Sometimes the endless rows of music in my media player leave me at a loss. I have a music collection that I’ve spent years lovingly crafting; all my favourite bands. Yet as I spin my mouse wheel its full length, nothing springs out. I scroll up, scouring the rows for something fresh. I scroll down, searching for some long forgotten treasure. After a few minutes I select “shuffle” and go make a cup of tea.
But maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. Wouldn’t it be great if you could tune into your local music like you do with Last.fm radio?
That last sentence sounded very much like a product announcement did it not? Well, it was!
Pick a tag, maybe another related tag, and click play. Last.fm Boffin. Strictly a tech demo. Let us know how you like it, and we’ll roll it into the next major release of our desktop software :)
Comments
Harmen
11 March, 17:15
Works nice on my mac! Can it also suggest albums I haven’t listened to in a while? And integrate with iTunes? And warn me when an artist I like releases a new album? And do my dishes?
Thanks :)
James Welch
11 March, 17:21
wow, works great!
is it possible to get it to scrobble for those no using the official client?
I’m an iscrobbler guy…
Max Howell
11 March, 17:23
I have some code ready to scrobble with the official client if it is running and independently if not. So yes. But I can’t guarantee a time frame as I need to add the “does dishes” feature first ;)
Jelle
11 March, 17:34
GREAT initiative.
One main remark, though: I guess it can’t be difficult to render a playlist (.m3u) instead of playing the tracks in Boffin itself. That way I can keep using my favourite player, Winamp.
AngryChad
11 March, 17:36
I’ve been looking for something like this for a long, long time. This definitely needs to be rolled into the official client.
Rolle
11 March, 17:45
For linux-users, songbird already has similar option: http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/197
Pichu0102
11 March, 17:54
I too would like a playlist for say iTunes or other players. Also, it would be nice to specify a tag if the tag you want doesn’t pop up by default.
Rob
11 March, 18:06
Yes. Thanks. Fantastic. Amazing. Been looking forward to you guys releasing something like this for ages.
Boffin as well. Great name :D
jip
11 March, 18:15
Doesn’t it scrobble?
Max Howell
11 March, 18:17
Yes it scrobbles. Via the official Last.fm scrobbler.
Kimiko
11 March, 18:32
Nice idea :)
Two things though:
- At the bottom of the Boffin thread it says “You are not allowed to reply to this thread.” What’s up with that? I’m logged in on the Last.fm website.
- Why is there again no support for Ogg files? The same thing happened with the fingerprinting thing (still waiting for it). It shouldn’t be that hard to link to a library that can read multiple formats, should it?
cooperaa
11 March, 18:37
Looks really slick but the reason I won’t use it is because it won’t update my iTunes library’s play count/last played date.
Would be awesome if it integrated with the user’s media player of choice and rather than scanning a directory, scanned the media player’s library. Also, could then play the files in the media player (I know Tangerine—the BPM calculating app—does it this way; same with iVolume).
Robin Buckley
11 March, 18:41
Wow! I love it!
Max Howell
11 March, 18:44
Sorry, the forum required you to join the group, we’ve adjusted that for now.
We really want to play other music formats, but distributing and supporting three platforms is not as easy as you might think :( So we’re hoping to make that happen within 4 weeks lets say.
Steve Moser
11 March, 18:51
Idea of something like this started here:
http://www.last.fm/group/Last.fm+Web+Services/forum/21604/_/285676
I posted a modified version of the script that writes track tags to the groupings field of your mp3’s so that you can make smart playlists of last.fm tags. Check it out:
http://stevemoser.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/lastfm-folksonomy-itunes-applescript/
Andreas
11 March, 19:29
We need this for our personal Last.fm libraries too!
Stas
11 March, 19:41
It’s so cool tool, the dream of my life, thank you! :)
Brent Housen
11 March, 19:49
Words can not describe how cool this is.
SteveL
11 March, 20:33
This is cool. If apple are getting ambitions, it is time to push back. Of course Amarok has used the last.fm APIs to help you work through your local music -but it’s UI is a bit clunky in places
Tim
11 March, 21:17
I’m lost…where can I get this?
