Genre Finder 5.0 - Updated 05/08/2012

[mistresso]

It looks like you have to register for an API key tied to your individual account, as the developer. But they also want you to agree to their license and terms of use, as well as list the name of the app and describe its functionality.

It would seem Last.fm is trying to go the route of something like an LGPL license - where the developer of the "Derivative work" has to credit Last.fm within their own application (and provide backtracking links, etc). Such licenses are mainly to protect the original creator from having his work used in an undesired manner, but can at times put onerous restrictions on the secondary developers.

I don't know how much it applies to distributed scripts for MediaMonkey, though. One of the issues I can foresee - in addition to publishing a script that has your own personal API key attached to it - is the timing constraints; there's some 5 hits per second max rule, combined with a requirement to "cache" certain data on a weekly basis. There is little way to control what a script user is going to do, or if they will manipulate your own script and make it run in a way that "violates" the terms of use - resulting in getting your account banned. With a "compiled" application, it's safer to control the Last.fm web service calls, as well as hide your private key.

The best scenario then might be to require the end user to get their OWN api-key, and store it with their Last.fm data in a manner similar to how the login fields are stored for the Scrobbler (via option sheet or ini file setting). Then append this onto all calls to Last.fm, and keep your own API key secret.

[trixmoto]

Yes, what you're saying is accurate then I will not be giving out my own key and people will have to create their own. Either that or I continue using the 1.0 webservices - is there any word on them dropping these or are they planning to keep both versions going?

[mistresso]

No word just yet, at least not via their forums.

The guy who wrote the .Net provider library for Last.fm is doing just what I had suggested earlier (no, I didn't give him the idea, just a coincidence!). He makes the end user enter in their own Last.fm registration information in local files before they can start using all the features of his product.

Apparently the registration keys are easy enough to get from last.fm - you just request one via their website. But you have to be a registered user already, of course - so this is a multi-step process to get setup to use the newer Last.fm scripts/mods.

Also, some folks have reported that Last.fm has its own built-in request throttling going on - perhaps to prevent folks going over the allotted traffic restraints. They start seeing a lot of timeouts if they hit the website too hard.

[cammonoammo]

Suggestion: I use both Artist and Album Artist tags - is there any way to select one or of these tags? Specifically, I'd prefer to use Album artist tags..

Cheers

[trixmoto]

I have added this to my list.

[Alex]

First off, Thank you so much for this great tool. It's really awesome and I love how it works! Thank you for taking the time to make this available to us!

These questions are really to see if I can improve how I'm using the tool


I've been having some major slowdowns when using the genre finder.

My database includes about 70,000 tracks and I check the "Run for current song on play" and sometimes the query/update completely locks up MediaMonkey for several minutes.
To be fair, I also use the Last.fm node which also queries Last.Fm to autoDJ tracks and both combined can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes before MM finally responds again.

1) My first question is, if I were to uncheck the "Run for current song on play" then when will the updates to the genre happen? is there a post-play update that happens?

2) What can I do to eliminate some bottlenecks with this tool in conjunction with other tools that query Last.fm or do updating (such as the auto-rating tool which is now disabled)

Also, let's say that I have an album with two songs, SongA and SongB.
SongA is playing now and genreFinder updates the album (my current setting) and finds SongB and now two tracks are updated.
3) Then I queue SongB, is genreFinder going to re-update the genre for this track and SongA?

4) Am I using this awesome tool wrong?

Any help is much appreciated.

Many thanks in advance,
Alex.

[Alex]

I forgot to also ask the following question:

How can I prevent the genrefinder to update certain albums?
For example, I have Billboard Top 100 Hits of 2000, if a single track is played and I have it set to album mode, it will update 100 tracks which are probably not going to match.

Is there a way for me to set a blacklist using the name of the Album?

Or maybe I am not understanding how the script works and maybe the script actually queries Last.Fm (when set in Album mode) and asks for the album's genre when set in album mode, or the artist's genre when set to Artist mode, or the track's genre when set to tracks?

Anyway, thanks for all you do, this script is really awesome

[trixmoto]

Thanks, I'm glad you've found this script useful so far.

