The Grooveshark HTML5 app can stream music from any modern mobile browser, including Safari on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Until now, the service wouldn't work on (non-jailbroken) iOS devices, since the desktop Web app for Grooveshark utilizes Flash for playback.

There's a Cross-Platform Compatible HTML5 Mobile Web App For That

Grooveshark isn't the first company to use the power of HTML5 to circumvent proprietary app store restrictions. The Financial Times launched a Web app of its own last year to get around Apple's steep subscription revenue share requirements. The browser-based version functioned as well as any basic native app and even led to an increase in mobile traffic for the Financial Times, thanks to its cross-platform compatibility.

Amazon has made HTML5 an increasingly central part of its mobile strategy as well, launching the Web-based Kindle Cloud Reader and more recently unveiling an iPad-optimized Kindle e-book store.

Grooveshark's reasons for having to go around Apple and Google are a bit different than Amazon's. The music startup isn't so much concerned about subscription revenue share terms, but rather has been ejected from native app stores because of the legally-questionable nature of its functionality and business model. The company is currently being sued by every major music label, with EMI recently piling on despite being the only one with which Grooveshark has a formal deal in place. The company allegedly hasn't been forthcoming with royalty payments to EMI, so the label has taken Grooveshark to court. Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner were already litigating against the company, accusing it of permitting widespread copyright infringement.

Grooveshark's longterm viability in the face of these lawsuits may be unclear, but for now the company is pushing forward and making its service available to more smartphone and tablet users.

But this week, the label was joined by a few of its industry allies in its fight against Grooveshark. Sony and Warner Music Group are piling on and joining the lawsuit against the service. Since UMG's lawsuit was filed, leaked emails and blog comments from purported Grooveshark employees have shined new light on the extent of the alleged infringement.

As damning as some of the alleged leaks sound, the case is not necessarily a slam dunk against Grooveshark. The company is taking a position not unlike the one used by Google when it successfully defended YouTube from a $1 billion lawsuit filed by Viacom.

The case also bears a slight resemblance to the situation Napster was in a decade ago. When an upstart music service with a legally-questionable method of sharing copyrighted material suddenly finds itself in the crosshairs of the entire major music industry, it could be a matter of time before a judge shuts it down and its owners sell it for parts.

If Grooveshark's executives deliberately tried to build a business on copyrighted material and then use its popularity as leverage during licensing negotiations (as some have claimed), they clearly didn't foresee the rise of legal streaming services like Spotify, Rdio and MOG. Should Grooveshark disappear, any one of those services would offer a good enough alternative, albeit without some of the rare, unauthorized tracks that have found their way onto Grooveshark.

I never abandoned purchasing music all together, but the MP3 struck me as a far more convenient format than the compact disc, and Napster gave me quick and easy access to a world of MP3's. When Radiohead's "Kid A" showed up on Napster weeks before the CD was available in stores, what was I supposed to do? Ignore it?

The Napster brand lived on for years to come, having been converted to a pay subscription music service. Unsurprisingly, it never quite returned to the levels of popularity it saw in 1999, as new digital music services popped up left and right. Most recently, the company was purchased by one of those services, Rhapsody. Today, Napster will officially be absorbed into the Rhapsody brand and even that iconic, headphone-wearing logo, once a symbol a generation's digital defiance, will cease to be used.

Ten Years After Napster, Digital Music is Still Evolving

As we head toward 2012, the digital music landscape looks very different, and in fact is still evolving into something that works well for fans, music labels and artists alike. The record industry as we once knew it may never return, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Today, people can record multi-track demos on the tiny computers they carry in their pockets and produce complete, studio-quality tracks on their laptops later. Once everything is mixed and mastered, they can publish it online audience at little to no cost.

Naturally, DIY artists who get started on the Internet don't have quite the reach of a record label, but many musicians have launched their careers online and some established artists have relied on the Web in lieu of the record labels that once supported them.

Consuming Music is Even Easier Without Napster

As far as consuming music, it's never been easier. Just as one used to be able to find new albums on Napster or LimeWire within days of their release, most major label and indie releases are available on Spotify, Rdio or MOG pretty much right away. If not, you can try Grooveshark, as long as it's still around, anyway. If those freemium streaming sites don't have what you're looking for, Apple, Google and Amazon all have massive MP3 stores with cloud-based storage services alongside them.

