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Author Topic: Artist / Band Info lookup  (Read 12225 times)

Dr.Flay

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Artist / Band Info lookup
« on: July 08, 2018, 04:17:40 AM »
Have you thought about using the Last.fm API to populate the "Show Info" panel in the media library ?
It is extensive and contains info on lots of independent and obscure obscure artists.
Being wiki based also means nobody has anyone but them self to blame for the fave new local band, or random find in a junk shop having no info.
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dro

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2018, 10:21:58 PM »
Nope as I wasn't going to re-implement that part of the local library plug-in in the replacement. However maybe it would be a better fit as part of something else I've got in mind as part of a general 'info' area within the library window that needs to be finished off (as I want things to work & be available irrespective of the skin being used) & it's not ideal imho having such info be view specific (it's why the now playing node is a complete waste).

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Dr.Flay

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #2 on: July 09, 2018, 10:08:54 PM »
OK. I can work with that. Great answer I can get behind.
Remember I will always start with something we already have, hence suggesting the existing defunct panel.
Mostly I never used it because it just contained marketing crap, not a useful biography.

I bring this up because if swapping over to a standalone Last.fm scrobbler from the official client, I will lose the handy info on almost any band being at my fingertips.
Looking up info via the last.fm API would not require a working scrobbler so this could be a solution for everyone.

As you are thinking of replacing the info system, then maybe something modular like the new tracking plugin.
This way options such as discogs and musicbrainz could be bolted in ad-hoc, allowing for user option or redundancy in case of closure or no access.

One thing also occurs to me now. Last.fm shows when an artist is on tour. If this can be accessed via the API, then Winamp could have an option to popup a notification and have it show in the media library or new info.
Perhaps a skin independent option would be to have a dummy album "On Tour Now" at the top of the smart view when you click on an artist name.
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dro

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #3 on: July 09, 2018, 10:43:58 PM »
There'll be nothing to stop you from using the existing last.fm provided solution. I just think for a number of users that going back to the standalone plug-in model (but integrated in as part of Yule Log) is a better choice for having something general that works & depending on needs things can be added or the original tools can instead be used :)

With the info side of things, Musicbrainz has only been my focus as that seems a reasonable enough basis but I get that it might be better to keep in mind other solutions (it primarily comes down to ease & availability of a service via it's APIs that is driving some of my decisions aka can it be used by all without $$$).

With the 'info' area I'm talking about, see the attached image which shows where it could be positioned by default along with the other permutations to flip things around so it can be mirrored or on top & the navigation tree at the bottom, etc. So having things put at the top of smartviews themselves isn't my ideal & instead using that additional area for something (like the things you're mentioning) makes more sense imho. But that's something that will be better done once the controlling library plug-in is replaced as there's unwanted issues when hacking it in at the moment that can break the views.

-dro

hans-jürgen

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #4 on: September 27, 2019, 01:28:00 AM »
There'll be nothing to stop you from using the existing last.fm provided solution. I just think for a number of users that going back to the standalone plug-in model (but integrated in as part of Yule Log) is a better choice for having something general that works & depending on needs things can be added or the original tools can instead be used :)

In fact there is one issue with the legacy Last.fm desktop scrobbler 2.1.37 that would stop WACUP users from scrobbling to Last.fm and/or reading the artist infos of the current track while listening with WACUP: the desktop scrobbler only works with WACUP or any other Winamp version (also 5.8 ) if it is installed in the default directory, i.e. C:\Programs\Winamp\Plugins on 32-bit Windows versions and/or the additional "(x86)" path on 64-bit Windows versions.

I can understand that you do not want to support that, but at the moment renaming the installation directory to "Winamp" instead of "WACUP" seems to be the only way to get it to work with the old plugin (ml_wa2_scrobbler.dll) that comes with the scrobbler and can be installed from its File menu. See the attached screenshot of WACUP scrobbling and also this support thread on the new Last.fm forum: https://getsatisfaction.com/lastfm/topics/is-it-possible-to-scrobble-from-winamp-with-the-desktop-scrobbler

So maybe updating the standalone plugin that would enable scrobbling without the official Last.fm desktop scrobbler would be the better method, at least for WACUP. By the way, the new Last.fm desktop scrobbler 3.1.29.x does not support Winamp or foobar2000 anymore, only iTunes/Apple Music and WMP. You can still download both scrobbler versions on the Track My Music page: https://www.last.fm/about/trackmymusic
« Last Edit: September 27, 2019, 01:49:53 AM by hans-jürgen »
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dro

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #5 on: September 27, 2019, 01:43:22 AM »
The last.fm client assuming a hard-coded path is part of the reason for wanting to just get the support in without having to rely upon their client (that niggles me no end & was one of the reasons I stopped using last.fm).

