Last.fm Similar Artists/Tracks

[Steven]

I have implemented a plugin that shows recommended artists and tracks similar to the current playing track in the Track and Artist panel. You can perform a number of actions such as finding tracks by each artist in your library, opening the last.fm web page, queueing/playing the similar tracks if they are in your library, etc. You do not need to have a last.fm account to use this plugin.
Its inspired by the Last.fm Playing Track Data website link done by Thorbjorn.



You can click on an artist or a track, with the default or override action set from the right click context menu.

For artists the actions can be:
- open the last.fm artist web page
- find the tracks for that artist in your library (note that the displayed track count includes inbox files, which dont appear in the library filter)
- find the tracks for similar artists to the one clicked
- if you click using the middle mouse button, then a tab with the artist tracks in your library will be opened irrespective of the settings
For tracks the actions can be:
- as above for the track artist
- open the last.fm track web page
- if MB matches the track to one in your library:
    - play now (it actually queues the track next and plays immediately so as not to destroy your now playing list)
    - queue next
    - queue last/ random

Installation
for MusicBee 3.0+:
- unzip the plugin: https://getmusicbee.com/download/plugins/mb_LastFmRecommendationsPlugin.zip
- copy the files to the Plugins sub-folder of MusicBee

[Thorbjorn]

Hehe awesome Steven. It works great.

I was actually in the process of trying to make this into a plugin myself. Have never done any programming like this so was a hard learning curve. Looking through the API was almost greek to me at the beginning. Made me respect your work even more.

If anyone is interested to see my very early test it's here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kyfq90s32wpwm4s/mb_LastFMTrackDataDll.rar
And no, it can't compare to Stevens work of course

[beeing good]

This is great, thanks a lot!

[Steven]

small update - i added the option to open the last.fm page for the clicked track

[SimonBRT]

this is excellent!  thanks.

[Alainn]

I like this a lot, I'm using their actual pages less and less now. Would it be possible to also show the amount of plays I have for the recommended artists? That would come in use if you're exploring a genre.

[dgbx]

Thank you Steven.  Another excellent addition to MusicBee.

[Bee-liever]

Thank you Steven.  Another excellent addition to MusicBee.

What he said!

You keep coming up with great ideas. Thanks again

[desplantes]

This is great, thanks a lot! +1 !!

[Alainn]

Last.fm has introduced a new API-call a couple of days ago: artist.getInfo - http://www.last.fm/api/show/artist.getInfo

It provides the option to get the auto-corrected version of the artist name (very handy for cleaning up the local library), artist description from preferred language/locale, number of listeners/plays, the user's playcount for this artist and a whole lot more. It would be great to incorporate that.

[brianon]

Superb plugin. Really love it. I used MediaMonkey for years and only moved to MB this year. Plugins like this make me ever happier I switched.

You return 5 Similar Artists each time right ? Anyway to increase this and/or also return them in sorted order ? Sorted by number of tracks available to you locally from the artist ? That would be great.

[jan-seng]

I did not visit this forum a lot lately, Musicbee is already working great for me as it is.
So I was happily surprized to find this plug-in today, one from my wish list, fine work again from Stephen.
I had used Thorbjorn's webpage until now, which also worked OK.
I have 2 questions:
- like the previous poster: is it possible to configure the number of similar results?
- not all similar tracks shown are actually in my library. An indicator saying so with the found result would be nice.

Gerard

[jamburglar]

Love this plugin, Steven.

One minor gripe -- would it be possible to distinguish between Similar Tracks that are actually in your library and those that are not found in your library? Perhaps the tracks that are not found could be grayed out/dimmer in color. I often have no idea which tracks are in my library and which are not so I end up getting the "track not found in your library" error/alert all the time.

[Steven]

the plugin has been updated so similar tracks that are not in the library are displayed as dimmed
see the first post for the download link and instructions

[VX]

This plugin seems quite interesting. Thanks for the update.
I have no a Last.FM account though. Is it mandatory to have one for the plugin to be used