By Grooveshark has quickly become one of the most popular streaming music services in the Android market, and yesterday they released a big update in the Android market to appease their customers. Alongside a bunch of bug fixes (those are always welcomed), we’ve been treated to a host of new features that should win over a lot of new customers (and keep existing ones happy.) Here’s the full list of changes:
Subscribed playlists – You can listen not only to playlists you’ve made, but ones you’ve Favorited while using Grooveshark.
Genre Radio – If you *really* don’t know what to listen to, we’ve added a bunch of Radio stations created by genre. Pick one and go.
User stations – You can save a Radio session as a playlist and come back to it.
Repeat Options – Repeat a single song, or an entire queue.
Queue is remembered across app restarts – The songs in your queue will remain there, even if you restart your phone/app.
Last.fm scrobbling support. I don’t think I have to explain this one to you fans out there. :)
Bluetooth support for play, pause, next and previous song controls.
Bugs We Fixed:
Playlists will now sync!Wifi-only songs are now playable over cellular networks, if you like.
Using Shuffle won’t cause the app to crash anymore!
Fewer “Lost connection to Grooveshark” messages, and significantly saved battery.
QueueService (the player code) now manages its life-cycle properly, and shuts down when not in use.
Removed the Quit button—it’s not needed anymore. The app frees background resources when a the last song queued plays, or the current song is paused. Quitting the app now happens when the phone’s home button or back button are pressed enough.
Now Playing didn’t always clear when the app wasn’t in use; this is fixed.
After a force close, sometimes songs wouldn’t play and the “Unknown Media Player” error was displayed; this has been fixed. *
For some Android phones, music would stop playing when the app went into the background; this has been fixed.
Skipping between songs frequently would eventually cause the app to hang and force close. Not anymore!
After favoriting or unfavoriting a song in Now Playing, the song’s state was not updated in any widgets—and vice versa. This has been fixed.
After an extended period of no use, pressing play from widgets wouldn’t start the last song; this has been fixed.Offline Song Fixes
Now stops and starts when needed which saves battery.
It prevents the phone from sleeping while any downloads are queued or active—so they won’t fail.
Songs being downloaded to Offline Songs during a connectivity transition (e.g. 3g to wifi) will seamlessly download the song.
Sounds like they’ve been quite the busy studio. Scan or touch (on your Android browser) the QR code below to get started, or just search “Grooveshark” in the Android market.
Honestly…with free apps like pandora, slacker, tune-in radio and the fact we all have been downloading illegal music for over 14 years or so…why would we begin paying for music now. I have 14gb of music on my pc…i doubt i need to pay for it now…
Does it work in UK?
what Steven Skwarkowski said…to the letter.
@Steven & Aleis
Maybe because artists deserve to get paid for their work?? Clueless F**k…
Well Pandora isn’t available worldwide, and the other services don’t exactly offer what Grooveshark can bring which is synced playlists through all your devices and it doesn’t just support Android, but iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia and the desktop client. There is also all the latest music, and the clients have been professionally developed for the best experience possible. It’s all about how the music is delivered, all because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s better. I’d gladly pay for this service this use any of the services you listed, firstly because it’s 3 dollars, and secondly, those services aren’t available in the UK, and the application is getting more refined after each update, that I’ll gladly use Grooveshark. :)
If I can pay 3$ a month to stream virtually every song ever made without having to keep it on my memory card thus saving me tons of money on flash memory, why not? Saves me time, effort, money, its a damn good deal!
Pitrick,
Other than illegally downloading, artists get paid for everyt method Steven Skwarkowski mentioned.
i have to agree with Steve on this one. Pandora is a great free app.
Any artist worth a shit is making money from touring, not from album sales.
Hey Steven, because there are still people out there with the ethics to actually pay for something rather than steal it. Your downloading “free” music is no different than walking out of Wal-Mart with something stuffed in your pocket you didn’t pay for. And no, I don’t work for the music industry in any way shape or form. I’m the father of 2 that teaches them the difference between right and wrong. Stealing is wrong.
I should also be paid for all my knowledge in the automotive world every time someone asks. I should be paid every time I have to go fix a friends cousins neighbors brothers car! Yet, i dont. We all do things all the time and we dont always get paid for it. I pay for albums (CD’s & Vinyl) I feel are worth my money. I dont feel like paying $16 for a CD when I only like 3 songs on it.
