Author Topic: Last.fm Similar Artists/Tracks  (Read 68117 times)

jan-seng

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 12
Hi Steven,

Superb work as always  :) Thank you!
It works fine in Musicbee 2.0.4663.
A question: on some tracks I get a list of Similar Tracks returned, but on others none. But I do get Similar Artists all the time. Why is that?

Gerard


psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
I just noticed that this plugin will only use the display artist for searching, even if you try to switch it to another one using the Artist menu.
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)

jan-seng

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 12
I have this comment:
sometimes an artist is playing a song together with another artist. I have the individual artist(s) in my music library, but it is not found as a similar artist.
Example: 'Marc Glenroy' shows the combo 'Ed Starink Peter Weekers' as a similar artist. I have 'Ed Starink' in my music library, but he is not shown . . .

raffraffraff

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 9
This plugin is an excellent idea, so it's really unfortunate that LastFM's recommendations are pants. No music service developer (in the whole universe) appears to understand that a similar track is not necessarily a track from the same genre or band. Or from a band that comes from the same town or genre. Yet that seems to be the only method used by LastFM.

Example: When I play "Tonight Tonight" by Smashing Pumpkins, I might add tracks that are uplifting, melodic, and maybe a little bit dramatic or 'athem' like. I could also throw in a suitable love song. Examples:

1. Bat For Lashes - Daniel
2. Elbow - One Day Like This
3. The Divine Comedy - Tonight We Fly
4. Aha - The Sun Always Shines On TV
5. INXS - Never Tear Us Apart

But instead it recommends:
1. The Smashing Pumpkins - Zero
2. The Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet With Butterfly Wings
3. Weezer - Buddy Holly
4. Beck - Loser
5. Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun
6. Weezer - Say It Ain't So

Now, you could put group 2 onto a playlist, but most of them don't really go with Tonight Tonight.  But the songs in the first group (which uses my own tags + algorithm) would have some hope of fitting together in the same playlist, perhaps with some judicial padding or editing.

jan-seng

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 12
Re: raffraffraff

That's the reason I stick to Musicbee 2.0.4663, with MusicIP selected as AutoDJ for continuous playing.
It's not ideal either but works to my satisfaction.
To have a visual link back to my library and discover a new band every now and then, I use the Recommendations plugin.

Gerard

ThY

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 148
This plugin is an excellent idea, so it's really unfortunate that LastFM's recommendations are pants. No music service developer (in the whole universe) appears to understand that a similar track is not necessarily a track from the same genre or band. Or from a band that comes from the same town or genre. Yet that seems to be the only method used by LastFM.

Example: When I play "Tonight Tonight" by Smashing Pumpkins, I might add tracks that are uplifting, melodic, and maybe a little bit dramatic or 'athem' like. I could also throw in a suitable love song. Examples:

1. Bat For Lashes - Daniel
2. Elbow - One Day Like This
3. The Divine Comedy - Tonight We Fly
4. Aha - The Sun Always Shines On TV
5. INXS - Never Tear Us Apart

But instead it recommends:
1. The Smashing Pumpkins - Zero
2. The Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet With Butterfly Wings
3. Weezer - Buddy Holly
4. Beck - Loser
5. Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun
6. Weezer - Say It Ain't So

Now, you could put group 2 onto a playlist, but most of them don't really go with Tonight Tonight.  But the songs in the first group (which uses my own tags + algorithm) would have some hope of fitting together in the same playlist, perhaps with some judicial padding or editing.

Hello, i understand what you're saying, i made a post with almost similar subject / request here.
My wish was to be able to listen to similar kind of tracks, using the genre tags.
The only thing that would need to be implemented is a function where we could indicate which genre is the "neighbor" of another.
Then enable a new shuffling option, or a new kind of playlist, where the tracks will only be played following a neighbor genre (or the same genre).

For people like me that doesn't tag my genres in a too much "blocky" way, with enough nuances, this system would be a great way to listen smoothly to a lot of songs.
Because you won't pass from an ambient song to an aggressive one.
It would just take some minutes to the user to configure relations between its genres.

What do you think about it ?

raffraffraff

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 9
My wish was to be able to listen to similar kind of tracks, using the genre tags. The only thing that would need to be implemented is a function where we could indicate which genre is the "neighbor" of another.

I'd bet that the system you describe already exist, but the problem, as I see it, is that genres themselves are inadequate to describe music. There are some exceptions where a whole genre is pretty homogeneous in its sound and in its themes. To my ears, rap is one example. Its sound is generally beats + samples + rhyming speech. Its themes don't vary much outside violence, misogyny, self-importance or overindulgence. Aside from rap and a few other exceptions, genres pigeon hole bands too much. Most decent artists break free from their ascribed genre, sometimes several times per album. Therefore genres are useless.

LastFM tags for Karma Police as Indie, Rock and Alternative. What does that tell you? Nothing much really. My tags for Karma Police are: Piano, Male Vocals, Melancholy, Downtempo, Beautiful, Dark. However, very few other people tag their music using adjectives, so it's almost impossible for me to use them to discover new music that other people have tagged. I can, however, use them within my own collection to create a playlist that matches the mood I'm in. I'm willing to spend a lot of time tagging tracks - its is essentially a never ending task. But this is the only way I know how to listen to music. I would go as far as saying that if my NAS broke and my backups weren't working, given a choice between recovering my music files without metadata, or the metadata without the music, I'd take the latter. You can always get the audio files again, but years of meticulous tagging can't be replaced.

redwing

  • Guest
My wish was to be able to listen to similar kind of tracks, using the genre tags. The only thing that would need to be implemented is a function where we could indicate which genre is the "neighbor" of another.

