MediaMonkey forum

MeMeMe...

you make a good case... you actually had me convinced for a little while... however I realised one thing that I want to point out.

When ScribblerDJ starts up, it hears a song, then checks out the LastFM recommendations, and picks a new artist - but it only picks from those I've already decided I like.
Soo it is only strengthening those relationships I WANT it to strengthen - the artists and songs I've already determined that I like. (By placing them in my library, and rating at 2 stars or above.)

you're right that it should log the songs because they are songs you definitely like (I hadn't taken into account the ratings)... However.. it is not the strengthening those relationships that you 'want'. It's the strengthening of the popularity of those songs that you want.

Increasing the popularity is not innacurate - as you said it's in your library and rated well... so yes.. it should get logged...
But it being in your library or rated well, does not mean it's 'related' to the song that played before. The only thing that indicates that is the recommendation from Last.fm... and it's in this respect alone (not the popularity) that there is a feedback loop.

How is that any different than any other 'related' songs that are already in last.fm?

I think the thing you should remember, accept, and come to terms with is, last.fm will *always* be based on chaos.

I would assume that the vast majority of people play the vast majority of their music on some kind of shuffle or random selection.

It takes alot of work to create custom playlists, I've been listening to music for nearly 30 years and playing on computers for over 20 of them, I've created specific custom playlists a handful of times for a handful of situations.

It simply is not a common thing.

Most other playlists would be a random selection of an artist or genre, or even a mostly random selection selected for car cd's.

Throw in the fact that some people will specifically try to skew the popularity of their favorite artists/tracks (see the radiohead/coldplay examples)...

And finally, you have the last.fm radio streams...

Last.fm has it's own built in 'scrobblerdj'.

They are called: tag radio, loved radio, recommended radio, neighbor radio, personal radio, just to name a few off the top of my head.

How do you think that last.fm comes up with these various radio playlists?...

By playing the 'related' songs that it already knows about at a minimum, and I'm sure there are factor's involved that we can only assume.

So the radio streams *already* strengthen the various relationships that *already* exist. And wow, this is an integrated part of last.fm!

Now, if you really want to listen to music that is hand picked related to each other, then you may want to try out Pandora.

Pandora is very similar to the various last.fm radio channels, but instead of built on the *chaos* of user submissions, its based on specific musical traits that are somehow related to each other.

You enter a track or artist and pandora will play a selection of tracks based on the 'musicality' relationships. Music geneology or something they call it.

Of course the obvious downfall for pandora, and for last.fm radio is, they are streamed. So you must be online and have sufficient bandwidth to support the audio streams.

If you want to create custom playlists of musically related tracks in your library, I recommend trying out MusicIP Mixer.

MusicIP mixer does something similar to pandora, in which tracks that are related by the musical/sound characteristics are used to generate the playlists according to the various options you can specify.

Anyway, I do think your concerns have merit, however I do think that with fact that a basically unlimited number of users are submitting anything from completely random, to playing the same song/artist all day 24/7, that last.fm will always be based on this chaos, and that hopefully the last.fm design takes into account the extremes and lets them have only minor influences on the overall results.

Wow thats a long post, thanks for reading if you got this far.

edit:
Here is a post about an article about the various music streaming/relationship things like last.fm/pandora/musicip...
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... t++article

edit 2: well crap, looks like the article no longer exists, and I can't find it on their site any more...
Here is the slashdot article if your interested.

Hey thanks, Technojnky, very informative post.

Not having heard a definitive answer from you previously, I assumed the issue was still unresolved and did not wish this opinion to be ignored.

You are obviously right though.

In pointing out that last.fm actually has it's own scrobbler DJ you make any reason to bother with foolproofing 'your' system, in a way that 'they' don't, a waste of time.

I do hope that last.fm do know of the issue and that they could (or possibly are) limiting doubling up relationship strengthening at their end. But you're very right when you say it's based on chaos compared to some other systems. So I guess it would be no huge loss if they are not.

You have a great grasp of the logic behind all this, Technojnky, and are well researched on it. I have to commend you for putting your all into your projects.

Dale.

I'm just a fellow user, like others. Psyxonova is the guy who made scrobberdj (I think he is on holiday at the moment). I beleive he has commented a little bit about the feedback loop concerns, but from what I remember I think he feels it is up to the users to decide for themselves.

After all, using the last fm plugin is completely optional, its not necessary to even have a last.fm account in order to use scrobblerdj, and the plugins are easily disabled if a user is concerned about feedbacks.

And several people have already commented, that it is the feedback and strengthening of these related tracks is what is the great thing about last.fm and scrobbler dj... not a problem as others believe.

Consider this, if tracks/artists never got played together, then where would last.fm build its relationships from?

Teknojnky wrote:I'm just a fellow user, like others. Psyxonova is the guy who made scrobberdj (I think he is on holiday at the moment). I beleive he has commented a little bit about the feedback loop concerns, but from what I remember I think he feels it is up to the users to decide for themselves.

Hey, did someone called me??? Teknojnky is right (as always). I am truly on vacations. But its extremely hot here today (Rhodes, Greece). So, i decided to stay in my air-conditioned room today and take a walk on the net...