Donskoy
11 March, 22:08
This thing can’t find any tags. Try everything and nothing happens!
Keith
11 March, 22:35
Why isn’t this already a thing? Where the world has failed, you have succeeded.
tef
12 March, 01:46
It seems to work on tiger if you install sqlite3 into /lib.
Lepoard ships with it.
Steve Moser
12 March, 01:50
This doesn’t get any of the interesting tags. It is basically another way to browse genres. Where are the ‘interesting’ tags like Summer, melancholy, or icelandic? Just saying. This should grab more tags like my script.
Cadu Garcia
12 March, 03:07
Ohhhh!!! I was waiting for something like that for so long! -
Master_Bob
12 March, 04:42
Why can’t we listen to multi-tag radios on Last.FM?
Irwin1138
12 March, 04:46
This is great, but it has problems with unicode, and it seems to be only able to recognize mp3, while half of my music is stored in lossless formats, primarily WavPack, with embedded cue sheet.
I wasn’t able to get it to work, cuz it keeps spitting the same error.
Ubqtous
12 March, 06:13
Very nice! This addresses a want I didn’t realize I had until I saw your post.
It would cool if it provided a way to:
• Clear all tag selections, i.e., start from scratch
• Define tag groups and save them as presets
• Generate playlists for external players like Winamp
• Merge similar tags—especially those that are nearly identical like “hip-hop” and “hip hop”
jacobbrett
12 March, 08:00
Sounds great! I’ve been wanting something like this for a long time… now someone just has to port it as a foobar plugin…
Georges
12 March, 11:00
Where can I find an executable or a .deb package for Ubuntu? Thanks.
Gofis
12 March, 12:46
Cool thing :)
As lot of people already said, it would be cool if it could generate playlist in external media player (Winamp, WMP, …)
Than you could have “instrumental”, “rock”, “jazz” etc. playlists generated in no time.
Just a thought, is there any ambition from Last.fm to design a complete media (music) player? Sort of “all in one thing”.
g.
Donskoy
12 March, 16:24
Still “no tags have been found”. I tried everithing. Added a lot of tags on site, reorganize my files – and nothing! Help, i want use this program =)
Vista SP1.
Max Howell
12 March, 16:45
@Donskoy I’m guessing your music is not mp3?
Jorijn Smit
12 March, 18:51
Wow I’d love to see this intergrated in iScrobbler or iTunes. KICKASS!!
Tony Dodd
12 March, 20:35
Max, you are a god among men. The scanning output screen alone is amazing.
rockhoppers
12 March, 21:59
Works a dream – a small feature request is as in the official scroblizer it would be nice to exclude tracks under my iTunes folder (I don’t currently scroble my childrens music – think Humpty Dumpty etc) however the boffin picks these up. Great otherwise – Thanks
Rolo_NL
13 March, 13:57
I’d love to use this program at its full strenght, but for some reason after indexing my music it just skips over the songs by starting the first mili-second and then skipping to the next. What am I doing wrong? Is a different configuration able to cure this hiccup?
I’m using windows xp, iTunes 8.1 and scrobbler 1.5.2.38918
Eastgate
14 March, 13:40
Very nice app so far. Two features I think would be cool is if you could exclude a track when it comes up from being played again, and if you could remove certain tags from displaying in your list.
Holzhaus
15 March, 11:55
Great, but where’s the Linux binary?
Max Howell
15 March, 13:38
I look forward to your submission of a Linux binary. Thanks for offering! There are so many Linux distributions, all with their own packaging formats, so it’s always welcome when people give back in this way.
Matthew Connelly
15 March, 19:35
I’m looking forward to seeing a debian package for this. I tried building from sourdce, but all I’m getting is shared object errors. Can’t wait for a .deb :)
Holzhaus
15 March, 20:08
@Max Howell:
Sorry if I was a bit “bold”.
I’d like to contribute an OpenSuSE-RPM-package, but unfortunately, boffin doesn’t work for me.
I could compile, but my I simple doesn’t start. No error messages in the console…simply nothing.
