Last.fm Plug-in & Auto-DJ testing (MM 3.0.x)

[MarineBrat]

Is it possible to give more control to the year of the available songs? I tend to listen to 60's and 70's music, but invariably last.fm will steer me into 90's and 00's music. Examples...

I start with a 1968 Buffalo Springfield song. Last FM jumps me from that to Creedence Clearwater Revival (good), then The Allman Brother's Band (good), then Pink (barf).

I try again starting with Loggins & Messina from 1969. Last FM takes me from that to Crosby Stills Nash & Young (good), to The Eagles (Good), to Christina Aguliera (pluck my eyeballs out!!!).

I'd love to be able to tell it to not jump forward by so many years, or to set a year window.

Or is this kind of thing perhaps available at the Last.FM website? I've only been there once, and that was just to make a login/password.

[spacefish]

Re Enhancments: Better Logging and View Log File button are nice Ideas will add that to-to do for possible enhancment.

Excellent!

What about include/exclude options? These are standard in all of the last.fm plugins I've used (both client and standalone).

[spacefish]

I think there may be an issue with stopping playback, timing and submissions. I believe you're submitting the last track when the next track starts -- please correct me if I'm wrong. It looks to me that if I stop playback immediately after the next track starts and then close the program, the next track never submits.

I stopped playback, closed MM, then restarted it and played the track that was already selected in the Now Playing window by pushing the Play button on my keyboard. It never submitted but the next one did.

I see in the log what may be the problem, but without track names I have no way of knowing for sure:

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20-02-2008 09:56:47: Last.FM Handshake Started
20-02-2008 09:56:48: Last.FM Handshake: OK
20-02-2008 09:56:48: Last.fm Submit: Skipping Invalid File Tags
20-02-2008 09:56:48: Last.FM NowPlaying: Update Started
20-02-2008 09:56:51: Last.FM NowPlaying: OK
20-02-2008 10:00:40: Last.FM Handshake Started
20-02-2008 10:00:41: Last.FM Handshake: OK
20-02-2008 10:00:41: Last.FM Track Submission: No need To Submit

The question is, why is there no need to submit? It's happened a couple of times now during testing.

Also, are you caching tracks when you can't connect to the last.fm scrobbling server? If so, where is the cache file and what is it called?

[bob61]

You are right This is Bug Will Be fixed in Next Version:
Until it is released do this:
Edit Lastfm_dj.vbs and replace lines 226-232 with:

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  If ini.StringValue("Last.FM", "RatingCondition") = "=" then 
    Edt.ItemIndex = 1
  ElseIf ini.StringValue("Last.FM", "RatingCondition") = "<=" then 
    Edt.ItemIndex = 2
  Else
    Edt.ItemIndex = 0
  End If

All should Work as it should after that.

Thanks, that worked to correct so that it saves off "<=" and "=". However it doesn't appear to be working with these save options. I have configured so that "Track Rating" is "= to 1/2 Star", I want it to find all similar songs only that currently have a 1/2 star rating. Each new song played is only 5 Star rated song.

[Peke]

That depends what Playlist you have selected as Backup Playlist (Right Click On playlist -> Send To ... -> Set Last.fm Backup Playlist) Also Set Higher Value to Similarity And Mm will use Backup Playlist more Frequently. So you create Auto-Playlist with Criteria Never Played, 1/2 Stars, 50 tracks (For Speed), Random Sort and you will have pleasant surprises.

Math Algorithm for Last.fm is little bit complicated than just this Setting and it acts more like Real DJ which chose Songs that best fit Played song to have continuous Party Atmosphere of Top hits and in most cases (when you have large number of accessible tracks and different artists I have 30k Accesible for last.fm DJ to chose from) it hits almost Bit To Bit so choosing right Backup Playlist is important and will force Last.fm DJ on tracks/genre that you want to hear.

[bob61]

That depends what Playlist you have selected as Backup Playlist (Right Click On playlist -> Send To ... -> Set Last.fm Backup Playlist) Also Set Higher Value to Similarity And Mm will use Backup Playlist more Frequently. So you create Auto-Playlist with Criteria Never Played, 1/2 Stars, 50 tracks (For Speed), Random Sort and you will have pleasant surprises.

Math Algorithm for Last.fm is little bit complicated than just this Setting and it acts more like Real DJ which chose Songs that best fit Played song to have continuous Party Atmosphere of Top hits and in most cases (when you have large number of accessible tracks and different artists I have 30k Accesible for last.fm DJ to chose from) it hits almost Bit To Bit so choosing right Backup Playlist is important and will force Last.fm DJ on tracks/genre that you want to hear.

Thanks Peke. I have my playlist set to "Unrated", these are all the tracks that have a 1/2 star. Here's how I have it configured:



So I'm not sure I understand why I'm getting tracks rated with 5 stars and never a 1/2 star.

