last.fm radio

Monday, Dec 29. 2008  –  Category: Songbird

lastfm-screenieSince Ian left, I took over his prototype work on Last.fm radio support in Songbird.  I know I’ve said before that I  ♥ Last.fm, but I’ll say it again.. their use of semantic web technologies is fantastic…

Anyway, so far we’ve got support for the lastfm:// protocol, as well as support for redirection urls of the form http://last.fm/listen/*, so all the “Play your library” links, etc. you encounter as you browse Last.fm just work.  It’s hugely satisfying to just browse around the Last.fm site and click my friend’s radio stations and have them start playing inside of Songbird.

Some points of note from the screenshot:

  • The previous-track, shuffle and repeat buttons become disabled.
  • The Last.fm “Radio station” icon, and station name are displayed in the faceplate.
  • “Now listening” works, and tracks you listen to on radio stations are scrobbled to your history.
  • Last.fm is awesome and recognises the Songbird app ID as well as the fact that I’m tuned to my library’s radio station.
  • EPSON has really annoying lame ads that prompt you to enter (redundant) user information that tricks you into clicking things in order to launch a pop-up.  BOOOO EPSON.

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10 Comments to “last.fm radio”

  1. Ian McKellar Says:
    December 29th, 2008 at 19:04

    Nice! It looks like it’s coming along really well!

  2. Keisuke Omi Says:
    December 29th, 2008 at 22:09

    Nice!

    By they way, the disabled previous track button looks nice.

  3. Mossop Says:
    December 30th, 2008 at 03:51

    Wow this sounds awesome, keep up the good work

  4. Yeshua Says:
    December 30th, 2008 at 11:53

    Good work, keep it going

  5. Lenny (schwadegan) Says:
    January 7th, 2009 at 05:32

    I tried the 0.3.4pre+dev and I really love the concept, however the quality of the sound wasn’t as good as when I stream from the lastfm page itself?

  6. boosh Says:
    January 8th, 2009 at 11:24

    Ya the quality isn’t too hot, but I’m sure that’s something you can fix.. But HOW did you get to be able to Pause(and resume) a song stream coming from last.fm?? None of their software or website lets you do that without stopping the Radio completely.

    Thanks a lot stevel, oh and this deserves much more than a 0.3.4 Version number! Definitely a 1.0 if not close to it!?

  7. Elijah Grey Says:
    January 8th, 2009 at 13:29

    The EPSON part most likely wouldn’t be a problem with Adblock Plus for Songbird.

  8. Elijah Grey Says:
    January 8th, 2009 at 13:34

    @boosh: I’m guessing it just pauses playback while to the stream is still downloading.

  9. Gdogg Says:
    January 9th, 2009 at 12:52

    This is what I have been wanting! for now, I just opened a tab to my library and keep it open (in songbird), pause my music when at work, and play the radio (so I have my full 3k library I use at home)

  10. Julian Bond Says:
    February 11th, 2009 at 12:17

    +1 for this. Just a thought. Are you using XSPF because last.fm just turned off the old legacy stream format.

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