Grooveshark HTML5 site now working on Windows Phone

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

A few weeks ago, Grooveshark.com announced an HTML5 version of their music-streaming site which made many of us excited--after all, IE9 on Windows Phone is all about HTML5. But alas, the first to complain that their browsers wouldn't play anything were Windows Phone users despite attention paid by the web developer for Grooveshark, James Hartig. In fact, he detailed his experience in a blog post laying blame on Microsoft: "Windows Phone Plagued by IE9's Flawed AJAX".

That didn't stop Microsoft's Ben Riga, Technical Evangelist on the Windows Phone team and Eric Lawrence, Program Manager on Internet Explorer, from trying to help out. And in a new blog post, the Grooveshark dev has now been able to figure out how to properly get Grooveshark running on HTLM5 for IE9.

We just loaded up the site (html5.grooveshark.com) and not only does it load quickly and look beautiful, but gosh darn it actually plays music (even under the lock-screen). In other words, all is good and while we'd still prefer a dedicated Grooveshark client, we'll take this mobile HTML5 site for now, thank you very much.

Kudos to Ben, Eric and James for working this out.

Source: Dev Jar; via @benriga

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

18 Comments
  • Sweeeeeet! =)
  • Site loads but when searching for music or clicking stations or popular nothing happens
  • Now it works. Yay! :)
    Looks a bit weird with the player staying in the middle of the page tho, but now im being picky.
  • Won't load. Asks for flash player to be installed. Anybody know why?
  • Oh oh...I do!  You didn't read the article close enough ;-) The site: html5.grooveshark.com It's not www.grooveshark.com which is where you're going.
  • Ah ok lol. Just clicked on the link
  • when did grooveshark ban access for germany? :/
  • Like Nizzon, can get to the page but nothing loads. Not a big deal. As Windows Phone users we get the premium version of Last.fm for free. No ads. I don't know why that isn't promoted more heavily.
  • Awesome. Now I can stream music through grooveshark. :D
  • Works great for me until the screen locks! The playlist only continues when the screen is active. Is anyone else experiencing this?
  • Playlist also breaks if IE is running in the background so it has to be an issue with how wp7 handles multitasking. Now that we have html5 working can't some write a kickass app for groveshark? Music shark has been dead for to long...
  • Excellent!!  Thank you!!  Even better than metro radio search feature!
  • Funny. I don't have the problems you guys have.
    It runs in the background, under the lockscreen, etc. It's awesome!
    (granted I'm running the custom ROM from DFT. maybe it has something to do with that? *shrugs*)
    Thanks much, WPCentral! 
  • Works for me under the lockscreen as well, though the gap between songs is fairly long
  • Crashed my phone, I'm afraid. Never had this happen before. Had to remove the battery.
  •  
    Can't wait for Grooveshark to hit the Windows Phone Marketplace? Then download the WP7 app here:http://www.jeremiahisaacson.com/Grooveshark.xap
    To install, side load the .xap file. Instructions here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Txv6ldiNqo
    Enjoy!
  • Everything great. The only glitch is that in lock screen mode (Lumia 925), in HTML 5 on Internet Explorer, it won't play the next song in the queue until I unlock the screen. Anyone else with a similar problem?
  • Ya, I've always had this problem with it. Too bad, if it worked through the lock screen, I'd use it all the time, with Flattr's set up and everything.    ____________ Lumia 920 Amber/GDR2