Last.FM plugin
I’ve recently started playing around with another great looking Mediaportal plugin - the Last.FM Radio plugin.
If you don’t know what Last.FM is, then in essence, it is rather similar to “Pandora”. You listen to music, tell it what you like, and it will recommend other artists and tunes you might like. The first thing to do then, is head over to the Last.FM site, and register.
There are then a couple of plugins to enable within Mediaportal. Firstly, there is the Last.FM plugin itself (this a Window plugin that gives you the screen to listen to streams from within MediaPortal) and secondly, there is the “AudioScrobbler” plugin. This one needs setting up with your Last.FM account username and password, so it can update the site with music you listen to through Mediaportal (handy!).
Once we’re set, you can then run the Last.FM plugin from within MP. the initial menu looks as below:
The first option allows us to start or stop the internet stream and will produce the options below:
You’ll see that the first option is “My Recommendations”. This will play some music based on what we have previously rated as ‘love’ or ‘hate’. The next option lists “Ludovico Einaudi” - the last artist listened to. The rest of the options i’ve yet to play with really, but the names are self explanatory!
OK, let’s say we don’t want to listen to Ludovico, instead, I want to listen to some music similar to Craig Armstrong. If we back up to the main screen and then click on the “Ludovico Einaudi” button, we see the screen below:
We can hit “Enter artist”, type in Craig Armstrong, and then the stream will start. You can see in the screen below some tracks that Last.FM has recommended to us as having a similar style - to try one, just select it, and it will start to play via internet stream!
You can of course then “love” or “hate” the tracks that are played, improving your profile and the accuracy of the results.
This is a great idea for a plugin, and one my wife is looking forward to trying as well - it’s a fun way of being introduced to new music by artists you may never have heard of!
