[APP] Groovefish v0.3.2 [DISCONTINUED]

[Barguast]

The Grooveshark client for Windows Mobile 6​

Groovefish will allow you to search for and play virtually any song in the world for free via your Windows Mobile 6.x device!

Current Features

• Search for individual songs.
• View song information.
• Play the song, with common media controls (play, pause, seek, etc.)

Planned Features

• Entirely new user interface, designed to make it easy and simple to access all parts of the program.
• Playlists.
• Favourites.
• Categories for both playlists and favourites, to help sort them effectively.
• Album artwork.
• Radio mode (play a sequence of randomly selected similar songs indefinitely)
• The option to cache to storage card in order to overcome the 'Failed to start song' error.
• Fully user-skinable user interface.

Groovefish is built upon the most excellent Grooveshark music streaming service.

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If you like this app, please consider a donation to encourage further development.

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[Barguast]

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Can I download songs to my phone?
A. No. This is not something Grooveshark allows you to do, and it won't be something Groovefish will allow you to do. It would constitute piracy after all.

Q. How can I help?
A. At the moment, I want a good solid base on which to build up the rest of the features. If you encounter a problem whilst using Groovefish, please post the details - including how to reproduce it if possible - in this topic. If the problem is non-fatal (i.e. the application doesn't crash) then please check the Debug Log (Options > View Debug Log) and post any relevant information from there.

You can also help by using the Grooveshark service. I'm not sure how they will react to this app, but I'd like to think they can coexist symbiotically since I'm promoting their service. You can support the host of the download by visiting the 1800PocketPC.com website who are kindly hosting and promoting the app for me.

Finally, of course you can DONATE to help encourage further development, more features, etc.

Change Log

0.3.2: QVGA compatibility, more bug fixes, code overhaul

• Big rewrite of some of the code - should fix some problems, may cause others!
• Sporadic crash on exit should now be fixed.
• Searches can now be cancelled.
• Fixes a crash that sometimes occurred when scrolling the search results.
• ... QVGA compatibility!

0.3.1: Bug fixes, extra debugging

• Music player should be less buggy now.
• Crash on exit should be fixed.
• Music player now give more information when connecting to a stream.
• More debugging information (will help the developer in debugging).
• Two options added; Pause on headset disconnect and Pause on incoming call.

0.3: Total overhaul!

• Completely rewritten code base for greater stability.
• Huge improvements to the user interface, allowing search, browsing, and playing on one screen.
• Search results now display the song and artist name.
• Media player now allows for playing, pausing, and seeking the music stream.
• Screen will no longer turn off while the application is running, ensuring the music won't stop playing.

0.2: Major Bug Fix

• Removes a crash that happened when the song had no artwork.

0.1: First Release!

• Initial proof-of-concept release.
• Program can crash if a problem occurs when downloading song artwork (rare) or the actual song itself (more common).
• Sometimes crashes when clicking 'Back' on the player page.
• Poor user interface!

Screenshots



Downloads

This application is now exclusively hosted on 1800PocketPC.com. Downloading requires no registration. Please do not upload this file elsewhere.

Download Groovefish v0.3.2 (current version)

• If you visit the site on a mobile device just click on the Download .CAB image to download the latest verion to your device.
• If you visit the site on a desktop browser and to download the CAB to your phone, just click on the CAB to Phone Image and Scan the tag using Microsoft Tag Reader, and the CAB is sent to your Device.

 

[kernman]

I am really excited about this......playlist support and device screen off would make this the ultimate music app.....thanks for your efforts.

 

[joao2307]

Testing

Please post any betas for us to test....thanks


JP

 

[Barguast]

Releases

0.1a: First Release!

Notes

• Initial proof-of-concept release.
• Program can crash if a problem occurs when downloading song artwork (rare) or the actual song itself (more common)
• Sometimes crashes when clicking 'Back' on the player page.
• Poor user interface!

The first release has been uploaded to the second post! I've tested this on my Xperia and it seems to be relatively stable. That said, I've not done much testing!

The user interface is admitted not very good. I've not spent much time on it, I was more focused on getting a moderately stable first release out there to see how it runs on different devices and at different resolutions.

Next up, I'm going to start designing the 'proper' interface and start adding some basic features that are missing. I have big plans for this!

Hope you like! All feedback welcome.

 

[pyrofool]

Seems stable enough for me at the moment. I'm testing on a Ipaq hx2795 qvga. I did have it crash when it tried to get the album art. Keep up the good work!

 

[Barguast]

Seems stable enough for me at the moment. I'm testing on a Ipaq hx2795 qvga. I did have it crash when it tried to get the album art. Keep up the good work!

Actually, as it turns out the 'rare' crash would -always- happen when there was no artwork for a song. This was due to me writing a clever bit of code with loaded the default artwork from the installation directory rather than downloading it. As it turns out, this clever bit of code didn't work since it used an unsupported .NET method. Opps!

I've taken this out for now, so it should work for all songs apart from the odd network-related crash! See post 2 for an updated CAB.

 

[sandronesta]

looking good, i like ur UI more than nilson, more finger friendly...

 

[kernman]

looking good so far.....thanks

 

[jhw549]

looking great as of 2a, works w/o issue on the Touch Pro (CDMA).
I can't wait to see where this goes...

 

[Barguast]

I'd like to hear some more feedback from others if possible! Any crashes, freezes, etc. I seem to be using a pretty unstable 6.5 ROM at the moment so I don't know whether to attribute the (few) UI freezes to the ROM or to my application. I suspect the former, but it'd be nice to get some form of confirmation.