[Big_Berny]

Ok, I found two problems in Last.fm DJ:
-The 'Configure'-Button blinks here (changes between visible and invisible). At least in the german version.
-The ratings option is not exact. The correct rating-ranges are:

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-1 = Unknown 
0-5 = Bomb 
6-15 = 0.5 
16-25 = 1 
26-35 = 1.5 
36-45 = 2 
46-55 = 2.5 
56-65 = 3 
66-75 = 3.5 
76-85 = 4 
86-95 = 4.5 
96-100 = 5

Also the last.fm-scrobbler has bugs:
-Sometimes I get "Last.fm Submit: Skipping Invalid File Tags", don't know why though.
-After submitting the cache (after it couldn't submit a song (no idea wyh!)) it doesn't submit anymore...

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20.02.2008 16:28:40: Last.FM Track Submission: Started
20.02.2008 16:28:47: Last.FM Track Submission: Connection To Last.FM interupted
20.02.2008 16:28:47: Last.FM Track Submission: Failed on Sens Unik - N° 1 Top 50
20.02.2008 16:28:47: Last.FM Track Submission: Started
20.02.2008 16:29:08: Last.FM Track Submission: Connection To Last.FM interupted
20.02.2008 16:29:08: Last.FM Track Submission: Failed on Sens Unik - N° 1 Top 50
20.02.2008 16:29:08: Last.FM Track Submission: Started
20.02.2008 16:29:15: Last.FM Track Submission: Connection To Last.FM interupted
20.02.2008 16:29:15: Last.FM Track Submission: Failed on Sens Unik - N° 1 Top 50
20.02.2008 16:29:15: Last.FM NowPlaying: Update Started
20.02.2008 16:29:15: Last.FM NowPlaying: OK
20.02.2008 16:29:47: Last.FM Handshake Started
20.02.2008 16:29:50: Last.FM Handshake: OK
20.02.2008 16:29:50: Last.FM Cache Submission: Started
20.02.2008 16:30:03: Last.FM Cache Submission: OK

Big_Berny

[onkel_enno]

After submitting the cache (after it couldn't submit a song (no idea wyh!)) it doesn't submit anymore...

Noticed that too

Also, are you caching tracks when you can't connect to the last.fm scrobbling server? If so, where is the cache file and what is it called?

The same folder: LastFM_Cache.dat

[spacefish]

Also, are you caching tracks when you can't connect to the last.fm scrobbling server? If so, where is the cache file and what is it called?

The same folder: LastFM_Cache.dat

Thanks. I guess it doesn't create the file until it actually caches something. I don't have it.

[spacefish]

It looks to me that if I stop playback immediately after the next track starts and then close the program, the next track never submits.

It doesn't seem to matter when I stop playback. I stopped a track at about the quarter mark and then shut down MM to go have dinner. I restarted MM and played the track (again pushing the Play button on my keyboard). At the end of the track, the log populated with

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20-02-2008 18:56:06: Last.FM Track Submission: No need To Submit

You definitely need to fix that. I certainly don't want to lose every track I stop and then play again after restarting.

[spacefish]

-Sometimes I get "Last.fm Submit: Skipping Invalid File Tags", don't know why though.

Do you have Only submit tracks if Album metadata exists checked? I do and that message appears in the log every time I start up MM.

[sciamannikoo]

@sciamannikoo
You can always manually Install Plugin. rename mmip to zip, .dll put in Plugins folder, .vbs put in Scripts\Auto folder and restart MM.

Thanks Peke, this way works, but I should set my shortcut to start as Administrator with the (on this case) annoying UAC dialog (I don't want to disable UAC).

Besides, I'm still wondering how to get the dialog posted by bob61, where I can set my Last.FM Auto DJ settings.

The only thing I was able to do is to set my account details, after doing that I cant see any relevant difference, no new dialogs, nothing. I even resterted again MM, just in case it need a reboot to login to the service.

[spacefish]

LastFM_Cache.dat

Is there any program that will read this file? It's not something I can view with notepad.

[spacefish]

The last track in Now Playing doesn't get submitted if MM is closed once it plays through.

I played through all the tracks in my Now Playing list and after the last track finished, I shut down MM. That track never submitted and after restarting MM, playing a new track did not cause the previous one to submit.

If you're basing submissions on the next track, I think this is a mistake unless you always cache tracks. The plugins that I've used have all had a time limit set for submission, e.g. 50% of the track or 2 minutes, whichever is less. Now, while I like the idea of not scrobbling the track until it's actually played through, I think there's some communication lost between sessions that's preventing this method from working as intended. It's certainly not reliable as is. Keep trying!

[Guest]

The last track in Now Playing doesn't get submitted if MM is closed once it plays through.

I played through all the tracks in my Now Playing list and after the last track finished, I shut down MM. That track never submitted and after restarting MM, playing a new track did not cause the previous one to submit.

If you're basing submissions on the next track, I think this is a mistake unless you always cache tracks. The plugins that I've used have all had a time limit set for submission, e.g. 50% of the track or 2 minutes, whichever is greater. Now, while I like the idea of not scrobbling the track until it's actually played through, I think there's some communication lost between sessions that's preventing this method from working as intended. It's certainly not reliable as is. Keep trying!

I'd much rather the method of submitting it based on a forumula rather than a complete play. There's times when I'm listening to a song that has a 'hidden' track at the end of it, so instead of skipping through to find It just hit next to move on.

It's bad enough MediaMonkey doesn't store that as a listen in the library, it'd be worse to not tract the file on last.fm.