Spatial modulations in the observed galaxy luminosity distribution (derived from redshifts as distance proxies) trace the radial peculiar velocity field. Using spectroscopic redshift surveys, this signal can be used to obtain independent bounds on large-scale flows and cosmic growth, complementary to traditional methods (such as clustering analysis). Considering SDSS galaxies at z=0.1, I will present recent measurements of the cosmic growth rate based on this approach and discuss ongoing developments that aim at extending the general methodology for other purposes such as applications to photometric redshift catalogs.