I've never used this site before, so I can't comment on how it used to work. This interface is not at all intuitive though.<p><pre><code> - click a play button on a song
- music starts playing
- click a different play button
- nothing happens
- click pause
- music stops
- click a different play button
- nothing happens
- click play
- first song continues playing
</code></pre>
Steps to get a second song to actually play after you've got a first one playing:<p><pre><code> - find the word Queue (non-underlined, not a button) in the lower right
- click it
- click "clear queue"
- hit the back button (for some reason, the page has navigated away)
- click the play button on a song
</code></pre>
I can understand how they want it to work, after plenty of frustration just trying to listen to some songs. But they've clearly been spending way too much time with it internally without showing it to real world users.<p>Expectation: clicking the play button on a song plays the song.<p>Suggestion: make all this "queueing" stuff be something you opt into, after deciding that you want it and learning how it's supposed to work. Or at the very least add a second play button per song that actually plays the song.<p>EDIT: I just found the link to see the old interface, and despite the above, this new interface is a million times better. The old interface was an empty box saying "what song do you want to hear?" I have no f'ng clue what song I want to hear. I'm on your site so that you can show me some cool new music that I might want to hear.<p>Every link on that old interface leads to an empty screen saying basically "go away, you uncultured, non-music-knowing-about person and don't come back until you've researched enough about music to add some songs to your collection." This new look comes across more like "check out all this music. It's all good, so come in and play around". Much better way to greet newcomers to your site.
I'm VIP user on GS for 3 years now.<p>The interface was just downhill ever since they've switched from Flash. And not only that, but this thing hogs entire CPU sometimes.<p>Android app is pretty sweet, though it didn't received update in quite a while.<p>Btw, you can be on the edge all the time on <a href="http://preview.grooveshark.com" rel="nofollow">http://preview.grooveshark.com</a><p>Not only that but they've broke the promise that they'll be always free (they're not in a lot of countries) and a promise to keep my VIP subscription cost permamently at what I've subscribed too.<p>I'm still a whore and use them as my primary source of music though, so I guess I endorse them.<p>EDIT: No, they've actually kept the original pricing. My mistake.
This is a wonderful update. I'll allow that it takes a moment to understand that the playlist along the lower edge should be thought of separately from the navigation it really only takes a moment. And the new front page opening is much more welcoming and I'd say the subtle addition of the (+) on the play symbol is enough of a cue. I never liked seeing the adverts page, so big and open, and found the old left hand navigation cluttered, useless, and to be ignored. But I'm happy to see that everything flows better now and like everything about it.<p>The artist overview looks much better now that the bio has been added and only a few album covers are showcased followed by a list of the artists most frequented songs. Which is what I want to see. I was always annoyed by the Activity Feed for taking up the space which ought to have been granted to Top Songs. My favorite change is the large Share Song invitation seen after clicking on a song. I'd really like to see Grooveshark replace YouTube for non-video music streaming and linking and I hope making that link so prominent will make it happen.<p>I do have a couple questions though. As someone who doesn't have an account I didn't see a link to add music and if I wasn't familiar with Grooveshark I wouldn't even know that was an option. Also I was wondering why the Artists Top Songs and Comments aren't switched when viewing a single song. And last, I noticed the radio button has been tucked away nicely. Since it's a switch would you consider leaving the menu up for a half second? That may be an awful idea but switches are meant to be seen and felt so I thought I'd mention it just the same.<p>edit: Since I was praising the quick sharing might as well: <a href="http://grooveshark.com/s/Do+Ya+Thang/4wvNTg?src=5" rel="nofollow">http://grooveshark.com/s/Do+Ya+Thang/4wvNTg?src=5</a>
I'm a frequent user, and I am really liking this design. Change is always a little difficult to get used to, but I'm finding it snappier.<p>The "Playlists" screen doesn't seem to be working. I tried visiting it and the spinner's been going for a long time. I only have about 20. I also right clicked a song and clicked 'Add to Playlist' > 'New Playlist' and it said it was created, but when I right clicked another song, the new playlist wasn't available in the list of my playlists. I said 'New Playlist' again and typed in the same thing, and it created it again. I clicked the button to view the new playlist and it only had the one song in it, so it must have overwritten what I'd just created. Dragging songs into the playlist is working fine, but I have no idea if it's getting saved, since I can't view the "My Playlists" page, and it's not showing up in the context menu listing my playlists. Anyways, hope this helps you do some debugging in the area.
I actually found the interface smooth and intuitive.<p>One gotcha, however. Selecting a video to play while a song is already playing produces a broken UX for me - the video appeared in a modal box, but was truncated by the queue and play bars at the bottom of the screen. There was no obvious way to view the whole video since the controls at the bottom were hidden.
I went to grooveshark.com and looked at the page for a few seconds. When I went to close the tab, a JavaScript popup asked me if I was sure that I wanted to "navigate away". Why, oh why does Grooveshark think that was useful, necessary, or a good way to treat a user?
I love Grooveshark and this redesign is really nice. It clears out a lot of the menu and features.<p>But the MyMusic page is really messy... I hope it's a bug because it's barely usable (<a href="http://i.imgur.com/TAzxG.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/TAzxG.jpg</a>)
Never used the site before, I gave it a go. What I wanted to find, I could not find. What I did find, the sound quality was, to me, awful. Maybe its just my taste in music and ears, but for me, still a long way to go.
Seems like there's a few issues with sections expanding to 100% of the available width within the main centered container. If anything they should just have the centered container expand to the full width of the screen a-la Netflix to make use of maximum screen real estate (not that I condone Netflix's obscene use of use of hover events to scroll sideways).<p>Screenshot for reference (1440x900): <a href="http://cl.ly/image/1r2906063g20" rel="nofollow">http://cl.ly/image/1r2906063g20</a><p>A great improvement over the old interface, but still has some room to improve.
Looks clean, and seems to be faster as well. Only regret, they are still using flash for audio: would have been nice to use HTML5 like with html5.grooveshark.com.
The only feature I was looking for was "Now with less legal issues". I have used Grooveshark a lot, but songs would keep disappearing due to DMCA take downs. They have a very innovative HTML5 web app and I love their selection, but there is a little too much legal grey ground for me to invest my long term usage in their service.
When I visit the site from firefox I receive an SELinux notice. "SELinux is preventing /usr/lib64/xulrunner-2/plugin-container from name_connect access on the tcp_socket" [for port 81]<p>Also, my firewall is blocking the app from connecting to 8.20.213.43:843
I don't notice any difference in the ui but I guess that's because I'm never logged in, if I want to share music I usually just send a new artist to my friends manually. Speed has increased though which is very nice, good work!
It seems like there's no ordered sorting. I can't say sort my library by track and then by album to you know... play songs in order unless I select a specific album and sort on that. Not especially straightforward.
I'm really liking the new interface, but damn that's a lot of wasted space. Trying to click through songs is like looking through a pin hole. Why is it all so small?
Just played around with it a bit. Looks like a more cluttered version of Soundcloud without as engaging of a social aspect.<p>Used to use it all the time though.
unfortunately it's blocked in germany (due to "unreasonably high cost of operation").<p>does anyone know if this has something to do with the GEMA (which also won't let us watch so many youtube-videos in germany)?