Well, here we are again. Another week, another slew of apps to choose
from. For a while there, we were doing an "App of the Week" series and
then, for an even longer while, we weren't. I'd like for us to get back
on the right path here, so I'm going to fix this.
Now let's take a little walk-through the app so you can see how pretty and functional it is. I also highly recommend you go to Grooveshark.com and listen to any music you see in the images that follow because I have really good taste in music. Not even kidding.
Here
are some shots of the context menu that appears when you long press a
song - I especially enjoy the offline feature. The "Now Playing" screen
would display cover art if the artist I was listening to had cover art,
but it turns out they didn't this time. That said, the 'Now Playing'
screen is simple and functional, which is all you can ask for, and the
ongoing notification is pretty much like any other music players. Note
the Last.fm scrobbling, of which I am a fan. I really like the song queue drawer, as well:
Overall, I
think the Grooveshark Android app is totally awesome. The sound quality
is a lot better than you'd expect from a music streaming app, to the
point that it sounds like you have the songs stored locally on you
phone. It's really quite impressive and I would easily recommend it to
anyone who loves music.
The app is pretty young, though, and there are still some bugs. They've solved the majority of the issues in the most recent updates, but, as with anything written in code, strange bugs will linger on. I often get "Unknown media player error" when fast forwarding which, honestly, is less useful to me than a "check engine" light. How do I react to that? Despite that, the app still definitely holds its own and the Grooveshark team has done some impressive work since the app's inception. If you're not ready to take the dive (see what I did there?) just yet, this is definitely worth keeping an eye on.
You'd be a fool not to grab the Grooveshark App for Android here:
App of the Week, Season 2: Eclectic Boogaloo
I've been a long time fan of Grooveshark. It is a service that, in my mind, cannot be beaten. There are tons of music streaming apps in the vein of Pandora, like Last.fm, and Slacker Radio, but they don't let you chose your songs or make a playlist. There are also awesome apps like Audiogalaxy and Subsonic, but they rely on the fact that you actually POSSESS the music you want to listen to. Grooveshark even manages to hold its own against similarly priced streaming music services such as MOG, Napster, and Rhapsody - they lack the option of allowing users to upload their own music, which can be a significant advantage if you're looking for obscure or hard to find tunes that aren't currently being licensed.
HTML5 is pretty
Grooveshark
is built on a simple premise: type in a song or artist, and voila, you
can listen to it. The website alone (which was recently overhauled and
re-coded in HTML5 - major props on that, Grooveshark) is reason enough
to love the service, but they didn't stop there: they made one hell of a
mobile app. You can grab the app in the Android market (or you wayward
iPhone users can grab it from iTunes. Also, it's kind of weird that
you're here.) although it does require that you're a Grooveshark subscriber. For $9 a month, however, it is a small price to pay for what is arguably the best music streaming service on the internet.
Enough
about Grooveshark as a whole, let's talk about why you're reading this:
the Android App. It integrates very well with the web app, allowing you
access to all of your playlists, favorites, and uploaded music. You can
also save music for offline listening. Nice!Now let's take a little walk-through the app so you can see how pretty and functional it is. I also highly recommend you go to Grooveshark.com and listen to any music you see in the images that follow because I have really good taste in music. Not even kidding.
This right here is the first screen you're presented with:
This
screen gives you access to everything in the app. The categories are
pretty self-explanatory, so I'll just show you pictures of what happens
when you poke these things:
These
are, obviously, images of my list of playlists, the tracks that are
popular on Grooveshark right now, and my favorites. The playlists have
no song limit and I have taken measures to test that. My playlist "The
Big Picture" has over 400 songs in it and is growing daily. Also, a lot
of the music I listen to is pretty obscure, but 9 times out of 10,
Grooveshark will have exactly what I'm looking for. In fact, these
playlists and my favorites are the only access I have to many of my
favorite songs. It's pretty impressive.
You
can also subscribe to others' playlists or create radio stations (a la
Pandora or Last.fm) but, to date, I haven't really used these features
on my phone. I suppose I'm just too proud to let my phone guess what I
want to listen to. Either way, the features work, I just haven't used
them in a while. Sorry.
You also get some option to play with, but the app takes care of most things in the cloud:
Just
like any other music streaming app, low bitrate files will load faster
but, as you may have guessed, not sound as good. Unchecking the "prefer
low bitrate files" option is best for wifi
The app is pretty young, though, and there are still some bugs. They've solved the majority of the issues in the most recent updates, but, as with anything written in code, strange bugs will linger on. I often get "Unknown media player error" when fast forwarding which, honestly, is less useful to me than a "check engine" light. How do I react to that? Despite that, the app still definitely holds its own and the Grooveshark team has done some impressive work since the app's inception. If you're not ready to take the dive (see what I did there?) just yet, this is definitely worth keeping an eye on.
You'd be a fool not to grab the Grooveshark App for Android here:
Grooveshark
Grooveshark gives you access to millions of songs, streamed right to your phone.
Grooveshark
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