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Digital Grooveshark Timeline
Grooveshark make app available for jail-broken iPhones
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 3 March 2010
Talking of a streaming music service with social networking and sharing functionality, Grooveshark, the US-based streaming whatnot which began very much as a social sharing network, has said it is making its iPhone app available for use on so called jail-broken handsets, ie those Apple phones unlocked from the constraints of the IT firm’s proprietary system.
This follows the news Apple have refused to approve the Grooveshark iPhone app for distribution via their official app store. Bosses at the streaming service say that Apple has “ritually rejected” the app for “primarily selfish reasons”. Presumably those alleged “selfish reasons” are that the app enables paying Grooveshark subscribers to access the streaming service via their mobile, and to store music on the handset to continue listening when outside of mobile range, and that arguably competes with Apple’s own iTunes services.
That said, the Grooveshark app works very much like the Apple-approved Spotify and We7 apps which offer a similar service for paying subscribers in Europe, so for Apple to now block the US firm’s app in a bid to protect its own digital services would be odd. Whether Grooveshark’s ongoing legal dispute with Universal Music had any bearing on Apple’s decision isn’t clear. Obviously, both Spotify and We7 have all four majors on board as content partners.
