Simular Artist selection

[jan-seng]

Earlier versions of Songbird had a function pane to view "Simular Artist" (up-to 5) and link thru to those artist's LastFM webpage, as well as to show a list of those artist's songs, if already in the library. I really liked that function, but it was not developed anymore.
Is something like that possible in MusicBee?

And a side question: is there an add-on showing MediaFlow of Album Art?

I started using MusicBee for it's stability and continuous development, as well as having most of the functions I like, but this I am still missing these features.

Regards, Gerard

[SimonBRT]

Earlier versions of Songbird had a function pane to view "Simular Artist" (up-to 5) and link thru to those artist's LastFM webpage, as well as to show a list of those artist's songs, if already in the library.

I have to admit I quite like the sound of of this.  Though auto-dj is already capable of using much the same information to create playlists based on similar artists in your library.  Actually, thinking about it, you can now create an auto-playlist with the criteria 'artist' 'is similar to' 'current playing artist' and have this open in a new tab.  This will display all tracks in your library by artists rated similar to the currently playing one by last.fm.  Not quite what you asked for but close.

As for your cover-flow comment, please search the forums, this has been discussed many times before.

[jan-seng]

Hi,

Yes, I found this to do somewhat what I like, but:

1. it does not automatically update the playlist when the track changes. I have to press <F5> to see simular artists for the new track

2. if I select a track in the resulting simular artist overview, it would be great when the information in the details pane would change to those of the selected track (instead of sticking to the now playing track info)

3. if I Refresh several times, the result of simular artist changes every time. I think I would prefer to always have the same (top x?) result and presented in the same order. I found I can change the number of results anyhow in the settings of the Auto Playlist

4. In the Music Recommendations add-on in Songbird one gets a list with top 5 simular artists and an indication if they are already in your library. Clicking on the picture in the list takes you to a new TAB, showing the LastFM page. Clicking on the name takes you to a new TAB, showing all the artist's songs in your library. Very nice feature.

Thanks, Gerard

PS. I wanted to add a picture to the topic but do not see a button allowing this . . .

[Thorbjorn]

I have made a web page that does something like this. It gets info from last.fm and links to last.fm, spotify and your musicbee library. Check here:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=6914.0

The Last.fm API is having problems at the moment though, so not many results showing.
http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Services/forum/21604/_/2067203

[jan-seng]

Hi Thorbjorn,

Really nice to play around with. It is just not obvious from the list presented if a simular artist or track is actually present in the MusicBee library,
but the auto-update on track change I really like.
If this just could work inside MusicBee itself . . .

Gerard

[Thorbjorn]

Yes it would be better if it only linked to tracks/artists that exist, but I don't think it's currently possible to test if it's present in the library or not. I think Steven would have to implement something new for that.

Another improvement would be if the last.fm links opened in the normal browser instead, but i don't think I can choose where to open the links.