Comment by physcab | Hacker News Reader

Comment by physcab | Hacker News Reader

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I've been at Grooveshark for a while. While I'm not going to comment on this story, I will say this: every single employee (now about 70) has sacrificed immensely for the success of this company since its start. It's pretty clear to everyone who works at Grooveshark that they don't do it for the money. They show up everyday because they have fun working with a great team, an awesome product, and the hope that one day this industry will be changed for the better. We've gone through a lot- lawsuits, employment without payment, app store removals, people saying crazy shit ("a legal jihad"??), competitors sprouting up every day etc. I'm sure this won't be the last either. But what keeps us going is hearing just how many people NEED us from my little sister who sends me her iPhone every month so we can put a dev build on it when her certificate expires, to the numerous artists we meet at music festivals both large and small who need a better way to distribute their music and get heard.

Let me just say I love your program and use it daily, but...

I recently just let the trial period on the mobile version (ios jb) lapse without buying a subscription. While I love the idea, and I love the app itself, the music quality simply isn't there. Now, I know the bandwidth limitations that come with 3g, and I know the quality is as high as you can get it, but it's just not good enough. Which makes me think that you guys might be peaking too soon. I can't see you making money off free web users with your (thankfully) unobtrusive ads, I don't see any real reason to pay to use the web version, and I don't see mobile infrastructure being fast enough to support you there, where it seems your real prime usage case is.

Even if Google and Apple weren't booting you off their platform, how would you survive long enough that you could deliver the same quality music through my phone that I already have on my phone?

A different experience - I recently tried out Grooveshark on my jailbroken iPhone, and I liked it. The interface is nice and clever, the music quality was fine (I was listening over WiFi though), the radio-style recommendations were decent. I'm just not a big enough music consumer to sign up for the $9/month service; I'm usually happy with my existing music library and if I want to listen to a couple new things I often just use YouTube on my computer. I'd recommend it to friends who wanted a subscription service though.

Thing is, if I have wifi, there's no need for a mobile app. I almost always have my laptop on me, and am more than content to listen with that. Grooveshark mobile makes the promise of any music, anywhere, any time. That's awesome, and is the one thing I could see paying an admittedly steep subscription for. It just didn't deliver well enough for me.

There is a setting to choose better quality songs. The default is to prefer lower quality songs. Also, you can offline songs on mobile devices for playing later.

Also, you can offline songs on mobile devices for playing later.

For some songs. Other song have given me a "not available on mobile" (or something to that effect) message. But those songs are not available at any quality.

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