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Scrobble album artist rather than artist

 

  • Scrobble album artist rather than artist

    Sometimes the featuring artists are misspelled or ordered differently and so last.fm scrobbles them differently. So scrobbling the album artist instead, would be preciser.

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    • DFA1979 said...
    • Subscriber
    • 25 Sep 2010, 20:13

    Re: Scrobble album artist rather than artist

    likesuchasblah said:
    So scrobbling the album artist instead, would be preciser.    But the 'artist' performed the track. That's not necessarily true of the 'album artist': think compilations, record-label promo CDs and stuff - take this, for example, the most logical 'album artist' is "labrador records", but they didn't perform any of the songs. Likewise, for something like the "Now <x>" CDs or movie soundtracks, it'd be "various artists".

    In fact, I'm not sure I can think of any situation where scrobbling the album artist rather than the artist is preferable. I guess some people might argue that for albums of one artist collaborating with different people for each track… (it wouldn't be technically accurate to ignore the collaborating artists, but it might make for a more relevant description of the person's taste).

    This sounds to me mostly like it solves a minor issue caused by people tagging their music badly, but in doing so causes other, correctly tagged, music to be submitted inappropriately (not a beneficial trade-off).

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  • I don't think album artist should be scrobbled, but I think the scrobbler should be able to read the album artist id3 to help move tracks into their proper compilations.

    http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/532454

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  • iTranscendence said:
    http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/532454    http://www.last.fm/forum/21716/_/626367

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  • That's a lot of technical stuff, and it looks like they are pulling in more ID3 data like I've been suggesting all along, but it doesn't explain whether the the album artist is going to get a play count or if it's going to use that data to move tracks into compilations like I'm suggesting, I'll have to ask more details in the thread.

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  • Also, although they might not say it, i've noticed that they are using the "album" field as well. And that is somewhat of a new development. If i play an mp3 with the album field empty the "recently played" thing on my page will show the generic pic for the artist. If i play the same file with the field filled out correctly, i get the album cover. Same mp3.

    -G.

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  • Well, quite certainly only taking the album artist would be a mistake. But not taking it, is not beneficial either. I think as iTranscendence suggested, it should use them to properly scrobble songs. That would get rid of problems like this:

    http://www.last.fm/music/Mark%2BRonson%2B%2526%2BThe%2BBusiness%2BIntl.%2B%2528feat.%2BRose%2BElinor%2BDougall%2B%2526%2BAndrew%2BWyatt%2529/_/You+Gave+Me+Nothing

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  • http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.last.fm/forum+scrobble+"album+artist";

    last.fm#DIV(class=messageSig)
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    • [Deleted user] said...
    • User
    • 27 Sep 2010, 17:24
    Definite nono.

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