Grooveshark recently started to block German users from accessing the service citing unreasonable costs of operations in the country as the sole reason for the move. German users who try to access the Grooveshark website see an announcement that the service is no longer available to them.
There may be other countries or networks where Grooveshark is not accessible anymore. It feels only natural that some users try to access the site even though it is blocked in their country or organization. Some may even have paid for a premium account and do not want to be left standing in the rain now.
Grooveshark Unlocker is a Firefox add-on that uses an ingenious method of bypassing access restrictions. Grooveshark checks the user’s IP address during the initial connection and either displays the blocked service announcement page or the normal Grooveshark website. The add-on enables a web proxy for that time, and disables the proxy again after the connection has been established and the restrictions have been bypassed.
The developer notes that users of the add-on may need to refresh the page several times before the protection is bypassed. This was not necessary during tests, each connection attempt worked right of the bat.
This method ensures that users get the maximum out of their connection, as the proxy is disabled after the connection has been established. So no slow proxy that is not fast enough to buffer the music stream.
Grooveshark Unlocker ships with a single proxy that may be banned by Grooveshark or discontinued. You can open the extension’s settings to change the web proxy to another one. A click on Find a proxy in the settings opens a new page that allows you to display a list of working proxy servers.
Grooveshark users who are blocked from accessing the service directly may want to try out the Firefox add-on so that they can access the service again. Interested users can download Grooveshark Unlocker from the official Mozilla Add-ons repository.
