Similar Artists 2.2 - Updated 26/10/2013

[trixmoto]

I've no idea then, there's nothing obvious in there, it seems to be in the middle of a search. I'll add it to my list to try and investigate more, when I have time.

[lumper5]

This is a fantastically useful and truly marvelous script. Thank you. One suggestion - and forgive me if this has already been raised, as I may have missed it when scanning the forum - I think a useful option would be to exclude recently played songs when automatically encueing the tracks. I've run in to situations where some of my lesser known artists pretty much are only similar to each other and if I have only a few tracks from them, I get into a situation where songs are repeating too frequently. Perhaps the easy way would be to ignore tracks that already exist in the now playing playlist history. Or, temporarily store these artists in memory and avoid repeating artists /songs for xx amount of time up an hour or some such? That little tweak would be super handy. Perhaps there's already a way to finesse that?

[rovingcowboy]

This is a fantastically useful and truly marvelous script. Thank you. One suggestion - and forgive me if this has already been raised, as I may have missed it when scanning the forum - I think a useful option would be to exclude recently played songs when automatically encueing the tracks. I've run in to situations where some of my lesser known artists pretty much are only similar to each other and if I have only a few tracks from them, I get into a situation where songs are repeating too frequently. Perhaps the easy way would be to ignore tracks that already exist in the now playing playlist history. Or, temporarily store these artists in memory and avoid repeating artists /songs for xx amount of time up an hour or some such? That little tweak would be super handy. Perhaps there's already a way to finesse that?

So your wanting a line in the script tnat would allow you to pick an option of only finding simular artists from songs ( played > 10 minutes) ago is that something like your wish?

[lumper5]

This is a fantastically useful and truly marvelous script. Thank you. One suggestion - and forgive me if this has already been raised, as I may have missed it when scanning the forum - I think a useful option would be to exclude recently played songs when automatically encueing the tracks. I've run in to situations where some of my lesser known artists pretty much are only similar to each other and if I have only a few tracks from them, I get into a situation where songs are repeating too frequently. Perhaps the easy way would be to ignore tracks that already exist in the now playing playlist history. Or, temporarily store these artists in memory and avoid repeating artists /songs for xx amount of time up an hour or some such? That little tweak would be super handy. Perhaps there's already a way to finesse that?

So your wanting a line in the script tnat would allow you to pick an option of only finding simular artists from songs ( played > 10 minutes) ago is that something like your wish?

No - that's not it at all. I've found that sometimes the same song gets played maybe 10-15 songs later because X artist is similar to Y and when Y plays, it's now similar to X and so when the script encues related artists upon playing Y, there's a chance that the same song by X will play again. So, I would ask that:

a. have an option to filter out recently played songs
b. have an option to filter out recently played artists

- that would ensure that songs /artists would not play too frequently.

Make sense?

[rovingcowboy]

So its not wanting them from 10 minutes ago its a option for it to remember whos simular to who and then not play the same songs for a period of 24 hours so you could start and stop the playing several times in one day and not get the same songs, and at the same time limit the number of artists that each artist can be considered simular too.

Is that more of what your wanting.

[lumper5]

So its not wanting them from 10 minutes ago its a option for it to remember whos simular to who and then not play the same songs for a period of 24 hours so you could start and stop the playing several times in one day and not get the same songs, and at the same time limit the number of artists that each artist can be considered simular too.

Is that more of what your wanting.

Not quite. Almost. I like the way the playlists get populated. The issue (for me) is when you have the option to have the playlist autoload the next batch on the last song, too often I'm getting another batch of the same artists I just heard and too many of the exact same songs. Here's an example:

Let's say that I'm Currently playing: Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart

which, let's say, last.fm says is similar to:
Bauhaus, David Bowie, Cocteau Twins, New Order

Let's say for this example that the only Joy Division song I have is "Love Will Tear Us Apart". And, so, the script encues:

Cocteau Twins
David Bowie
Bauhaus
New Order

Now, advance ahead, and now New Order is playing and so the script is going to look for similar artists. There's a good chance that the script will encue Joy Division into now playing. And since in this example, I only have "Love Will Tear Us Apart", I may hear this exact song 4 songs later.