1) If you uncheck this option then the script will not run automatically, it will only run when you run it manually from the menu item or toolbar button. There are currently no other automatic modes, although I guess I could add an option to do it as the track is ended instead of as the track is beginning.

2) At the moment the only way would be to uncheck the automatic option and just run the script manually. Maybe I could add in a delay to wait 10 seconds or something before running, that way it would give the other scripts a chance to finish before it started.

3) Yes in this case the script would fire both times - I will try to put some sort of caching mechanism into the next version to avoid this scenario.

4) It was originally designed to be used manually by selecting tracks and then processing them. Although the script works "on play" in any mode I only really had it in my mind that people would use the track mode in conjunction with the OnPlay. I will need to work on the script to get it behaving better in other modes when running "on play".

5) There is currently no way of saying that you do not want some albums to process and others not to (this again links to 4). This would be very difficult to configure within the script as you'd need a list for each mode, etc.

6) Yes, the script does query differently in different modes...
- In track mode it queries for the track genre and tags the track
- In artist mode it queries for the artist genre and tags all the tracks by the artist
- In album mode it queries each track in the album until two tracks agree on a genre and tags all the tracks in the album

[booblers]

deleting my posts since forum moderators see fit to delete honest posts. just helping to make their job easier. nothing to see here.

[Alex]

Hi Trixmoto,

I wanted to make a small suggestion which also rides on top of Booblers' first paragraph (GenreFinder stopping play for several seconds/minutes).
I've noticed this happening on large collections within an album, for example, a Top 100 hits album (with 100 tracks in that single album title) will take several minutes for the script to process in Album mode.
The settings I have:
------------------------
Log Level: 0
Run Mode: Album
Minimum Match: 0
Check library before querying?: Checked
Use top results: 0
Show toolbar button?: UNChecked
Show confirmation screen: Never
Run for current song on play?: Checked
Only overwrite blank values?: UNChecked
Tag with multiple values?: Checked

UPDATE LIST
==Nothing specified, left as it was when first installed==
------------------------
If we were able to set the size of the album with some option (say a listbox with numbers 5-100 in increments of 5) that when checked, it limits the processing of albums to only those that have a number of tracks equal to or less than the option set. If the option is not checked, then all albums are qualified (no size limit).

For my Top 100 hits, I've had the script lock up to process 100 tracks for roughly 10 minutes. What this affects (nothing you can prevent here unless MediaMonkey3 allows by default true thread separation of PLAY from script execution) is the music queued to play stops going forward. The current song finishes but instead of moving to the next song, it simply repeats the last 10 seconds or so until the script is done.

If we had the album size limit option, we could prevent these look-up queries from processing large albums and keep the locking of threads to a minimum.

To generalize my observation, if your script is not done by the time the song is done playing, the above-described scenario happens.
So this is just a way to reduce that kind of impact.


Thanks for all the hard work you do.
I love this script and I use it a lot. I just terminate the process when a song in a large album is queued

OH! I almost forgot!
I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature but, when the genre finder doesn't find a match, I saw it replace the current genre with a blank. Can you set the script so that if the results found are empty, to not write them?
Thanks!

[trixmoto]

Thanks, I'm glad you like the script. I'll definitely add both of these suggestions to my to do list.

You have "use top results" set to zero? I wouldn't expect you to ever get a result return other than blank then.

[Alex]

You have "use top results" set to zero? I wouldn't expect you to ever get a result return other than blank then.

From your tooltip (when you hover over the textbox for "Use Top Results"): "To use all results set to zero"

[trixmoto]

Ooops!

[MHNRadio]

Hello. This might seem like an odd request. The way I have my scripting done to show sub-genres on my website requires a ":" after the first genre pulled from Last.fm. Is there a way to change the Genre Finder script so that when it pulls multi-value genres it will place a ":" after the first genre pulled? This would make things a lot easier in the long run for me. MM is truely the best tagger I have ever used. If I can fix this one little area I will have everything displaying on my website correctly. I have provided a link below to show you what I am talking about.

http://www.therageradio.com

[trixmoto]

Can you give me an example of what this looks like exactly in the genre field? I'm sure I'll be able to sort something out in the next release for you.