Great discussion guys. Once again the issue is the "feedback effect" that perhaps ScrobblerDJ is causing to LastFM. And i am saying perhaps, because until this day I still haven't found any info that explains how LastFM is processing usage statistics to create its relations...
If i was a LastFM developer I would have tried to find a way to filter out all that "noise" that is caused by scripts like ScrobblerDJ or worst from fan users that try to make their favorites bands climb on the top of the Artists Charts. Perhaps the system is self-tuned, as all chaotic systems are (take for example the most chaotic one, life).
Anyway, i think that one of my posts was misunderstood. I have no intention to create a system that will disable submissions to LastFM of songs that were picked from ScrobblerDJ. I said that the new LastFM plugin (which i think is still beta) allows you to easily turn it on or off from system tray. The only think that i will try to do is to find a way to access this functionality from scripting and add an option to ScrobblerDJ, so it will turn the plugin on of off automatically. This will be a global setting, meaning that it wont make a difference if you are using ScrobblerDJ live, or you are listening to a playlist that has built.
I think this is the better way to deal it, the choice is yours, i will just provide the means to do it your way...
As for the new version... well yes it is still "coming up". Sorry about this guys. I know that you are tired of hearing me saying that but what can I do?. I only script in my spare time and I had to take some vacations. Again sorry about that but the new version will be ready when i have the time to finish it....

Thanks again...

Perhaps i will go to Tsampika beach now....

ha... of course.. I shocked at myself that I got the author mixed up.... shame on me... shame.

I'll go hide in my corner now.

Dale.

No worries at all Dale!

Hope your having a good holiday Psyxonova!

(and I'm not always right! )

psyxonova wrote: I said that the new LastFM plugin (which i think is still beta) allows you to easily turn it on or off from system tray. The only think that i will try to do is to find a way to access this functionality from scripting and add an option to ScrobblerDJ, so it will turn the plugin on of off automatically. This will be a global setting, meaning that it wont make a difference if you are using ScrobblerDJ live, or you are listening to a playlist that has built.
I think this is the better way to deal it, the choice is yours, i will just provide the means to do it your way...[/img]

It's good that the choice will be ours. One thing, though - I don't use the new lastFM plugin. I've stuck with the old mediamonkey plugin, since for that I don't need another program running in the system tray.
From the lastFM forums, it seems that a number of users don't like the new plugin, and do the same as me.
I just thought I'd mention this in case it affects the writing of your code - for example, searching for a plugin that isn't there.

Thanks for your excellent script Excellent stuff!

Being very new to MM it took me a while to figure out how to get it working.

For those of you like me:

1. Install script.
2. Start MM, Go to Tools->Options->Player->ScrobblerDJ Settings and set it up If you don't have ratings set ... turn on 'Include Unknown Rating'.
4. Close options.
5. At main window -> hit the little icon up top on the far right (looks like a little monkey face), or you can turn it on in the 'options' dialogue.
6. Drag a song into the 'Now Playing' box and play It should go from there.

Perhaps these can be added to the first post ... took me ages to find how to set the options (it wasn't clear to me as a complete noob how this actually worked).

loving this script. been looking for something like this for ages.

my only prob is that sometimes i get stuck with three songs. that is to say the script repeatedly selects the same tracks over and over again. this aint too much of a problem since i can just queue up another song manually from the library, but it can get a little frustrating when you keep getting dani california by the chilli peppers every twenty minutes.

i was wondering if altering the settings would help at all. here are mine

Default Playlist : All Available Tracks. [ I changed this so that it would look through my entire library to select stuff rather than just the rated items]
Timeout: 5sec
InfoShow: 7sec
Minimal Match: 50%
No Same Artist: 80mins
Select Rating: Any
Include higher ratings: n/a
Include Unknown Rating: checked
Enable ScrobblerDJ: checked
Enable Debug Mode: unchecked
Show Warning on Timeout: checked

Being a bit of a newbie i couldnt figure out what 'minmal match' did since it seems to make no difference whether at 1 or 100%.

Such good work here. this script made my week. thanks.

Yes that sounds a bit weird. According to your settings ScrobblerDJ will not pick up the same artist unless 80 minutes have passed...
I can think of 2 occasions when this rule brakes...

1) You manually skip those spesific songs before 1/3 of the song is played. In this case MM doesnt mark the track (and therefore the Artist) as played and ScrobblerDJ picks it again if is recommended from Last.FM

2) ScrobblerDj cant find any of the recommended Tracks/Artists and therefore it selects a random song from the default playlist. Constrains that you set for ScrobblerDJ dont work for the default playlist. Maybe you should create an auto playlist that doesnt include songs played in the last 3 hours or so, and set this playlist as the default one....

In any case all of those problems will be solved in the new version...

Thanks for your good words...

Thanks. That's a good advice about the playlist. That should workround the problem i was having.
Very much looking forward to the new version.
Cheers again.

Great script. Changed the way i listen to music. One suggestion: Could there be a "Re-query Last.fm" option made available? This way, if the first song last.fm matches does not want to be heard by the user, he/she can requery for another, more desirable, song. Maybe this option could be built into the context menu or the info bar?

Hey tajmahal... I agree, that's a good idea.

woops.. forgot to log in.