Now, I have played with grabbing more songs from last.fm, making the generated similar playlists bigger (I'm currenlty pulling 13 artists at a time). Evenso, too often, I have the same song played too frequently when you have a smaller pool of similar artists.

It seems that the most logically way is to *optionallY* filter recently played songs (and, perhaps, recently played artists) from those items that get transfered into the cue, those that are automatically loaded and encued. Let those songs live in the "Similar Artists" playlists, but filter them based on recent history.

I don't know how to make this much clearer.

I've not yet had an instance where I've heard the same song 3 times in the same 39 songs (a multiple of 13), but I"ve had the same song cued twice a number of times while using the script for the last few months. I have approximately 13,000 tunes in the library but nearly 1/6 of them are where I have one song by an individual artist or band.

Thanks.

[trixmoto]

I've added this to my list, I'll see what I can come up with.

[trixmoto]

New version (2.1) is now available to download from my website. Changes include...

- Fixed ReadLock/WriteLock errors
- Added option to ignore recently played tracks

[lumper5]

New version (2.1) is now available to download from my website. Changes include...

- Fixed ReadLock/WriteLock errors
- Added option to ignore recently played tracks

Excellent. Thank you. You should have a paypal donation from "lumper5" .

BTW, I had to expand the size of my OPTIONS area in MediaMonkey to see the additional option box for Ignore Recent. Noting this in case someone else installs it and doesn't see it immediately.

[trixmoto]

Thank you very much, very kind.

[dbuechner]

Dear Trixmoto,

I still get the WriteLock before ReadLock error on around every second or third time I'm running your script. It's really annoying because I have to restart MM every time. For some Artists (for example Rage against the Machine) its almost impossible to run the script. I have uploaded the log file to my dropbox.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2710090/SimilarArtists.log

I'm using Windows 8 (32-bit), MM 4.07.150 and the Version 2.1 of your script.

Thanks,
Daniel

[dnats]

Hi trixmoto,

Thanks for this extensions, it's great as my library grows.
I have two requests I wonder if you can make?
First, I would like to have "create a radio" function. You know how you can type in an artist on last.fm and it will start to play right away with similar artist? It would be great if you could have like a button to open a search box and you can type in a desired artist/song and it would start playing.

Second, this is more of a functionality fix. The randomize playlist function need a tweaking to only randomize new fetched songs instead of randomizing the whole existed playlist. Right now, it's kind of problematic because it also randomize songs that already played. So I think you should tweak this function.

[trixmoto]

Thanks, I've added both of these to my list for the next version.

[theweasel68]

Hi,
I have installed MediaMonkey 4.1.0.1656, and Similar 2.1., all running on Windows 8.

The Issue:
Similar Artist is not working in most cases. Sometimes, I select a song from my database, and within a second, I get some nice results on my playlist - all works fine then.

In most cases, I select a song, and no playlist is created. I only see a status message:
Image
http://image-upload.de/file/vUuuHH/9301ce920f.jpg

These are the settings for Similar Artist:
Image
http://image-upload.de/file/IK4H9u/4b333145cd.jpg

Sometimes, I can stopp the addon by simply terminating it, sometimes, this doesnt help. I see some progress, but nothing happens, MediaMonkey freezes, i need to terminate the complete program. Here is a screenshot, where Similar Artist obviously did something, but then "stalled":
Image
http://image-upload.de/file/PJhrvY/e717e6be0e.jpg

I have installed the same versions of MM and Similar Artist on two different W8 laptops. On both machines, I have the same problem.


Anyone, who experienced something similar and knows, how this can be solved?
I really would like to use this feature, as it gives some good matching selections for the playlist. Would be a pity, if I had to de-install this addon...

Thx.

[theweasel68]

Hi,
refering to my just previously posted issue - there is another error message now appearing additionally. Please see screenshot (can´t copy and paste the message unfortunately):


http://image-upload.de/file/IHNjO9/be32e09631.jpg (Klick on the image to enlarge it for better readability)

Again - I marked a song and started Similar Artist. As a result, I got this error message. MM 4.1, Similar Artist 2.1. on Win8 Laptop.

This error message gives more details - maybe this helps???