% browser compatibility, especially when dealing with older IE versions, imposes a bit of headbanging over their quirks and issues. Another point is performance: on older machines, animating big elements on the page (like grooveshark does) causes flicker and a clumsy experience for the user. The last point is maintainability and integration: after all, flash software is another piece of the stack you have to coordinate, implement, integrate and deploy.

So, it's a bit controversial which path to choose; on our project we're following a mix of the two, by reducing the flash implementation to the bare minimum to accomplish streaming, upload (ajax upload via iframe is a bit of a mess) and a set of JS interfaces to implement the rest of the interface via XHTML. Similar to http://playlist.com 's approach.

The last consideration that comes to my mind is purely ethical/political: I prefer to use open standards and contribute back to open projects via source code, and not be forced to use closed technologies and tools and contribute back via cash, having to read clumsy documentation, little opportunity to improve anything, and the list could go on and on.. :).

[1] Luckily this is gonna change with HTML5!

Raphael_Amiard2• 17 years ago

Thanks for the complete answer !

I found the moving elements on grooveshark to be quite a bit annoying anyway.

Also the database is much less complete than the one of www.deezer.com as of now.

ashleyw• 17 years ago

http://www.spotify.com/en/

Since using that, iTunes: "Last opened: Thursday, 26 February 2009 11:27"

It just feels like I'm browsing for music on iTunes, and listening to the previews....except the previews are the full songs! It rocks! :)

rs• 17 years ago

The problem with spotify is that its only supported on Windows and Mac, and the only way to run it in Linux is via Wine. This is miles better and it just embeds into the browser which is nice.

halo• 17 years ago

If you pay for premium you could also use despotify: http://despotify.se/

jrnkntl2• 17 years ago

And that it is "not available in your country"

ropiku• 17 years ago

They have released a library (can be used by premium users): http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/04/07/spotify-open...

jpendry• 17 years ago

for what it's worth, i've been using http://www.lala.com/ more and more, and have come to really enjoy it.

mapleoin• 17 years ago

Wow, so no one knows about http://deezer.com ? It's been around for years. It's lack of popularity probably stems from the fact that it's French, same as http://jamendo.com (Creative Commons music)

vjt2• 17 years ago

Jamendo is quite a different beast, because it's a CC label, not a music sharing/streaming medium.

ilamont• 17 years ago

Neat site. I got it to work in IE6 but like an earlier poster think that the volume control should be in a more logical/visible place.

Some of the metadata appears to be messed up, as well. I clicked on what I thought was a Lemonheads album and got Presidents of the United States of America covering "Video Killed The Radio Star" instead.

And the billion-dollar question: How can this possibly be a sustainable business model? Ads for Verizon surely won't cover the development, licensing, and operating expenses for this site, will it?

dc2k08• 17 years ago

http://www.playlist.com/ which was announced on HN a while back provides this service too. It's worked quite well for me so far and their UI has drastically improved since it launched.

keltecp11• 17 years ago

Kinda reminds me of Mixturtle... but this is AWESOME!

samueladam• 17 years ago

EMG ( http://escapemg.com/ , makers of grooveshark) has other nice services like http://tinysong.com/

kp212• 17 years ago

Sick, sick, I got some of my lesser known progressive house songs queued up while I work...thanks!

Markus2• 17 years ago

And it works in Canada!

pj• 17 years ago

Man, that sucks almost nothing works in Canada. Hulu doesn't work in Canada. Netflix. But you have some good content on CBC.ca.

Dragon's Den is fun to watch.

dhughes• 17 years ago

...no Pandora either, guess her box is closed for us in Canada.

Markus2• 17 years ago

I'm really impressed by this site. Huge selection of music and a very friendly UI. I like how when you add a song for immediate playback, it prepends it to your queue instead of overwriting your queue.

Facebook Connect / OpenID would be nice. Also, when I signed up with a taken username it gave me an "unexpected error" message, a bit sloppy.

redss• 17 years ago

No way to fast forward. :(

jhatcom• 17 years ago

Just curious, isn't that site violating music copyright laws? I would be afraid to use it for fear of getting sued by the labels.

josefresco3• 17 years ago

They only people that would run afoul of the law would be the good folks at Grooveshark. Use it (without worry) while it lasts.

joss82• 17 years ago

This is, by far, the best music site I've been to. Mostly because of the perfect UI, autoplay and no DRM. deezer.com, musicme.com pale in comparison No flaw detected so far, have you found any ?

josefresco3• 17 years ago

Blog link doesn't work, just opens a new window and loads the main GS page.

ComputerGuru• 17 years ago

I like.

Surprised to find some nice international selections on there; usually have a hard time locating some non-Western music so it's refreshing to find some good World genres out there especially in such high quality and with such a nice, clean interface.

(Y)

Oxryly• 17 years ago

Awesome!

Silentio• 17 years ago

http://www.seeqpod.com does something similar, though it isn't as well designed.

dforbin• 17 years ago

Rachel likes bacon. I like Rachel. http://grooveshark.com/about

xiaoma• 17 years ago

Yeah. I've been on Grooveshark for over a year and I love it! The clean interface really makes a difference.

defied• 17 years ago

I actually prefer using http://www.hypem.com

Been using that site for months, all the other ones (even grooveshark) lack certain alternative songs which you can find on hypem.

The list with popular songs on hypem is also better, but that might just be my personal taste.

Just in case anyone is still using YouTube for music

Related Stories