In addition to being legal, today's digital music services go beyond the desktop and are readily available on our smartphones, those little gadgets could have hardly imagined a decade ago. They're even starting to get integrated into smart TVs, cars and a growing number of household appliances.

For a more serendipitous listening experience, there's personalized Internet radio services like Pandora, Last.fm and Slacker Music. If you prefer human recommendations over algorithms, services like Shuffler.com scan hundreds of popular music blogs and build genre-based, curated music stations, even on the iPad. You can even listen to others DJ their own setlists in real time using services like Turntable.fm or one of its many copycats.

Of course, if none of these options give you what you're looking forward, less-than-legal means to acquire music still exist, but you didn't hear it from us.

The latest lawsuit is actually the second one to be filed by Universal Music Group, the biggest of the major record companies. This time, UMG is suing over a claim that Grooveshark employees were required to bulk-upload music files to the service, and even got a monetary bonus for beating their upload quota. The lawsuit demands $150,000 per alleged infringement, which works out to about $17 billion, as Digital Music News points out.

Pretty scandalous stuff, but it is an anonymous comment on a blog. It could have been made by anybody, including a disgruntled intern or somebody working for a competing service. Or it could be accurate, in which case Grooveshark's legal defense had better be rock solid.

This is only the latest in a series of legal challenges faced by Grooveshark. What makes the site so controversial is the way it handles the licensing, hosting and distribution of music. Rather than taking the legally bulletproof route of companies like Apple, Google or Spotify, Grooveshark relies heavily on user-submitted audio files, which are then available to other users on the service. As a result, the content library on Grooveshark isn't limited to commercially-released albums. Music fans can use the site to find bootlegs of concerts and other rare material.

As a consequence of the ongoing litigation, Grooveshark's mobile presence has been hampered. Earlier this year, its app was pulled from the Android Market, although can still be accesed from the browser on Android-based phones.

Despite an HTML5 redesign, the site's player still utilizes Flash, and thus won't work on iOS. That normally wouldn't be a big deal, except that Apple has pulled and banned the service's iOS app from the App Store over the legal controversy. Users with jailbroken iPhones can still get Grooveshark from Cydia.

The company has now fired back at the music industry and at Apple and Google, contending there's nothing illegal about its app.

Grooveshark insists that it complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and that it processes takedowns as they're filed. Indeed, the company says it's taken down over 1.76 million files and suspended the upload privileges of over 22,000 users.

Grooveshark says it focuses on licensing with these individual users, but it is also working to secure rights with record labels. It touts licensing deals with over a thousand labels, as well as payment agreements to performing rights organizations. "These are not the characteristics of a company 'dedicated to copyright infringement," something that the RIAA and labels have accused.

Grooveshark makes it clear in its open letter that it wants to defend its name:

"In light of the recent misleading press concerning Grooveshark's application, it is important to make clear that we will defend our service, and the letter and the spirit of the law, in court and in Congress. We will defend our name and our ideals for the sake of our users who expect modern delivery systems and comprehensive access across devices, for the sake of artists and content owners who fear another decade of decline, and for other innovators who continue to bring new ideas to market through the expression of creativity in the form of technology."

For Android users who want to skirt the ban from the Android Marketplace, you can download the Grooveshark app directly from the company homepage. For iPhone users, well, you're out of luck.

That's my theory, anyway. One of the things I'm interested in tracking are the streaming music services. So tonight I built a Twitter list of people who work at Rdio, Pandora, Mog and Spotify. (Then I remembered Grooveshark!) Give it a click and you can follow it too. I'll show you how I made it below - and of course this process could be applied to any field.

Becky from Fancyhands sent me back great links for lists to Pandora and Spotify right away. The list she sent from Mog wasn't so great but no one appeared to have made a list of Mog employees yet.

Step 2 - I made a list of Mog employees by searching for them on LinkedIn. Then I trained the point-and-click database creation tool Needlebase to go to that search result page URL, click through each person's profile link, check and see if they had a Twitter profile linked there and if so scrape it for me. (My tutorial.) I created a new list of Mog employees myself and added each of those people to it.

