Groove Shark is an Online free music library of over 7 million songs located at: http://listen.grooveshark.com If we want to make Playlists, and save our favorites, then we need to sign up onto Groove Shark by clicking the Create an Account button at the top right area of the home page screen. It is then very simple to fill out the screen: (Also tick the Terms of Service box). The sign up is immediate, and does not involve any confirming emails to your inbox or the like. We need to search for our first song to add to our first playlist. We find a song, and then we play it to check it is ok, (with the bottom of screen Play button). If we click on the top of screen Add button, this will add the song to a Playlist called current songs which is built across the bottom of the screen. We can see this in the following screen image: How to Use Groove Shark Online Music Player Page 1 of 11
To search for our next song, we click on the left hand column Home button. This will take up back to the search screen, and we can find and choose our next song. We found that on this next song, we had to right click on it, and then choose Play Now to get it to play. It then added itself to our current songs bottom of screen playlist, without us having to press the add button. Note that we can use our browser back and forward buttons to navigate while in Groove Shark. We don t seem to lose data as we do this. If we have a current songs track that we want to delete, all we have to do is mouse over it at the bottom of the screen, and we can obtain an X button to delete it: There is also a Play button when we mouse over songs on the bottom of screen to play them, (or a Pause button as shown above, if the song is currently playing). How to Use Groove Shark Online Music Player Page 2 of 11
So we can keep adding songs, until we have all that we want for our particular play list. The easiest way to add the songs, seems to be to search them, and then when they are listed, go to the left hand side of the song, and click on the + button to add them to the bottom of screen songs list. Then mouse over them on the bottom of screen, and use the Play button that appears to preview them. If they are not to our liking, then mouse over them and click on the x that appears to delete them from our current songs list. Note that there is a bottom of screen slider (we click the mouse and drag it) that we use to move across our current songs list: Once we have our desired set of songs, we now click the bottom of screen Save button to save them into a Playlist: A pop up panel then appears, where we can enter a name for our Playlist: How to Use Groove Shark Online Music Player Page 3 of 11
We then click the Save button. Our Playlist then comes up as a new item in the left hand column menu of the screen: If we click on this Playlist, then the songs from this playlist will appear in the player like this: How to Use Groove Shark Online Music Player Page 4 of 11
We can share our Playlist with friends, but we do not seem to be able to embed it into our own web page. If we click the top right hand corner Options button, and then choose Share we will be supplied with a direct URL link to our Playlist like this: http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/bigpassy+s+rock+songs+1/22127288 To be able to play all of the songs one after each other, we need to highlight all of the songs in blue using our mouse and the down arrow key. We then click the top of list Play All or Play (12) etc button, and not the bottom play button to get things started. Making a Groove Shark Widget to Place on a Blog or Webpage. There is a whole other world of Groove Shark, that allows us to make a widget. A widget is a self contained music player that we can place onto our web page. It is kind of like a little ipod of all our favorite songs. A finished widget looks like this: How to Use Groove Shark Online Music Player Page 5 of 11
To make a Widget we have to go to a separate section of Groove Shark. You can use the Playlist that you have already made. It is possible to turn this Playlist into a Widget. However we were not always able to get Groove Shark to find our playlist, and sometimes had to re-search for our songs, while in the Widget builder. We think this happened because we may have forgotten to save our song list as a Playlist first. To enter Widget Builder mode, we have to click Export on the bottom of the normal screen, as shown below. However, before we can get the Export option to appear, we need to have built a songlist, and also saved it as a Playlist. As soon as we click Export, a new screen opens up to a new window like this: How to Use Groove Shark Online Music Player Page 6 of 11
Our first choice is to choose Chameleon (if we want to make a multiple songs player), or click the right arrow and choose Single Song if we just want to embed a one song onto our web page as a narrow pencil like player. We then need to scroll down on the above screen, and set up our color scheme, as well as the size of our player. We can use color scheme presets, or make our own colors: How to Use Groove Shark Online Music Player Page 7 of 11
We can choose a preset, and then customize it to our own colors like this: When we are happy with the Design of the Player, we click on Next Step at the bottom of our screen. On this next screen, we can choose additional songs for our Widget if we want to: How to Use Groove Shark Online Music Player Page 8 of 11
The above screen can be scrolled downwards, and when we are happy, we can click the Finish button: We then need to save our widget, and then scroll down to the bottom of the screen, to obtain our cut and pastable embed HTML code: (by clicking the copy code button) How to Use Groove Shark Online Music Player Page 9 of 11
We can then use Ctrl-V to paste this code into our Blog Post while in HTML edit mode: The player (ours is a very 540 pixels wide) is then on our page. It looks better at 250 wide, which can easily be achieved by editing the HTML in two places where the width is. We can click on any song and the playing will commence from there: How to Use Groove Shark Online Music Player Page 10 of 11
Here is a copy of our HTML code: <object width="540" height="400"> <param name="movie" value="http://listen.grooveshark.com/widget.swf"></param> <param name="wmode" value="window"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="hostname=cowbell.grooveshark.com&widgetid=18644345&style=metal&bbg=8bd 61c&bfg=FF0054&bt=470c78&bth=8bd61c&pbg=470c78&pbgh=FF0054&pfg=8bd61c&pfgh=47 0c78&si=470c78&lbg=470c78&lbgh=FF0054&lfg=8bd61c&lfgh=470c78&sb=470c78&sbh=FF 0054&p=0"></param> <embed src="http://listen.grooveshark.com/widget.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="540" height="400" flashvars="hostname=cowbell.grooveshark.com&widgetid=18644345&style=metal&bbg =8bd61c&bfg=FF0054&bt=470c78&bth=8bd61c&pbg=470c78&pbgh=FF0054&pfg=8bd61c&pfg h=470c78&si=470c78&lbg=470c78&lbgh=ff0054&lfg=8bd61c&lfgh=470c78&sb=470c78&sb h=ff0054&p=0" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="window"></embed></object> Note that our widget is wider than normal. The normal size is 250 pixels wide. We can always come back to our widgets and re-edit them later, at the special URL of: http://widgets.grooveshark.com/ provided that we saved them: So that s Groove Shark. It s awesome, free, and a great way to have your favorite songs on the web available to you anywhere, anytime. Let s hope it lasts, and doesn t get closed down, or go bankrupt. Enjoy, Big Passy Wasabi. How to Use Groove Shark Online Music Player Page 11 of 11