Last.fm Archives - Lobo Strategies

Last weekend, I tried to get my Android phone to scrobble the songs that I listened to via Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player. I tried the Last.fm Android client. I loaded the ScrobbleDroid client (which did work with the Android Music app). But I had no success. So I set the problem aside for a few days.
And then things started to work.
I decided to play something at the office. And I noticed that there was a message in the information bar of my phone. The message was simple: my music was being scrobbled to Last.fm (via the Last.fm client). This was great news. But as an analytical geek, I was disappointed because I had no idea which change resulted in the successful outcome I was experiencing.
Unsatisfied with success, I’m now trying to reconstruct my apparent success. The only thing that changed during the time between when it wasn’t working and the time that it began working was that a new version of the Last.fm client was deployed to my phone. [Note: I used passive voice in the last sentence because I didn’t deploy it by choice. I had selected automatic updates for this app. And it got updated. Using active voice, I would say that my phone (and the app market) updated the application.]
Since this is the only change I can identify thus far, I must lean towards this change as being the probable source of my success. But I am not wholly convinced – yet. There is an obvious interaction between Google Music, Last.fm and ScrobbleDroid. And since one of those components did change, then I could just close the book: problem solved. Unfortunately, I haven”t seen the code for any of these components, so I can’t really say which is the root cause for the change in status.
But at this moment, I am going to accept victory as a desirable outcome. I now have one cloud music application that does meet the majority of my listening needs. That system is the Google Music client. I also have one retail music channel that meets my needs. That music channel is Amazon.
On the whole, I have one question: what’s changed? That’s easy. I’ve finally broken the leash that iTunes has on my music library. Now that I am not wholly dependent upon Apple, I can objectively evaluate the iCloud offering whenever it becomes available.
For now, there is peace in the music valley at Chez Roo.
-Roo

For many music fans, a key to their listening experience is scrobbling to Last.fm. For those not familiar with the term, it refers to recording the songs that you play. Last.fm has built its unique offering based on the ability to record when and how you listen to music. The process of recording is called scrobbling. For years, whenever you listened to things on iTunes, they could be recorded on Last.fm’s site. Even the Songbird team built scrobling into their basic product offering.
Why is this data important? That’s a great question. People care about this kind of data for a variety of reasons. Some people just want their friends and followers to know more about themselves. Some people like to be considered experts in something (e.g., a band, an album or a community of mutual interests). And some people like to meet and interact with other people that share their interests. Scrobbling collects data that makes all of these things possible. [Note: Scrobbling also lets record companies and bands target their music and their marketing to serious fans.]
Because a large and active community chooses to publicly record their music preferences via scrobbling, most music products have open interfaces and/or direct interfaces to the Last.fm service. Consequently, you can scrobble with almost any PC or Mac-based music player. But this is not the case with mobile phone-based music players.
Because most music players on Android do not provide native support for scrobbling, creative people have built their own scrobbling engines for use on the Android platform. ScrobbleDroid is one such engine. This product was originally a Google Code project. It is now a product that can be obtained from the Android Market. And it is an excellent (and free) tool for scrobbling your listening habits to Last.fm.
Unfortunately, it only works if you use the Android Music application. So it currently supports only music that is stored on your Android phone. But I have high hopes that someday, it will be extended to support both the Google Music platform as well as the Amazon Cloud Drive platform.
In the meantime, if any of you know of a different scrobbling tool that works with streaming music, drop me a note (via comment, email or Twitter).
-Roo

The intersection of vision and action

Tag: Last.fm

A Welcome (And Unexpected) Resolution