Step 3 - I only had a small handful of Mog employees so far and I knew there were more on Twitter, so I searched for mentions of Mog in Twitter bios using Twellow. At that point I had 8 Moggers and was ready to move on with my life. Then I remembered Grooveshark and saw that they had a nice staff list they had created themselves.

Step 4 - I was complaining on Twitter today about how hard it is to splice multiple Twitter lists together and my new pal David McKinney said "try Formulists!"

I did and it was AWESOME. Click click boom, thank you Formulists, here now is a list of exactly 140 people (coincidence!) on staff at the 5 leading streaming music services:

Give that link a click, follow the list, then either visit the link on your Twitter page or add it as a column in Tweetdeck or Seesmic and just like that, you'll have a front row seat for conversations between some of the hippest cats online. Hey, Team Rdio, thanks for the music - I'm so happy I subscribed!

The Grooveshark app was initially rejected by Apple and relegated to the unauthorized Cydia app directory for jailbroken devices. Grooveshark spent a year tweaking the app to make it legal and it appeared in the App Store on August 8. But today, it was gone.

"Earlier this afternoon, Apple sent us a letter notifying us that, due to a complaint they received from Universal Music Group UK, Grooveshark for iPhone has been, strangely, pulled from the App Store," Grooveshark wrote on its blog.

"This comes as an absolute surprise to us, and we are not sleeping until we figure out exactly how to fix this--and get Grooveshark for iPhone back in the App Store."

Apple recently approved a spate of cloud-based music apps, including MOG and Rdio. But Grooveshark is unique because it relies on users to upload music to its catalog, which can be streamed and downloaded from the app via either Amazon MP3 or the iTunes Store.

The company already settled one lawsuit with a major record company in October, agreeing to license EMI's catalog.

The iPhone app offered a 30-day free trial and then a $3 a month subscription. Like other services, Grooveshark allowed users to download songs. It has apps for BlackBerry, Android and Nokia (Symbian) devices.

The release comes on the heels of several other streaming music apps' admission to the App Store and offers a cheap, though sometimes catalog-light, alternative to other services.

Grooveshark had previously seen its app rejected by Apple and had done an end-around, offering a version of the app for jailbroken iPhones in the Cydia app directory.

Grooveshark comes onto the scene with a 30-day free trial of its app, which is free to download, and a much lighter pricetag of just $3 a month after the first month. As a peer-to-peer style service, Grooveshark's catalog is theoretically infinite and can, at times, contain some rare musical gems. At the same time, you might be hard-strapped to find some basics. As Matt Rosoff, a writer for CNET and a fellow Pink Floyd fan, points out "there are occasional gaps: Only one song from Pink Floyd's 'Animals' album showed up".

Like other services, Grooveshark also allows users to download songs for times when 3G is not available - a feature we were really fond of when we took a look at MOG - but doesn't currently support background operation. Thankfully, multitasking is one of the slick updates the company is working on for the next version.

The app's functionality is similar to other services, though MOG remains our favorite to date. The search feature could use a little help with sorting by either artist, album or song name, but for the price, it's pretty hard to beat. $10 a month feels like an actual bill, whereas $3, though not a huge difference, feels like something that could go entirely unnoticed every month - especially for the constant stream of music wherever you go.

The album collection combines weighted rankings - based on submitted top 10 lists from 550 MP3 blogs - with a widget from Grooveshark to listen to the album, and a Creative Commons photo of each band. It's quite nice. The newest addition to the project is unusually low-tech; it's artist renditions of the top 50 musical artists of the year.

This year's Hype Machine Zeitgeist is another example of the awesome potential of free online music combined with smart technology and excellent design. Check it out and be inspired. Is this era the end of the music industry? It sure doesn't need to be.