And even if it worked, I guess, a lot of folks would actually feel safer if it was an “official” package. (Isn’t it possible to make a pkg for all distributions by using statically linked libs and put everything in /opt?)
@Matthew Connelly:
Go to “_bin” and do a “LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./boffin” instead of “./boffin”. That should work.
Max Howell
15 March, 23:50
Linux was designed from the ground up to not support binary distribution. Even if I statically linked everything. And we have a lot of dependencies, so this is a huge task. Even then, we’d not support everything. Certain sub sections of Linux kernel 2.6.x probably, but that is all. Even publishing a deb is a PITA, which variety of Debian am I supporting then? Ubuntu perhaps. Which Ubuntu? 8.10. Which Ubuntu 8.10? Kubuntu 8.10. Oh actually it doesn’t work unless you install the GStreamer Fluendo MP3 plugin and the KDE4 branch of Phonon. Blargh.
This is why I draw the line at source tarballs nowadays. However our source tarball needs work, make install for instance. That I’ll do at my earliest opportunity.
And seriously. We’d really appreciate it if people packaged it for us. I’ll very happily link.
Also if you have Linux issues, I’m happy to help. Please post at the forum or email me. This is not the right medium.
schizoform
16 March, 03:07
looks great! look forward to FLAC support and playlist import/export.
match
17 March, 05:09
Excite tool! I will try out your tool.
A
17 March, 08:23
How about Mac remote support?
bloodnut84
17 March, 09:50
This is an amazing tool. I was not a Last FM user until I heard about this. Love Last.fm and Love Boffin!
Technically speaking, Keep it light weight!
I do get some crashes, but a re-start sorts it out.
Well done to all involved!
Zandrr
17 March, 15:06
Nice work! I was looking for something like this, so I really want to use this.
But i have a slight problem: I have the same problem Rolo_NL has. Just scanned my music folders but when I press ‘play’, it skips over the songs, instead of actually playing them..
Is there anything we can do about this?
Max Howell
17 March, 20:08
Bug reports to the forum please.
Tecfan
19 March, 11:00
I hope this will be built into the official scrobbler?
Ina
19 March, 20:06
Really great idea!
Clueless
19 March, 20:39
Love it and am looking forward to catching all the new bits you choose to nail to it.
Hannah
19 March, 22:25
Love it! But I’d really love to be able to type in my own choice of tags I want it to search for, instead of just listing the most popular. That way I could find moods as well as genres that fit what I wanted (which is more the way I tag things anyway).
Dirk
23 March, 13:14
works great, but definitely needs flac and wavpack support :)
Trey
24 March, 02:34
This is SICK!!!! This has GOT to be built into the next release! The interface is already perfect too (especially the scrolling pictures!) Just fix whatever technical problems come up and this thing is ready for show!! Thanks Last.fm!
julianmaestas
24 March, 21:38
amazing, please include it in next version.
drvid
25 March, 17:45
can I please let Last.fm index all the audio files on my hard drive so I can worry about litigation from the RIAA???
Psi
25 March, 19:53
“I have a music collection that I’ve spent years lovingly crafting; all my favourite bands”
…now imagine I take that data from you, and from everyone else, SELL it for millions, and give nothing back to you.
Not only that but now you must pay to use our site now that we have what we need….
Christian
25 March, 20:07
Best. EULA. Ever.
Great idea, too!
cool
25 March, 20:20
wow, this could be the best last.fm feature! lots of potential. it’s like having an ipod shuffle desktop program, only lots smarter. please don’t charge for this feature too, or i will have to mis-tag all my last.fm library in protest!
Mind Booster Noori
26 March, 11:00
It’s a sad sad thing that you just closed the comments on your “we’re gonna make you pay for radio” blog post. Not wanting to listen to your users is a real*bad*decision.
client uninstalled
26 March, 11:54
I agree, closing comments just because they’re unpleasant is bad policy, it only enrages people. Although I guess you already have a more than relevant sampling of the public opinion…
Max Howell
26 March, 12:08
We closed comments because the blog engine can’t handle it when it has to render 1600 comments! As the post says comment in the forums instead, not on an unrelated post!
dick
26 March, 15:16
Music should be avaluable for everyone!
