Author Topic: You use last.fm? Why?  (Read 5510 times)

pregunontrack

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Hello! I noticed Musicbee focuses a lot on using last.fm. Never used it but overall I know what it is. Just wondering why many of you use it? why Musicbee focuses a lot on using it and what is your opinion about it?

phred

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I don't use it except for its interaction with MB. Or more correctly, MB's interaction with it.

And the reason MB uses it is that the API is friendlier (no charge) than other options that may provide more information. Being that MB is free software, it's understandable for Steven (the developer) not to incur expenses.
Last Edit: April 04, 2021, 07:32:36 PM by phred
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watdub

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It helps me to keep a rough playcount on what music I play.  The playcount of songs played on my phone or Kodi (TV) get 'routed' through lastfm back to MusicBee.  It's not 100% accurate but near enough.

pregunontrack

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I don't use it except for its interaction with MB. Or more correctly, MB's interaction with it.

And the reason MB uses it is that the API is friendlier (no charge) than other options that may provide more information. Being that MB is free software, it's understandable for Steven (the developer) not to incur expenses.

In other words, it helps gather information for your music library?

phred

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In other words, it helps gather information for your music library?
That's what I meant initially, but I remembered that they changed their API and Steven has discontinued use of it. I don't care about play counts and I don't scrobble.

So no, I don't use it.
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frankz

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I use it to track all my plays and send my mobile plays back to Musicbee.  My autoplaylists are built on rating and time/date last played.

I also use it for music discovery.  It gives great recommendations for what you will like based on what you listen to.  I have discovered many artists I never would have discovered through Last.fm.

Holbytla

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This thread made me curious so I opened an account on last.fm. Why did I just start using this now? So yeah thanks. Hopefully I'll discover some new artists more easily with this thing. ::)

Holbytla

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After just one day of using it, already discovered an artist I love.  :-*

hiccup

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After just one day of using it, already discovered an artist I love.
Honest question (I've never used Last.Fm):
Do these suggestions show up in MusicBee?
Do you get them from LastFm's website after you've logged-in?

Holbytla

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After just one day of using it, already discovered an artist I love.
Honest question (I've never used Last.Fm):
Do these suggestions show up in MusicBee?
Do you get them from LastFm's website after you've logged-in?

You create an account on the website and then just turn on last.fm on musicbee, it will ask you to enter login and password. You go to the site to check what artists it recommends. Thats my understanding so far.

hiccup

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You create an account on the website and then just turn on last.fm on musicbee, it will ask you to enter login and password. You go to the site to check what artists it recommends. Thats my understanding so far.
Thanks. Maybe I'll try it out.

Back to—somewhat—on-topic:
I see some deeper value in the OP's question.
The lastfm reference in MusicBee is very obvious and impossible to disable in MusicBee's interface.
I don't see any actual problems with that, but it does beg the question how essential it is for MusicBee users in general, and why it isn't a bit more optional instead of 'always there'.

phred

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I don't see any actual problems with that, but it does beg the question how essential it is for MusicBee users in general, and why it isn't a bit more optional instead of 'always there'.
I think most of the users of this plugin use it to scrobble. Perhaps others used it for more than that, but since the API changed and Steven reduced the interaction, scrobbling, and perhaps the discovery of new music, may be it.
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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The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

frankz

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Honest question (I've never used Last.Fm):
Do these suggestions show up in MusicBee?
Do you get them from LastFm's website after you've logged-in?
There are plugins for MB (don't know if they're integrated at this point because I've always had them).  One is a last.fm playlist generator, which will generate a playlists from your library of a genre, or tracks related to either the selected track or the artist of a selected track as tagged at last.fm (not your tags).  Good for folks less focused on tagging their genres.

There is also a last.fm recommendations plugin that enables a tab with a bio of the playing artist, similar artists to the playing artist, and tracks similar to the playing track.  

What I mainly do, though, is go to the last.fm recommendations tab when something playing really strikes me and click the "read more on last.fm" link for the artist.  That brings me to the artist's page there, with lists of similar artists, tracks and albums by the artists rated by listenership. Each artist has user generated tags where I can explore more from the broad categories that the artist belongs to. If I go into one of the listed songs, there are lists of similar tracks.

Besides the manual artist tagging, which are people's judgement calls, it's crowd-sourced recommendations based on what people actually listen to.  People who listen to A also listen to B.

Once you build up a large "library" of listened tracks, the artist, track and album recommendations from the home page become quite focused on your tastes.

There are also premium features for paid users.  I am not one, but I have considered it at times.

stardepp

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