Eager North Americans have been waiting for the Spotify service to launch stateside; nevertheless, because the company looks to sign major label deals before its American release, there is no hard date for launch. According to paidContent, "Spotify hopes to launch in the U.S. in Q3 or Q4." Meanwhile, Florida-based Grooveshark just launched a premium service available to both US and international members, and an iPhone service has been submitted to the App store. While Grooveshark's current app does not allow for cached offline music, the company plans to incorporate this feature in an upcoming version. Not to be outdone, Rhapsody also submitted an iPhone app early this week. If Spotify launches in the US when Grooveshark's cached music app becomes available, it will be an interesting battle for streaming music supremacy.

Additionally, Bonnain went on to point out the Grooveshark artists community and quiet honestly, we were thrilled to discover it. Beyond the fantastic experience of the music discovery engine and the listener-focused features of the site, Grooveshark actually has a Bandcamp-style service for artists to promote themselves.

The Artist Dashboard allows bands to track their most popular songs, fan favorite play lists and measure play counts. Additionally, Grooveshark also allows bands to sell merchandise via Junkytees and TuniPop, license music via Creative Commons, land deals via YouLicense and crowdsource album funding via SellABand.

Within the artist's environment, Grooveshark monetizes its service by offering musicians a chance to have their music advertised and played alongside similar bands. With more than 7 million tracks in its catalogue, the company is effectively leveraging its size and existing audience to make a case as the premier destination for artist promotion. Artists can expect to see their tracks in community playlists and distributed via widgets, links and soon, through mobile playlists.

While Spotify's iPhone application has received a ton of buzz for its ability to play cached music streams, Grooveshark also has an iPhone application in the works. While the app's current iteration does not allow for offline play, Bonnain assures ReadWriteWeb that the feature is in the mobile developer pipeline and it won't cost $15 a month to try it when it arrives.

While both Grooveshark and Spotify's premium subscription programs are in their infancy, it will be interesting to see which service will find the right features and licensing partnerships to come out on top.

According to Forbes journalist, Javier Espinoza, "Another looming threat [to Spotify]: Microsoft is launching a very similar music streaming service later in July, a service that also allows users to download the music, something Spotify still won't allow members to do." Nevertheless, the question is, will Microsoft be able to provide cross-format support and separate itself from its lackluster music devices in order to build a site that consumers will enjoy? If it can't, Spotify will have nothing to worry about.

Besides, in late June, Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek made the following statement to the Register, " We're working on a one-click download solution with 7Digital, press buy, press OK and you buy a recording. My hope is to get it out in the next couple of months."

Demonstrated at Google's late May I/O conference, Spotify's Android already caches music for easy offline play. An iPhone app version is already reportedly in the works.

If you can play all of your favorite music from your cached play list, how important is it for the average user to have the access to the original file? Below is a look at the current Android app, let us know your listening habits in the comments below.

2. Deezer: Deezer offers users free and legal streaming music while sharing advertising revenue with artists and rights owners. The site launched with a Sony BMG partnership and signed a Universal Music deal in 2008. Users can share their favorite music by connecting with friends within the social network, or embedding playlists in 3rd party sites.

3. Spotify: Heralded as one of the best music streaming experiences on the market, Spotify is only available in the UK, Sweden, Norway, Spain, France and Finland. TechDigest TV uploaded a fantastic looking preview of Spotify's much anticipated iPhone app.

4. Tunerec: Swedish company Tunerec allows users to create music libraries and playlists from recorded radio play. Because libraries are taken from recorded music, it takes a while to populate playlists; however, according to RWW's initial review by Frederic Lardinois, the service is worth the wait.

5. Last.FM: If you haven't heard of Last.FM, you've probably been living under a rock. The site offers users the ability to create radio stations and stream them complete with AudioScrobbler-powered recommendations.

6. Pandora: To the user, Pandora and Last.FM are similar recommendation-based radio services; however, where AudioScrobbler makes statistical inferences, Pandora's recommendations are determined by the Music Genome Project's 400 distinct musical characteristics.

7. Slacker: Slacker is another popular radio recommendation service. Users input tracks and receive recommendations. Slacker first launched with custom mobile hardware and has since expanded onto other mobile devices.

8. The Hype Machine: This is a fantastic service for those willing to leave music selection to the experts. Like other sites, this one allows listeners to search for music and stream playlists; however, the files on the site are actually streamed from the blogs of top labels, DJs, promoters and music start ups.

