1/5/2024 0 Comments Does lastfm scrobbler bandcampI just believe that Last.fm and Bandcamp have the potential to offer something really special if they pool their respective offerings, and I hope I can articulate my idea in a remotely coherent fashion. Now, I’m not suggesting that they merge, or one buys the other, or anything like that-I’m no business expert, and I don’t know if either would be “up” for a formal coming-together, or if it’s possible, desirable, etc. Why don’t Last.fm and Bandcamp join forces? I hope you can guess where I’m heading with this, but in case not, I’ll come straight to my point (finally!): I specify, or my listening history, or both), identify some Bandcamp artists which might match this, and serve them up so I can listen to a selection, in case I might want to investigate them further? Of course, you can browse genres and the like from the Bandcamp home page, and I sometimes do that… but wouldn’t it be great if somehow, there was a way for “the system” to look at the music I listen to (whether by the influences, artists, etc. The flipside of all that choice, is how to track down the artists in this ocean of choice, which are likely to match your tastes. It’s a great place to find new music, and when you buy their downloads, you can choose your format (320K MP3, FLAC, Ogg, etc.) and have a reasonable idea that they’re getting a bigger cut of the cash than they would if they were signed to a major label. Much as I like Bandcamp, I feel one of its strengths is also a weakness: its large and growing catalogue of independent bands and artists. An old favourite of mine-British looping guitarist David Cooper Orton-recently started releasing material there (some of which I’ve bought), and I also “discovered” an American post-rock/electronica project there, Sound of Seventy Three (a bit Stereolab/Air-ish, I’d say), whose eponymous album I also coughed up for. (It felt to me like “MP3.com for the 21st century”-referring to the MP3.com of the late-1990s, before it picked fights with the 800lb gorillas of the music industry, with sadly predictable results.)īefore long, I’d set up my Bandcamp pages, with a selection of my newer and “archive” tracks for folk to sample and purchase downloads of (plug, plug □ ), and had also started tentatively exploring some of the other artists on the site. Now: hold that thought, while I bring in my other “friend” here…Īs with Last.fm, I can no longer remember how I discovered the music downloads store Bandcamp, but almost as soon as I did, it felt like I’d found the ideal outlet for my music and recordings. I admit I’ve been thinking about it, especially of late, as I do rather miss the “personalised Internet radio”. Unfortunately, a few months ago Last.fm turned off its “radio” feature for freeloaders like myself, meaning I would have to cough up £3 a month for the Last.fm subscription necessary to get my tailor-made channels back. Whilst I make no secret that I like those two artists, as you’ll see from my Last.fm profile, my listening is just a bit wider than that.) (Whilst generally broadly accurate, the channel seemed to get the idea sometimes, that just about all I listened to was Harold Budd and Brian Eno. I also came to appreciate Last.fm’s “radio stations”-particularly the “recommended” channel, where the service would play me a list of tracks it thought I’d like, based on my previously-scrobbled selections. This is known as “scrobbling”, and it means (amongst other things) that you can store and share statistics on your favourite listening, flag tracks that you love or loathe, and give Last.fm an idea of your music tastes, so it can recommend new sounds to you. ( “Scrobbling”? For the uninitiated: when you listen to songs via an app(lication) which has Last.fm support, you can set it to send information on what you are playing, to your account on Last.fm. I am also not sure whether it was still called Audioscrobbler at the time, though I’m fairly certain it was the “scrobbling” that interested me back then, rather than any of the service’s other features. I can no longer remember when I set up an account on Last.fm, though I think it was a few years ago now. This is a piece about two of my favourite Internet music services, whom I would rather like to introduce to each other.
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