The one feature I want – being able to hit the search button anywhere in the app to find a song – still isn’t here. Weird. And while we’re at it, what about Voice Action integration?
I stress that Grooveshark is only 3 dollars a month, that’s hardly going to rob you. It’s a great service and as I mentioned it offers great support over a whole sync of devices.
@Matt, and that 14GB’s worth of music that he’s illegally downloaded isn’t bad enough, we’ve all done it, but I haven’t to that much of an extent.
Anyway along with the VS stuff, let’s just move along on with our personally preferred services.
I’m sure you’ve convinced yourself! But in the real world taking something without paying for it, just because you justify it in your head, doesn’t make it’s right. If you like the 3 songs, go buy just the 3 songs instead of stealing the entire album. I work in the IT world and fix crap all of the time I never get paid for too. I still don’t justify theft and downloading music without paying for it is theft.
Wish i could walk into the grocery store and only pay for what i felt was worth my money.
Grooveshark is WAY better than Pandora. You can actually listen to the EXACT songs you want to hear when you want to hear them. Someone asks do you remember the song… just open Grooveshark, and start streaming it. It can also download songs to the phone for play offline. All for $3 a month. This update is long needed though, and should make for an even better product.
Too bad I cant listen to music at work. Atleast i can browse and troll Phandroid all day though!
it’s a shame this update seems to have broken playback of songs for me. (Unknown Media Player error)
@steven – nice attitude. I suppose we shouldnt pay for apps on the android market either and just download apk’s from rapidshare instead?
Old argument that never seems to die. Anyway, how many of you drove 55.1 mph in a 55 mph zone today? You broke the law…turn yourself in, now.
@Sam
It’s not an argument…it’s a fact. The cop that decides to give you the speeding ticket is in his right to do so but he probably won’t…like downloading a song here and there won’t get you in trouble. But you still clearly miss the point just by stating that dumb example…
I will stop replying now…you never win against a troll…
I just can’t get over the horrible audio quality while on a cellular connection… is there any way to get better quality audio when I’m not on WiFi?
@Richy – We can download APKs from rapidshare?!? HOW?!
j/k.
I agree with Steven Skwarkowski about this application, except for the illegal aspect of free music. I fail to understand how it makes that much of a difference from pandora, slacker, etc. that makes it worth a monthly bill…regardless of price. As someone else has said, we all (or most of us) have downloaded music illegally in the past. All of the music that I downloaded is now old so I really have no use for it. I do not think we should still download music illegally anymore because there are so many ways to get it for “free” (read: ads). Honestly, the reason why pandora is so great is because I don’t have to think about making playlists, I just tell it a song!
Anyways, I will download this to try it out because people here have recommended it. Even if I don’t like it, my girlfriend might.
Does the 3bucks actually go to any of the artist or just the dev? Just because they charge does not mean it is “legal”
There is no right and wrong. Nothing in the real world is so black and white like that. Is is wrong to download songs illegally? Probably. Is it wrong that musicians make so much more money because of the type of work they do vs. someone who chose a different career and will be paying student loans for the next 20 years while eating top ramen? Probably. You people with your “right and wrong”, when reality is that life is unfair for 99% of the world population.
seriously, who uses a keyboard like the one you have in the picture?
@GVinvites…I have that same keyboard why you ask, well I do alot of number crunching and the calulator format keys that are seen on the right believe me helps alot.
Nothing in life is free. So take what you can. If you gotta pay, pay. If you don’t then don’t. y’all sound like a bunch of f-in kids. To each is own. Now STFU!
Wow, yet another feature Symbian has had since 2007.
Yeah android is real cutting edge.
Grooveshark allows you to listen to songs you want and create play lists that synced to all of your devices. This includes Nokia/iPhone/Android/Desktop/Windows Mobile, the only other service I know does this is ‘Spotify’ but Grooveshark has more new songs. I still can’t argue that 3 dollars isn’t enough for what I’ve listed. You can also store your songs in the cloud and access it through Grooveshark, and you can download your playlists onto your phone for Offline playlists for playback throughout the day, no matter if you have internet or not.
