Grooveshark is in the air ...

Hello to everybody! Some days without posting, but not without making inventions for fun and profit.

I'm enjoying to deploy a geo-social app, but about this i will write another day. Today, I want to speak about Groveeshark. I like Grooveshark, imho is best than Spotify. But, I've got a problem. I'm poor .. so I can't pay 9$/mo. by listen it in my mobile device. Also I want listen it in other devices that haven't got support ;)

So, i've thinking about this problem .. and i've found a workaround: streaming my favourite Groveeshark station through icecast. It's easy and now i can listen it in my phone, in my Wii, in my Xtreamer ...

Step 1: The audio source

Obviously, we need Grooveshark. So, we start a Grooveshark client (desktop or web) in our linux desktop and choose our favorite radio station.

Step 2: The icecast2 server

Yes, we need an icecast2 server. So, go to install it.

apt-get install icecast2

We don't need any special config, only change the default password and start it.

Step 3: The magic command

Now, we've got a Grooveshark client that is playing music in our desktop and a streaming server that is ready to relay audio. So, we need connect our music with our streaming server. How?

It's very easy. We only need three tools: arecord, lame and ezstream and put all together.

arecord -f cd -t wav | lame - - | ezstream -c /etc/default/ezstream_groove.xml

This is the command. With arecord we record the current PCM output, with lame we reencode the WAV stream into a MP3 stream, finally, with ezstream we send the audio to the icecast server.

The ezstream_groove.xml file can be some like this:

<ezstream>
    <url>http://yourhost:8000/groove</url>
    <sourcepassword>YourPassword</sourcepassword>
    <format>MP3</format>
    <filename>stdin</filename>
    <stream_once>1</stream_once>
    <svrinfoname>GrooveIT</svrinfoname>
    <svrinfourl>http://appinventorlife.blogspot.com</svrinfourl>
    <svrinfogenre>All</svrinfogenre>
    <svrinfodescription>GrooveShark Radio</svrinfodescription>
    <svrinfobitrate>128</svrinfobitrate>
    <svrinfoquality>3.0</svrinfoquality>
    <svrinfochannels>2</svrinfochannels>
    <svrinfosamplerate>44100</svrinfosamplerate>
    <svrinfopublic>1</svrinfopublic>
</ezstream>

Step 4: Listen your station

Our icecast server will be played in a lot of devices:

- Android with Online Raadio
- Homebrew Wii with WiiRadio
- Any VLC compatible device
- ...

Step 5: Making it stable

Finally, if we want deploy this idea, we need make it stable. How make it?

First, we making a script that relaunch the stream if fails.

#!/bin/bash
while true
do
 echo "Streaming ..."
 arecord -f cd -t wav | lame - - | ezstream -c /etc/default/ezstream_groove.xml > /dev/null
done

Second, Grooveshark stops the music if detects inactivity. So, we need simulate activity in our desktop. For this, we need a random mouse movement :)

#!/usr/bin/python

import random
import time
from Xlib import X, display

while 1:
 disp = display.Display()
 scr = disp.screen()
 root = scr.root
 root.warp_pointer(random.randint(100,800),random.randint(100,600))
 disp.sync()
 time.sleep(10);

This is all ... enjoy it :)

P.S. You can try your invents with this: streaming OGG and use a HTML5 client and others ...