'Version 1' is coming along nicely by the way - I've write ALL of the UI from scratch and I'm about to rewrite the comms with more speed and greater stability in mind. I'll try to get another release out this week - and it should prove to be a huge improvement...

Fingers crossed!

 

[aussiebum]

hehe, no one complaining = app is working fine, right?

Anyways here's my feedback - tested on Touch HD with PDAViet's V63 WM6.5 build 23053.

Issues/bugs
* Playback stops (eventually) when screen is turned off, and resumes only when screen is on again. Already checked that the I wasn't in suspend mode, and used Power Options to perform the screen off. Doesn't matter if using headphones or external speaker, same results.

Suggestions
* Ability to add songs to a playlist, and play only songs in the playlist (like the main Grooveshark website)

Other than that, everything works as expected (with one song anyways ) Will test more....

Look forward to V1!

 

[jhw549]

Issues/bugs
* Playback stops (eventually) when screen is turned off, and resumes only when screen is on again. Already checked that the I wasn't in suspend mode, and used Power Options to perform the screen off. Doesn't matter if using headphones or external speaker, same results.

I experienced the same issue, but wrote it off as incorrect settings on s2u2, I just did a hard reset and am still fixing up some things...

 

[aussiebum]

I experienced the same issue, but wrote it off as incorrect settings on s2u2, I just did a hard reset and am still fixing up some things...

Just to clarify, the issue occurs *after* I switched off S2U2 completely before using Groovefish, because I know the "Don't Suspend Power" setting is Off by default and even when switch On, still seems to stop HSDPA connections sometimes.

Ok, did a little more testing, found some more issues:
* After pressing play in a song, pressing the back button seems to wipe the search results list
* Buffering seems to fail for certain songs, eg. "Bee Gees" => Staying Alive - I get a .NET CF error, but can't see specific details because I don't have the mesages module installed.

 

[skyler17]

Wow, I'm really excited. Now we have two guys that are both working on a great Grooveshark client. Wonderful.
Downloading now, if I find something useful to tell you about your current version, I will give you feedback asap.

PS
I think that the name of your app is brilliant!

EDIT: Ok so here are my thoughts....

One Major gripe that I have is that whenever the backlight turns off, so does the music. The same thing happens with Gooveshark Mobile.

other things:
1. when you search and then go back, it does not show the previous search results. I'm sure you were already planning to address this in the near future though.
2. There is nothing wrong with the user interface, it works great. Search is front and center.
But a reccomendation for the future that I have is to incorporate a carousel (kinda like TF3D) so that there are the following tabs: "Search" "My Music" "Recent" "Popular" "Favorites" and "People". Since those are the main menu items on listen.gooveshark.com, those screens would make most sense.
3. Obviously it would be amazing to be able to log into your account through the application. I'm sure this is already coming in the future too.


Lastly, if anyone is having problems with the application not being able to play a stream, it is Gooveshark.com's fault right now and not Sharkfish's

 

[GuestK00306]

One Major gripe that I have is that whenever the backlight turns off, so does the music. The same thing happens with Gooveshark Mobile.

other things:
1. when you search and then go back, it does not show the previous search results. I'm sure you were already planning to address this in the near future though.

^^ My only gripe right now.

Also, when searching for music we should be presented with Artist/Title alone. No need to do more than Grooveshark does Then only present the rest of the information (Album/Art/Length/Genre) when the music is playing. I'm not going to decide what to listen to based on song length

With a UI as finger-friendly and attractive as nilezon's this could be fantastic!

P.S. Tested & working on Asus P565 VGA 480x640 over HSDPA

 

[Barguast]

Yay! Comments!

A few responses;

• I'm not sure if it's possible to keep the music playing after the screen has turned off - if there is some magical way of doing so, I'd love to know - it's certainly not something I'm doing intentionally! I can just stop the screen from turning itself off, so there is a potential fix there - just not an ideal one.
• The song info page (with the genre, duration, artwork, etc) will be an optional step in-between the search results and the player. My aim is to have all major functions of the application to be one (or, at the most two) taps away (probably using something similar to skyler17's carousel idea).
• The search result page will eventually show song and artist name - I went with the plain ol' ListView control for the search result just to have something done quickly, and with kinetic scrolling.

As for the stream crashing the application - the only situation I've had this is where the stream is actually missing. You can test this by doing the same search on Grooveshark and seeing if the error message pops up. I haven't yet accounted for missing streams so if it's missing - it'll crash!

Oh, and... I made an application icon this morning!

 

[superkevx]

very excited for the next release, keep it up!!

 

[Barguast]

It's good to hear there is still some interest... I'm still putting a lot of hours into this project, so it's nice to hear there is still some enthusiasm for it!

There should be another release some time this week, hopefully. I'll post some screenshots if I get a chance - the UI is looking very pretty now!

 

[GuestK00306]

It's good to hear there is still some interest... I'm still putting a lot of hours into this project, so it's nice to hear there is still some enthusiasm for it!

There should be another release some time this week, hopefully. I'll post some screenshots if I get a chance - the UI is looking very pretty now!

Oh yeah! Can't wait

The screen switching off/audio problem is by-design in WinMo. The only player to actually get around it is WMP and I have no idea how. Nitrogen keeps the screen on "dimmed" mode while the music is playing to get around it.

The only problems I've encountered in this release is the random Exceptions being thrown when trying to play certain tracks. Doesn't always happen though & usually closing/opening the app solves it.