Groovera News

Groovera 6th Anniversary Celebration With Special Guest Sven Van Hees @ Harlot Thursday October 15, 2009 ... FREEPublished October 3, 2009

It is Groovera's 6th anniversary and an event you won't want to miss! We will be celebrating at Harlot with music from special guest Sven Van Hees, San Francisco's own Under, and DJ sets from Groovera's founder, Tim Lumen.

It will be a night of fine chill-out music in a fine setting without any cover charge, so drink and be merry! Feel free to forward on our flyer, invite yourself on Facebook and forward the invitation (sure, "fan" us there, too!), and join our Meetup group if you're in San Francisco!

Download Flyer     |     Facebook Event Invitation     |     Meetup.com Event

Harlot San Francisco     |     Sven Van Hees' website     |     Under's website

New iTunes Supports AACPlus! Effective Immediately, VLC Player Will No Longer Be PermittedUpdated September  16, 2009

At long last, iTunes supports AAC+ radio streaming! With the release of iTunes 9, now Mac and PC users alike can easily enjoy Groovera's high-quality AAC+ streams. This brings a few changes and some recommendations:

• If you use VLC Player on Mac, please install iTunes 9 in order to enjoy the AAC+ streams.
• If you use iTunes 8 or older, please upgrade and begin using the AAC+ streams. To do that, either click the "iTunes 9" icons in our "Listen Now" menu (this is the best option) or look for Groovera streams in the "Ambient" category of the iTunes radio directory.
• If you are a PC user and you don't like iTunes, there are still great media players that support AAC+ such as Foobar2000 and Winamp. Windows Media Player is also a good option if you install Orban Opticode plug-in.
• If you are a VLC Player user who has been using it to rip Groovera streams - party's over. VLC was only ever allowed so that Mac users could benefit from the AAC+ streams since VLC was the only option previous to iTunes 9. Because VLC was widely abused - we were always well aware - we had long planned to discontinue it as soon as another option was available for Mac users.

Also, we will eventually close the MP3 streams in favor of the AAC+ streams now that ALL the popular modern media players support it, so please begin to use the AAC+ streams instead. Try it, you'll like it and it's the wave of the future! Thanks!

Windows Users: If you have tried launching Groovera streams from our "Listen Now" menu and either the media player does not automatically start the stream or nothing happens at all, you need to associate PLS files with iTunes in order to get it to happen automatically.

If Windows asks to save a file named "listen.pls" when you click on the "iTunes9" icon on our "Listen Now" menu:

1. Save "listen.pls" (or whatever you decide to rename it) someplace on your hard drive.
2. Right-mouse click on the PLS file you just saved to your hard drive.
3. Select "Open With" from the context menu that appears.
4. Click "iTunes" from the next window that appears. If iTunes is not on the list of programs shown, click the "Browse" button at the bottom of this window, navigate to the location of your iTunes executable (.exe file), and select it.
5. There should be a "Do This Automatically From Now On" checkbox (or it may say "Set as Default") on the final window that appears - click it and you should be set for good.

If needed, here is very helpful Microsoft knowledge-base article that goes into further depth regarding establishing file-and-program associations: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307859. This article is written for XP but it applies to all Windows operating systems equally.

Regarding iTunes Radio Directory Glitch: Groovera Channels Missing From Ambient CategoryPublished September  05, 2009

We began receiving reports on Tuesday, September 1 regarding the fact that Groovera channels have disappeared from the Ambient radio listings in the iTunes media player. We have also noticed the increased listernership on Low Mercury as a result, since it is the only Groovera channel remaining there. We are aware of the problem and have been working with the team at iTunes to restore our listings. Although we recommend you tune in to your favorite channel by clicking "Listen Now" from Groovera.com's website menu anyway, we have been receiving several emails a day from listeners like you who have been inconvenienced by this problem and we encourage you to continue sending us your feedback as we are working to get this fixed and need your support.

Thank you very much for your support!

UPDATE, September 12: The iTunes team claims to have fixed the problem and that the fixes will appear sometime today in iTunes. Also, the Ambient directory has been restored in iTunes 9. Woohoo!

Technical Status (U.S. Pacific Time)

September 18, 2009 10:45AM - Groovera is currently offline for some emergency maintenance in response to the (very rare) technical issues experienced within the past six days. We will be back online as soon as possible and hopefully shall be perfectly stable again, as before.