
No app store? No problem: Grooveshark rolls out full HTML5 site for all devices - zoowar
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/05/screw-app-stores-grooveshark-rolls-out-full-html5-site-for-all-devices/
======
cek
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))...

~~~
notatoad
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.

~~~
cek
> _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.

~~~
notatoad
You can't build web apps that run in the background and expect any sort of
browser compatibility, and you know it. That's why you picked that example,
despite the fact that I freely admitted in my original comment that there are
use cases for which a native app is a better choice. If you are bound and
determined to hate the web, good for you.

------
caublestone
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
> 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
_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
> 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
What's the huge difference with YouTube besides Vevo and huge amounts of
crappy user generated content? Please illuminate me.

~~~
lmm
Are you saying youtube "failed miserably at adapting to new challenges"?
Because I'm not seeing it.

~~~
koide
I'm saying a huge amount of YouTube's content is infringing on somebody's
copyright, still. Even after their Vevo, matching content to copyrighted
content algorithms and all.

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

~~~
cmelbye
Oh. That's... very annoying.

------
mmahemoff
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.

------
zobzu
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
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
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.

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

~~~
rich90usa
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
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!

------
minikomi
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
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
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
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.

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

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

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

~~~
chrischen
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>. But it'd still be better if
there was some HTML5 support for it since the app only works on specific
sites.

~~~
mmahemoff
Yes, I've implemented this kind of thing with <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.

------
lnanek2
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
Unless they make it into the top 30, why would there be huge amount of
traffic?

~~~
zevyoura
They would definitely make it into the top 30.

------
nashequilibrium
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.

------
paul9290
Remind me again why I am paying $10 for Spotify when I can just use this?

~~~
rationalbeats
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
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
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.

------
jfornear
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
That's kinda the point.

> No app store? No problem.

------
mitjak
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.

~~~
rich90usa
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
I don't see either, even after clearing the cookies now, which I did do
initially as well. Perhaps not in Canada yet?

~~~
elboru
I did exactly the same thing, maybe servers are still updating. I'm in Mexico
right now.

~~~
wanderr
Press doesn't seem to have mentioned, this is a US-only launch for now, for
business reasons. It will be coming to the rest of the world in a month or so,
I believe.

~~~
urish
Do you have any source for that? I'm in Israel and I seem to be getting the
old beta on almost all platforms, but from time to time I do get the new one.

~~~
wanderr
Source is my boss telling me to make it that way. ;) Curious how you're
getting the new one on occasion...that should be very consistent, unless some
of your requests randomly come from a different IP, and our geoip DB thinks
it's US?

~~~
urish
Well, I'd be very happy to hear when your boss tell you that it's going to
change - I'd love to get it here!

I don't believe there's any reason my IP would be identified differently, but
I can tell that except for once on the first day this never happened again
from any device here.

~~~
wanderr
It's still not open to all countries yet, but it should be available in Israel
now. :)

~~~
elboru
It's available in Mexico too, thanks!

------
juxta
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?

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

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

~~~
rsynnott
HTML5 audio can on iOS. Not sure about Android.

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

~~~
rogerchucker
Gonna go look for my tiny violin

~~~
citricsquid
you don't think it's absolutely unacceptable that Grooveshark makes money off
of content they don't have the rights to?

~~~
Volpe
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
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
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
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.

~~~
Volpe
If artists couldn't make money on selling people (the right to listen to
"their") songs, would they abandon their artistry?

Is it a sense of entitlement? or is it a rejection of the monetization of
culture?

~~~
WiseWeasel
It should be up to the musician to reject the culture of monetization and
distribute their music for free, not you. Musicians shouldn't have to work
another job so they can have the privilege of supplying you with music. If you
value their music, you should demonstrate it to them, so they make more for
you.

~~~
Volpe
If no one wants to buy (the right to listen to) a song then it 's price is too
high.

