Additional last.fm sync options

[mtm5925]

First, sorry for my poor English. I'm using 'sync play count from last.fm' feature a lot, and I'd like to see some additional sync options for better usage.

*** I'm not requesting to change the way MusicBee scrobbles, *** it's only about how MusicBee sync DB after retrive data from Last.fm. No change in scrobbling.


1. Ignore album field:
Currently, MusicBee sync DB based on three fields - artist name, album name, and song title. This works well, but I'd like to see an option that ignore album field when syncing.

For example, when I listened a song 20 times from multiple - studio album, greatest hits album, and other random compilation album - albums, I want MB to show the song played 20 times, not 6, 9, 5 times each.

There are some pros and cons on this, but I think this is more persist, and better represent of how many times I listened a song.


2. Ignore specific characters or words:
An option that ignore specific characters or words such as '?', '(instrumental)', or whole phrase in ( ) or [ ]. Here's few example in my database.

   Close to You
   (They Long to Be) Close to You

   Evergreen
   Evergreen (Love Theme from "A Star Is Born")

   Careless Whisper
   Careless Whisper (feat. Kenny G)

   Where Do the Children Play
   Where Do the Children Play?

These are exactly the same songs. But they scrobble, and sync as different songs. With the ignoring option, these problems can be fixed easily. There should be customizable exception list, though. For words such as 'part', 'reprise', '1st', '2nd', etc... Here's an example of two completely different songs with similar titles.

   Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
   Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise)


3. Distribute to each artist when artist name contains 'and', 'with', ';', '&':
Many duet songs are also song of each artists. For example, "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" by George Michael & Elton John is also song of

   George Michael
   Elton John
   Elton John & George Michael (reverse)


And here's some other options/fixes I'd like to see.

4. Scrobble short tracks:
last.fm doesn't allow scrobbling under 30 seconds tracks, but there are some websites like this ( http://universalscrobbler.invitationstation.org/ ) where you can manually scrobble short tracks. But this is obviously not the fastest, easiest way to do. I'm curious if MB can manage this.


5. MB recognize the whole Asian characters as one. When I sort by title, all the Korean, Japanese, Chinese characters are mixed up.


Thanks for reading. MB is truly the best music player I've ever used.

[Steven]

i havent read through your request in detail as yet but a couple of quick comments
- i am aware that synching with last.fm is now more problematic because last.fm auto-correct tags on scrobbling, so when synching playcounts and "love" status back no match can be made. I dont really like the idea that someone has to maintain a list of exceptions so a match can be made. When i get the time i will investigate whether its possible to map the auto-corrections somehow (it should be possible to capture the auto-correction when scrobbling but wont solve the issue for tracks already scrobbled)
- for Asian character handling in MusicBee, i am not aware (until now) of any issues sorting. MusicBee processes all strings as unicode and uses the .NET string comparison functionality which is supposed to handle regional sorting variations. It certainly doesnt treat all asian characters as the same. However for performance reasons, MB does make one optimisation if your computer reports the language set to EN (english) which would mess up asian chacater sorting

[Per_automatik]

how a bout a list of "possible matches" when syncing? that is a window with manual playcount and loved track correction is possible, and that could include "set tag" to what ever you last.fm tells you it spells like,

exemple: last.fm loved "radiohead - creep" in your library "radiohead - crep" with possibility to change crep to creep and set it's playcount to what creep has on last.fm

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

2. Ignore specific characters or words:
An option that ignore specific characters or words such as '?', '(instrumental)', or whole phrase in ( ) or [ ]. Here's few example in my database.

 Close to You
 (They Long to Be) Close to You

 Evergreen
 Evergreen (Love Theme from "A Star Is Born")

 Careless Whisper
 Careless Whisper (feat. Kenny G)

 Where Do the Children Play
 Where Do the Children Play?

These are exactly the same songs. But they scrobble, and sync as different songs. With the ignoring option, these problems can be fixed easily. There should be customizable exception list, though. For words such as 'part', 'reprise', '1st', '2nd', etc... Here's an example of two completely different songs with similar titles.

 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise)

Instead of the above, could we have the option to replace <Title> being scrobbled with one or more Virtual Tags, Custom Tags and/or the special tag you created for classical pieces, @Steven? I use several Virtual Tags to output pieces from different conductors and albums in a consistent manner, but, because titles sent to Last.fm may vary depending on the album, I have a lot of ugly inconsistency on my Last.fm that I'll eventually need to clean up. It would be much easier if there were an option to manually attribute what tag gets sent to Last.fm as the "title" of the track.

For reference, here is what I mean by tagging consistency.
"Header" consists of <Work> <WORKSUBTITLE>
"Subheader" consists of <ALBUM SUBHEADER>
I've replaced <Title> with <LABEL>, which looks for <Movement #> <Movement Name> <TEMPO DISPLAY>



I'd prefer being able to pick among Virtual/Custom Tags to replace <Title> with, but the <Title (Display)> one would be somewhat workable too if you added <Tempo> to it.

3. Distribute to each artist when artist name contains 'and', 'with', ';', '&':
Many duet songs are also song of each artists. For example, "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" by George Michael & Elton John is also song of

 George Michael
 Elton John
 Elton John & George Michael (reverse)


And here's some other options/fixes I'd like to see.

+1 This is an interesting Last.fm idea. For duets, I have <Artist (Display)> tagged to Artist 1 & Artist 2 and <Artist> = Artist 1; Artist 2. Perhaps if the tagging-clature follows this structure, MB could send track to Last.fm as Artist 1 - Album Name - Title and Artist 2 - Album Name -Title

4. Scrobble short tracks:
last.fm doesn't allow scrobbling under 30 seconds tracks, but there are some websites like this ( http://universalscrobbler.invitationstation.org/ ) where you can manually scrobble short tracks. But this is obviously not the fastest, easiest way to do. I'm curious if MB can manage this.

+1

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Instead of the above, could we have the option to replace <Title> being scrobbled with one or more Virtual Tags, Custom Tags and/or the special tag you created for classical pieces, @Steven? I use several Virtual Tags to output pieces from different conductors and albums in a consistent manner, but, because titles sent to Last.fm may vary depending on the album, I have a lot of ugly inconsistency on my Last.fm that I'll eventually need to clean up. It would be much easier if there were an option to manually attribute what tag gets sent to Last.fm as the "title" of the track.

For reference, here is what I mean by tagging consistency.
"Header" consists of <Work> <WORKSUBTITLE>
"Subheader" consists of <ALBUM SUBHEADER>
I've replaced <Title> with <LABEL>, which looks for <Movement> <Movement Name> <TEMPO DISPLAY>



I'd prefer being able to pick among Virtual/Custom Tags to replace <Title> with, but the <Title (Display)> one would be somewhat workable too if you added <Tempo> to it.

Actually, scratch the above... if this does get thought about and implemented, it would make more sense to have the default values be the built-in tags (as is now,) while the customizable option could be to allow functions to be used to determine what is sent up to Last.fm. I'm away from home still and using foobar2000 + BubbleUPnP to access my MB media and I noticed said program allows the user to dictate what is handed to Last.fm. Would be cool to see in MusicBee as well.