Author Topic: LastFM changes to API (02/05/19)  (Read 41040 times)

redwing

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Most of their services are still working fine for me.

They said:

Quote
The announced change has already been deployed, and was designed to ensure compliance with our API terms of service with as minimal disruption to app developers as possible.  My understanding is that there are no further changes planned, so you shouldn't expect anything else from the api to change in the foreseeable future.

If what we've seen since yesterday is how it's supposed to work, then I think they may be using two levels of rate limiting:

- user-level rate limit: for scrobbling and loving tracks per IP: daily limit  
- app-level rate limit: for retrieving images, album, artist info, etc.: seems using a very short time window and working again if the usage from the app falls back below the limit.

As they don't explicitly state that they will no longer allow any access to images, etc. and those services are still working, they may be just trying to minimize the impact from abusive usages by introducing those rate limiting.

Steven

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I just tried now and all seems to be fine. I imagine you are right about some sort of app level restriction and if anyone finds details on that please let me know.
I will consider reducing the requests on last.fm for artwork once i have some details on the rate limiting

ost

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Each time when try to mark track as "Loved" I got this pop-up window:


redwing

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Steven, does scrobbling request require MB's API key? Then all scrobbling & loving via MB must be counting towards MB's usage rather than each user's usage. If that's the case, you might want to consider separating the feature to their own scrobbler app.

Steven

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Steven, does scrobbling request require MB's API key?
yes, every last.fm function used by MB is done via an API key.

I have written to last.fm to request an app limit increase. I expect they will come back with some conditions attached so dont be surprised if some functionality will need to be removed.

frankz

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I have written to last.fm to request an app limit increase. I expect they will come back with some conditions attached
I'd expect last.fm's response to an email that starts "I'm the developer of MusicBee..." to be "Yes, sir. How can I help you?" 

Last.fm's whole business model is collecting data and then, for money, feeding it back to the user.  As one of the premiere Windows music players and library managers, MusicBee feeds them the data they need to make what they charge people for worthwhile. 

I'd expect that the API limits are for tools who make scam scrobblers that are used to goose band/label stats and get them recommended more.  I think a legit app shouldn't have any problem getting a waiver.

If they're smart, they're thrilled to be so tightly integrated into MB.  It makes the data they charge for that much more reliable and useful.

Ableet

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Would these API changes be affecting the ability for MusicBee to synchronise love/play counts, per chance? Ever since the update, my loves are fully wiped upon restarting, and the play/love synchronisation regularly fails. Such a shame if so.

Steven

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If they're smart, they're thrilled to be so tightly integrated into MB.  It makes the data they charge for that much more reliable and useful.
yes, i am quite surprised at how they have handled this so far - i guess they must think that spotify is the only one that really matters but i expect that MusicBee is one of their top generators of scrobbles/ likes etc below spotify.

ost

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Steven, is it possible to do that Love/Banned ratings also can be saved as tags inside files as a regular Ratings?
After latest last.fm API changes all my loved tracks are ruined  :(

Steven

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Steven, is it possible to do that Love/Banned ratings also can be saved as tags inside files as a regular Ratings?
After latest last.fm API changes all my loved tracks are ruined  :(
You dont help your case by exaggerating. All your loved tracks are not ruined. It will only be the case that newly loved tracks where the love status could not be saved via the last.fm api that MB will not save the loved status otherwise it will become out of sync with whats at last.fm.
Depending on the response from last.fm i may remove all interation with last.fm in which case the love status will only be saved in MB

ost

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Depending on the response from last.fm i may remove all interation with last.fm in which case the love status will only be saved in MB

It will be great if it will be stored in MB - now I lost all "Loved" marks at my library.

Steven

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i made a change so when doing a full sync (manual or automatic) sync of loved tracks, it will abort the operation when a rate limited error is reported

https://getmusicbee.com/patches/MusicBee33_Patched.zip
unzip and replace the existing musicbee files

ost

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Hmm, still not working for me, did a manual sync of loved tracks with last.fm - no results. Sync at start up also not working.

Steven

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The change was so loved tracks are not reset when the rate limit error occurs. The loved tracks will only resync if there is no rate limit error.
I have made one further change so the same is done for similar artists
https://getmusicbee.com/patches/MusicBee33_Patched.zip
unzip and replace the existing musicbee files
Last Edit: May 06, 2019, 10:24:41 AM by Steven