Given a lot of arts are heavily inspired by the culture around them, who gives
the artist the 'right' to own all 'rights' to music they create

Poetry is an art that doesn't make money (compared to music), has poetry died?
Just because we monetized something doesn't mean it was the right thing to do.

~~~
res0nat0r
> If no one wants to buy (the right to listen to) a song then it 's price is
> too high.

Wait. The music industry made some 2 digit _billions_ of dollars last year. No
one wants to pay for music entertainment?

> Given a lot of arts are heavily inspired by the culture around them, who
> gives the artist the 'right' to own all 'rights' to music they create

Substitute your profession above for artists. Do you feel the same? Everyone
is inspired from things which came before them, and yes you can profit off of
your new creation which has been influenced from culture which has come before
you.

> Poetry is an art that doesn't make money (compared to music), has poetry
> died?

It doesn't? Here is a list of the top selling books on Amazon labeled poetry:
[http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-
Poetry/zgbs/books/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-
Poetry/zgbs/books/10248)

Top 3: Shakespeare, Beowulf, The Odyssey. The publishing companies who printed
these books and spent the time typesetting, translating them etc aren't making
money?

> Just because we monetized something doesn't mean it was the right thing to
> do.

This argument only seems to come up in context to books/music/movies. IE:
Entertainment which you can easily get for free and think people should be
compensated zero dollars for it now because of the internet. Ridiculous. Why
are the people who create entertainment the only ones who should work for
charity? Note: it isn't some noble cause, it is because you don't rely on that
industry to put food on the table, are cheap, and can get your entertainment
online for free instead.

~~~
Volpe
> Wait. The music industry made some 2 digit billions of dollars last year. No
> one wants to pay for music entertainment?

I posed it as a question, if people are not prepared to pay for something (e.g
they download it for free), it because it is priced wrong (too high). That
doesn't mean all music is priced too high.

> Substitute your profession above for artists. Do you feel the same? Everyone
> is inspired from things which came before them, and yes you can profit off
> of your new creation which has been influenced from culture which has come
> before you.

You can't substitute any profession over the top. Arts are intrinsically
different, their value is much harder to calculate. This has long been
discussed throughout history, it is only in very recent history that some of
the arts have become a 'profession'.

> Top 3: Shakespeare, Beowulf, The Odyssey. The publishing companies who
> printed these books and spent the time typesetting, translating them etc
> aren't making money?

Right...not the artist.. That is a strange argument to make. In all those
cases, the artist is long died, and someone (else) is trying to make a buck
off of their work... Copyright is only meant to last the life time of the
author + 50(?) years... So Shakespeare and Homer are really bad examples in a
copyright debate.

> This argument only seems to come up in context to books/music/movies.

This argument comes up every time there is a major shift in how people
act/produce. The same 'debate' occurred when the printing press destroyed
monopolies on books... Who's response was: Copyright.

> it isn't some noble cause, it is because you don't rely on that industry to
> put food on the table, are cheap, and can get your entertainment online for
> free instead.

Nice ad hominem. Though try to keep that out of the discussion please.

~~~
WiseWeasel
This is more like talking past each-other than a real discussion, since you're
not making any solid arguments addressing the points you're responding to.
People downloading music can be an indication of opportunism as much as of
market failure.

Think about how much smaller the music industry would be, and I'm just talking
about the number of people making music themselves, if there were no sales of
recordings. No more buying a CD on your way out of a local or touring band's
show, no more iTunes Music Store or Amazon MP3 or CD store, no more labels;
you're talking about taking away a majority of these artists' revenue. If
musicians can't ever hope to get paid enough to put food on their table and a
roof over their head, how many will put in the energy needed to bring their
music to fruition? How many will put in the effort to make good recordings for
you to enjoy? Making a good recording is difficult and expensive, and we
benefit greatly from it. There is value there for us that we should have the
courtesy of recognizing if we hope to enjoy a wide selection good music
recordings in the future.

~~~
Volpe
My initial point was not that they should give away their music. It was that
people are taking it for free, regardless of copyright law.

That, plus the fact I think copyright is the wrong way to monetize this, and
new ways need to be created.

But you are right, the discussion has deteriorated.