In my opinion:
Music artists and actors for that matter are extremely overpayed. They have no talent. NO TALENT. Other people write their songs. Other people do the instrumentals and sound effects. And their voices are perfected through the use of auto tune and other methods. Sure, Ke$ha has some cool beats, but I’d like to hear that bitch sing live without auto tune. Artists like Nirvana deserve every cent they made. It’s pathertic that the fat little kid Angus Jones, a 16 year old talentless kid has already made more than you guys will in your entire life. They make more than doctors, teacher, etc. http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/two-and-a-half-men-kid-signs-300000perepisode-deal–1624
That article made me question how patheic our society has become… rofl
First off I’m not saying that’s its right or wrong but what’s wrong with somebody paying for something and then wanting to share it, its more wrong to sell it to people, its like buying a cake then you need to charge people everytime they eat a piece then paying the bakery for every pice someone bisides you ate. And correct me if I’m wrong but I haven’t seen an artist go broke becouse somebody shaired their song, I have seen it becouse of drugs though
GInvites – I was thinking the same thing when I saw that shot, secretly hoping I could be the first one to comment on it, pwned ;)
Pitrick – downloading a song illegally is NOT the same thing with stealing something from Walmart. When you steal from Walmart, they are actually 1 DVD less. You took one physical object from them. When you download a song online, you merely copy it.
Anyway the fact of the matter is that “pirating” online is a much stronger world than what’s really going on. People copy stuff online because that’s how the Internet works. It’s much different from real life. This is why you can’t stop online piracy – ever – and it will only keep increasing.
The only way to make money from this “pirating” is to find business models that take advantage of it. Some artists and authors are already using torrents as a way to promote themselves and their work. Fighting it is only slowing down the inevitable. At some point they have to embrace it and figure out how to make money from it.
Right now they can’t even think in that direction because they’re too stuck on the idea that they have to sue everyone.
I got tired of buying albums that mostly sucked fucking balls. Sure I would like about 2 or 3 tracks, but most of it sucked balls. Artists got over by making half-ass albums for YEARS. And the only way to get the 2 or 3 good tracks was to buy the entire shitty album. So you know what…FUCK THEM!!! I could care less about their crying asses. They fucked the consumer over for years and now it’s payback time. I’ll download whatever the fuck I want bitches. Learn about it. Try and stop me. I thought so, you can’t.
Oh and by the way, I’m a musician. I’ve played the piano since I was 6. I’m now 29. You do the math. Also, I used to produce beats for a rap group called Island Boys Cartel. So I know the business. I know how “hard” the work is. We used to hang out in the studio and smoke weed and drink all fuckin night. For every hour we spent working on recording, we spent 5 hours fucking off. So don’t give me your sob stories about artists and how hard they work. I was the hardest working mother fucker in that studio because I actually had to create the music. Other than that, nobody really did shit all day…other than slang dope on the corner.
All you people saying how bad stealing music is, you’ve probably downloaded something you didn’t pay for in your lifetime. Its one thing to state right from wrong, its another thing to be a fuckin hypocrite. And all you people preaching to the masses are probably some fuckin hypocrites.
The RIAA can go suck a big one. Their definition of stealing and mine do not coincide. The obnoxious copyright laws used to back up the curmudgeonly greed of the music industry also is ridiculous. On demand is where it’s at, and glad to see Grooveshark is doing it
Grooveshark people spent a lot of time effort building this–not so you could have it for free.
They aren’t asking more than what, three dollars a month for V.I.P.? You cheap mother fuckers. I’ve jacked a lot of music in my day, why? because it was ridiculous to spend 20 bucks for a damned CD.. but when someone charges three dollars a month for ANY SONG YOU WANT, and you still act like you’re offended to spend money? Kill yourselves you rodents.
@Steven Skwarkowski: Only 14GB of music? Thasssss it? You didn’t accomplish downloading much in those 14Yrs, did you? Step on it man! lol :D
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BTW, the type of keyboard some of you are criticizing in the pic are probably some of the best keyboards you could use. Too bad they seem to only make these crappy soft ones now.
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To all the morality police in here: GTFO
Was paying $9.99 for Rhapsody untill now. Grooveshark rocks! $3.00 is a hell of a deal. Offline playback was what got me
Grooveshark sucks. Lots of mislabeled songs (songs that say they are done by an artist when they are not). Lots of duplicate tracks. Guess I’ll stick with Rhapsody.