Author Topic: LastFM changes to API (02/05/19)  (Read 41051 times)

bammy

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I was having a popup I've never seen before: "29 : Rate Limit Exceded - Your IP has made too many requests in a short period, exceeding our API guidelines".

Seems like Last.FM has changed some API, as announced here: https://getsatisfaction.com/lastfm/topics/api-announcement-dac8oefw5vrxq

As of right now, it's affecting my ability to "Love" tracks in my library.

Last Edit: May 03, 2019, 09:45:54 AM by bammy

phred

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I wouldn't call this a bug. LastFM changed the terms of use for their API and you have exceeded the new limits. I doubt there's anything Steven can do legally to get around the new limits and I wouldn't expect him to try to circumvent the new terms of use.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

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bammy

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I wouldn't call this a bug. LastFM changed the terms of use for their API and you have exceeded the new limits. I doubt there's anything Steven can do legally to get around the new limits and I wouldn't expect him to try to circumvent the new terms of use.
Right. Well for the moment I am unable to "Love" 2 tracks in a row. Perhaps a way to supply our own Last.FM API keys?

frankz

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The announcement you linked to doesn't seem to have anything to do with use limits.

==
While we allow API users to have access to a lot of data through the API, it has always been against our API Terms of Use for third parties to use audio, audiovisual, images or artwork. In some instances, some data may have been indirectly accessible through a small number of API calls, and so as part of the recent API clean-up, we have corrected that anomaly.
==

bammy

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The announcement you linked to doesn't seem to have anything to do with use limits.
I see, my main panel with Artist picture does not work anymore - I guess Last.fm has rate-limited me, thus not being able to use any other API (such as "Loving" tracks). I've disabled my Artist Picture panel for now.


Steven

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I havent used the last.fm functionality myself for ages and trying now I was immediately rate limited. So I guess it has been done against the MusicBee api key.
To be honest I cant really be bothered with last.fm if they want to make things difficult so I think I will remove all functionality except the scrobbling and if they decide to make that problematic I will also remove that.

frankz

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This may be a temporary or localized issue rather than the result of any policy change as suggested by the OP.  I'm not having any trouble scrobbling, loving tracks or generating playlists based on MB's Last.fm functions, and I think if it was widespread we'd have a rash of reports of it.

Is "Simliar to <Artist>" based on last.fm? That's working for me too.

The change may affect getting album art and artist art from last.fm, though.  I don't do artist art, but album art from them still seems to be working. 

Steven

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No similar to and album covers are also immediately failed. You will be alright for a while but the cached data will eventually expire

redwing

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I think you might want to wait and see what's going on for a few weeks before making any drastic decisions, as their changes were made very recently and app developers now started complaining about it. If they completely disallow to retrieve any data (images and bios), the impact on MB will be significant. But they are still working including album covers as of now.

redwing

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Tried with Adele's artist image & 25 album cover.
Sometimes it returns "Rate Limit Exceeded - This application has made too many requests in a short period".
And sometimes it works just fine, even after a few seconds later, and then not working again at the next trial.
Keeps going on and off.

Steven

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MB is already throttling requests as per Last.fm API guidelines. It fails consistently for me, right from the very first time I tried tonight.

redwing

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I don't know, but I downloaded several covers and artist images during my tests though it didn't work many other times.
Last Edit: May 03, 2019, 09:08:35 PM by redwing

frankz

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The announcement seems to be saying that "images or artwork" shouldn't have been part of the API and were accidentally served.  I'd expect those things to fail going forward.

I think (hope, actually - wishful thinking because I want it to be true) that the other errors popping up are bugs introduced by whatever they did to "fix" images and artwork and those other things being served when they didn't want them to be, and that those errors will go away on their own.

redwing

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To me it's not clear how their rate limit for apps is working. It might be re-evaluated per several seconds.