I'd bet that the system you describe already exist, but the problem, as I see it, is that genres themselves are inadequate to describe music. There are some exceptions where a whole genre is pretty homogeneous in its sound and in its themes. To my ears, rap is one example. Its sound is generally beats + samples + rhyming speech. Its themes don't vary much outside violence, misogyny, self-importance or overindulgence. Aside from rap and a few other exceptions, genres pigeon hole bands too much. Most decent artists break free from their ascribed genre, sometimes several times per album. Therefore genres are useless.

LastFM tags for Karma Police as Indie, Rock and Alternative. What does that tell you? Nothing much really. My tags for Karma Police are: Piano, Male Vocals, Melancholy, Downtempo, Beautiful, Dark. However, very few other people tag their music using adjectives, so it's almost impossible for me to use them to discover new music that other people have tagged. I can, however, use them within my own collection to create a playlist that matches the mood I'm in. I'm willing to spend a lot of time tagging tracks - its is essentially a never ending task. But this is the only way I know how to listen to music. I would go as far as saying that if my NAS broke and my backups weren't working, given a choice between recovering my music files without metadata, or the metadata without the music, I'd take the latter. You can always get the audio files again, but years of meticulous tagging can't be replaced.

I said the same thing a while ago :)

Sometimes tags are more precious than music files

I spent a good deal of time manually tagging my classical music collection, so I can understand how you feel about that.

ThY

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 148
My wish was to be able to listen to similar kind of tracks, using the genre tags. The only thing that would need to be implemented is a function where we could indicate which genre is the "neighbor" of another.

I'd bet that the system you describe already exist, but the problem, as I see it, is that genres themselves are inadequate to describe music. There are some exceptions where a whole genre is pretty homogeneous in its sound and in its themes. To my ears, rap is one example. Its sound is generally beats + samples + rhyming speech. Its themes don't vary much outside violence, misogyny, self-importance or overindulgence. Aside from rap and a few other exceptions, genres pigeon hole bands too much. Most decent artists break free from their ascribed genre, sometimes several times per album. Therefore genres are useless.

LastFM tags for Karma Police as Indie, Rock and Alternative. What does that tell you? Nothing much really. My tags for Karma Police are: Piano, Male Vocals, Melancholy, Downtempo, Beautiful, Dark. However, very few other people tag their music using adjectives, so it's almost impossible for me to use them to discover new music that other people have tagged. I can, however, use them within my own collection to create a playlist that matches the mood I'm in. I'm willing to spend a lot of time tagging tracks - its is essentially a never ending task. But this is the only way I know how to listen to music. I would go as far as saying that if my NAS broke and my backups weren't working, given a choice between recovering my music files without metadata, or the metadata without the music, I'd take the latter. You can always get the audio files again, but years of meticulous tagging can't be replaced.

I said the same thing a while ago :)

Sometimes tags are more precious than music files

I spent a good deal of time manually tagging my classical music collection, so I can understand how you feel about that.

Maybe the system i described already exist in Musicbee, but nobody has been able to tell me where ^^
Other than that, i understand your explanation about the genre tags, i also tag mine, track by track and not by album or by artists.
But the fact is that having too many tags or too much complex tags come to not serve you as good as you think it will.
I mean it happened to be my case.
Over tagging my tracks one by one was fastidious and time-eating, when it finally appeared that, at a certain level, the things that differentiate a genre from an other were simply the group or the artist themselves ^^

bhupatib

  • Guest
"You can click on an artist or a track, with the default or override action set from the right click context menu."

I don't any such options on right click.



The usual 'search>find similar' only shows me option from my library but not from Last.FM
I have properly installed the plugin and it shows up in the plugin screen.

UPDATE:
Found it! Sorry for the false alarm :)


Last Edit: April 02, 2014, 11:34:19 AM by bhupatib

Moshi_

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 133
  • http://www.last.fm/user/Moshi_
Hey Steven!

Is this a bug?

I hardly get similar tracks listed and instead an artist picture from the last recommended artist is moved below the first recommended artist and no similar tracks.


Space Octopus

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 30
  • Teach a Man To Reason, He'll Think For a Lifetime
 ;D I hope this works for me! If it does, it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread, seriously. It's something I really wanted & desperately miss about last.fm after they decided to be idiots & remove their main function (radio) and since I have SO much music, I suspect it would be great for me. <3
Make it so, number one.


EffenBlue

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 46
OK what am I doing wrong?
I downloaded the v3 plugin and when I try to enable it an error pops up: 
Could not load file or assembly file:///C:\Program Files (x86)\MusicBee\Plugins\mb_LastFMRecommendationsPlugin.dll or one of its dependencies. Operation is not supported. (Execption from (it cuts off here)

Same thing happens for Addtional Tagging Tools  (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131515)
and the v3 last.fm stats & web browser plugins as well      (Exception from HRESULT: (cuts off here)