it would be great if amaroK would submit MBID tags to Last.fm when it submits the rest of the info, that way the \'album charts\' would actually work.

It doesn\'t?

Hmmm... future last.fm implementation will be based on MBID first when one is available.

Since one of the amaroK devs built the last.fm player for Linux, you\'d think this was already being done (like plug-ins for other players already do).


On a related note, would love to see MBIDs added to the amaroK db in new table columns where they\'re available. Might make the above easier as well, not having to check the MP3 every time for an MBID tag.

I assume you mean musicbrainz ID. Can you explain how this is used by last.fm?

eean wrote:

I assume you mean musicbrainz ID. Can you explain how this is used by last.fm?

Yep musicbrainz ID tags.
Last.fm currently uses musicbrainz ID tags for calculating people\'s top albums chart. It used to be that properly tagged mp3 with artist and album fields filled in were sufficient for calculating those charts but it\'s no longer the case. Only songs submitted with an MBID tag go towards calculating top albums.
Most plugins don\'t currently submit MBID tags when submitting each played song, which means that for most people the top albums chart is useless seen as it\'s never updated.

So it would be great if amaroK could submit the MBID tag for each track when it submits the other information, that way top albums charts would at least work for amaroK users.

There\'s some information in the Protocol 1.1 description:
http://www.audioscrobbler.net/wiki/Protocol1.1
" If a MusicBrainz ID is present in the file (as defined here), then you should send it."
And in this thread on the forums:
http://www.last.fm/forum/21716/_/46236

The eventual plan is that last.fm will use the MBID sent by the user to determine the song they\'re listening to. They take the MBID, and use actual MB info to determine the artist/song/title, thus reducing the number of multiple spellings of one song and such in the user/artist data on last.fm.

If no MBID is given, then it will revert to the way it works now using the submitted artist-album-title info.

But MBIDs will play an important role in coming changes to last.fm.


(Disclaimer: I am not a last.fm dev, the above info is based on #audioscrobbler chats and last.fm forum discussions.)

Ah, OK. I guess the issue is that calculating mbid\'s takes a chunk of CPU time.

Calculating?

They\'re stored in the ID3 tags when using the MB tagger, so they\'re easily read if they exist.
http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/MetadataTags

The top one on the page, Track Identifier, should be read and sent (if it\'s available) along with the other info to last.fm.

HairMetalAddict wrote:

Calculating?

They\'re stored in the ID3 tags when using the MB tagger, so they\'re easily read if they exist.

AFAIK the MB tagger only works on Windows. So is there a way of tagging files (esp ogg) with MBIDon Linux?

Actually, I\'ve tagged thousands of MP3s using the Win MB Tagger via WINE on Linux.

But the Picard tagger that\'s being worked on is multi-platform. Just not hitting a stable release yet. (Though I\'ve heard rumors people have used it.)

http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/PicardTagger

Er, and this is more than a bit off-topic, so to make it on-topic: Um... amaroK should save MBIDs in ID3 tags on MB lookups! :-P (Okay, I don\'t care since I don\'t tag with roK, just trying to keep it on-topic. Somehow.)