9. Blip.fm: Blip.fm is another site where music lovers can access millions of streaming songs. Members receive their own station and the ability to share station programming responsibilities with friends. The site also offers integration with blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed and Last.fm. The act of blipping refers to the act of linking to a song and attaching a 150 character comment to it.

10. MOG: MOG is a music blog network that encompasses more than 300 blog posts per week. The site offers an in-depth look at new artists and includes music recommendations, videos and streaming audio clips. A good place to start with this service is to play audio from it's Recently Popular Posts page.

11. Lala: Lala also offers users a playable web browser interface. The service contains 7 million free online songs and the ability to purchase additional web songs at 10 cents each or downloadable MP3's for 80 cents and up each.

12. Imeem: Imeem is considered "the new social mixtape". The streaming music site allows users to create playlists and share them across the web. RWW recently covered Imeem's iPhone and Android launch.

13. SoundCloud: SoundCloud also allows users to upload tracks and share them via the cloud. Listeners receive shared files via an email-style interface. From there, they can choose to either play the music from the site or download the tracks they've received from friends.

14. 8Tracks: This service lets users upload 8 tracks as a playlist and share the playlist with friends. This service is essentially what Muxtape used to be.

15. Muxtape: Muxtape has transformed from one of the early mixtape-style music sites (users uploaded and shared playlists) to a directory of bands. It remains a great place to discover indie bands.

16. Project Playlist: Project Playlist indexes music from across the web. Again, users create playlists and share links to music files with their friends. Reviewers see this as one of the best music search engines in existence.

17. Skreemr: Skreemr is also a search engine and music indexing site. It claims to offer users access to "6 million mp3 files from over 100,000 web sites".

18. Fizy: Similar to the now defunct Seeqpod, Fizy is an extremely bare bones approach to streaming music with a simple search bar. Like Seeqpod, the site offers speedy music video results and audio results, and unfortunately, legally questionable content. Perhaps the site's recent acquisition will change that.

On the Horizon: Microsoft is set to launch a streaming music site at the end of July. For more info on this project check out our coverage.

But the competition here is not Microsoft. For the business user, the competition is Blackberry; and Blackberry is not Microsoft. I am a long time Blackberry user and it is seldom annoying. It just gets the job done. So unlike when I switched back from Windows to Mac, which I did with a big sigh of relief, I am in no hurry to switch based on anything wrong with what I have.

And a few reviews are making me think that iPhone could be a high maintenance date. Sure, high maintenance dates can be fun, but I am judging this on boring utility criteria. For example:

1. Keyboard. I am ready to be convinced by touch-screen keyboards. But I am not sure I want to spend the time adjusting. Outside the USA, where SMS is the major use of a mobile phone, I think this is a big deal. Flipping to horizontal is neat, but does this work for email?

2. Battery. Any mobile device that cannot do a full day's work and play without re-charge is a pain. You don't want to be in "don't leave home without it" mode regarding your charger unless you are going for more than a day. On a normal day, it's plug it in before you go to sleep and pick it up in the morning.

3. It's a bit big as a phone. OK, so is the Blackberry. But, as they say, size matters when you are holding it to your ear. Some people express almost comical amusement at the idea of using the iPhone as a phone - "you still call people, how quaint". Then don't call it a Phone, because it does set that expectation.

I know that resistance is futile. I will get an iPhone eventually. Or Blackberry will give me a better browser, which is really what I love about iPhone.

The killer app for me? Skype to Skype calls over WiFi. I believe that requires an unlocked iPhone. It would dramatically change the economics of mobile phones. Which AT&T certainly knows and will be resisting for as long as possible.

Plus a really slim but full function collapsible keyboard, so I can write full length stuff as easily as on my laptop. And then a simple way to plug into any screen that's around, so I can edit docs stored in the cloud. So that I can stop lugging around my laptop; that's a big win for people who spend a lot of time away from their desk.

My guess is that the iPhone ecosystem will bring all these things to market fairly soon. The iPhone is the first real new platform since Windows (sorry, Facebook).

Image: After the iPhone Keynote, Jan 2007; pic by mac steve