Fuck Last.FM
26 March, 16:59
Howell (H8U) Yeah, of course it can hadle only 1600. So why there are 1651 comments (that is the limit? yeah, sure!)
Last.fm: – yours subsribing fee SUCKS
And You Suck as well!
It’s my last time with last.fm
Max Howell
26 March, 18:07
It can handle it, but it starts taking too long to render and the webserver buckles. But believe what you want.
Maíra Mee
26 March, 18:26
I’m commenting here because comments were closed for the post about last.fm becoming a paid service in SOME countries. I’d like to say that this change is outrageous and ridiculous! I live in a poor country where €3 means a lot of money and it is clear to me that it is either the same or worse for the absolute majority of countries which are going to be forced to pay. Why is it going to remain free for only three countries? How come the countries in which you don’t have to pay are countries where the poorest people have incomes which are 10 times the income of the middle class in my country? This is offensive! You are going to become just another paid service on a corner of the net. In case you didn’t notice Brazil is the first country in number of users of social networks. We are all losing here. There are no winners with this stupid change.
Max Howell
26 March, 22:33
Last.fm would cease to exist without this change. Anyone who loves Last.fm wins. This is simply the case.
Music costs the same wherever we stream it. It is senseless to be angry at us about this fact. We do not choose the prices.
More reason to use Boffin perhaps? It’s not as though we’re only about streaming music. Applications like Boffin are also produced for free for you, with very little financial incentive for us.
Angry
27 March, 08:54
Fuck yourself, idiots! This is very bad idea – to enforce users to pay you. You will lose the most part of your users because of that. It`s absolute not fair – for one countries it will stay free, for others – paid..
Bye bye shit.fm.
P.S. I`ve been listening lastfm for three years and never expect that such changes will come…
rostasi
29 March, 00:32
Well, back to the REAL subject here…
The Boffin idea is pretty cool.
I have too many tunes for it to go thru each time – it takes about 6 hours – but maybe for small libraries it may work fine.
®ø∂
Themeros
30 March, 03:27
Guys, you have to make an option available to show only MY tags from Last.fm!
I don’t care about what others tag my music like, I want MY tags because it is my personal library!
I’ve been wanting something like this forever and it is close to happening.
Please Last.fm, make my dream come true!
beenhere
2 April, 10:31
I’d rather pay for the CD’s then pay to listen to them on the internet!
(Plus not all songs are full tracks).
Byebye last.fm
groug
2 April, 20:48
It’s really great. It works perfectly, I love it!
Dennis
10 April, 07:59
It´s a nice feature for me … Boffin is cool. The changes on Last.fm are good, thanks a lot of ;)
Best greetings from
Dennis
http://www.musikflatrate.de
mojaam
12 April, 14:39
Oh my this is nice. Must incorporate in next version Last.fm! That will give my winamp player a run for it’s money.
mojaam
12 April, 14:42
Also, hope you guys are able to filter out all the horrible comments from haters and not let it affect you. Last.fm is a great service and so keep doing you thing.
shadevampire
12 April, 16:23
Works fine in windows, altough it sometimes crashes but… I just simply love it ;) I use it almost equally to winamp. Keep it up, this is the right way! :)
Bugfix and straight to the next release!
shadevampire
12 April, 16:50
Just some ideas: – a gender-ratio system would be great: I mean, I could set 80% hip-hop and 20% electro, or like this – plus other rating systems (x of 5 or x of 10)
shadevampire
12 April, 17:56
Another note: I’ve got the same gender with multiple tags and different weight -> I have dnb and drum and bass; hip hop and hip-hop etc.
shadevampire
12 April, 18:08
another idea: would be great if I hit minimize the program could appear in system-tray (bottom-right) and not in windows-tray. This is almost a core feature to music-players.
Robson
19 April, 12:08
So… you’re basically bringing back multiple tag radio?
About time too. Never made sense that you couldn’t randomly listen to music that sounded both jazzy and soulful yet you could play specific tracks that you wanted on demand for free 3 times…
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