It's not hard to copy the plug-in over but the user shouldn't need to do that (assuming they've not updated their existing Winamp install to be a WACUP install in the same folder) plus there's other issues with the plug-in & the earlier version that it's derived from.

That's why I think it' better to just implement the support directly than rely upon their client solution which as one of the longer term goals is to provide native 64-bit clients means I've got to provide such support where possible otherwise it cripples feature support & that's not ideal.

Either way, I need to move it up the todo list instead of just talking about it :)

[edit]
I'd missed the edits whilst making my reply. That's interesting to know they dropped support even for the favoured fb2k (I can remember when Winamp was in the initial set of clients supported). Having worked a bit on the original standalone plug-in, it's honestly better to just start afresh & have it support the appropriate protocol changes as I'd also have to assume they don't really support them (has been a while since I've looked up what's going on to know for certain what I'd need to look at working with).

-dro
« Last Edit: September 27, 2019, 01:47:12 AM by dro »

hans-jürgen

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #6 on: September 27, 2019, 02:17:18 AM »
It's not hard to copy the plug-in over but the user shouldn't need to do that (assuming they've not updated their existing Winamp install to be a WACUP install in the same folder)

The problem with simply copying the plugin to the default Plugin folder is that it still doesn't work with WACUP, but with Winamp 5.8, as the hardcoded path only knows "Winamp", not "WACUP", even if the installer asks about the correct path while installing. I just renamed the directory to Winamp, and WACUP worked flawlessly with the old plugin afterwards. By the way, the installer in the legacy desktop scrobbler also renames the plugin in the internal SFX file from gen_wa2_scrobbler.dll to ml_wa2_scrobbler.dll while installing it.

Quote
That's why I think it' better to just implement the support directly than rely upon their client solution which as one of the longer term goals is to provide native 64-bit clients means I've got to provide such support where possible otherwise it cripples feature support & that's not ideal.

Either way, I need to move it up the todo list instead of just talking about it :)

Right, as mentioned on Reddit, there are still quite a lot of Last.fm users who want to scrobble with Winamp, so I tested the currently available versions on Windows 10 version 1903.

Quote
I'd missed the edits whilst making my reply. That's interesting to know they dropped support even for the favoured fb2k (I can remember when Winamp was in the initial set of clients supported).

The reason for releasing a new and leaner 3.1.x scrobbler version were the problems with iTunes versions 12.x, as Apple had changed it significantly which broke a lot of external plugins back then.

Quote
Having worked a bit on the original standalone plug-in, it's honestly better to just start afresh & have it support the appropriate protocol changes as I'd also have to assume they don't really support them (has been a while since I've looked up what's going on to know for certain what I'd need to look at working with).

Right, the old 1.0 scrobble protocol has been deprecated, and version 2.0 allows authenticating with your Last.fm account without having to fill in your credentials when connecting/logging in. The connected apps are listed in the related Last.fm account settings afterwards: https://www.last.fm/settings/applications
The source code of the legacy scrobbler is available on its GitHub page, e.g. it has just been updated to the macOS Catalina version 2.1.39 which also supports Apple Music instead of iTunes: https://github.com/lastfm/lastfm-desktop
« Last Edit: September 27, 2019, 02:36:56 AM by hans-jürgen »
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dro

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #7 on: September 27, 2019, 03:38:27 AM »
Ah, I'd missed the reddit reply (don't use it all that often) so apologies for the double comment on there.

I have to say that it doesn't make much sense for the plug-in itself to not run if its not within a Winamp\Plugins folder & I'm sure I've had the plug-in running under WACUP in a non-Winamp\Plugins folder previously. In fact I've just gone & re-installed the older client, allowed it to install the plug-in into an existing 5.666 install (using the Winamp folder) & then copied it over & I was able to scrobble a track without issue.

The problem I'm seeing is the legacy last.fm clients' "open winamp' action being broken. It just doesn't open the 5.666 install that is in the expected folder but it recognised it as a valid option so I put that down as an issue on the last.fm side.



The renaming of the plug-in to have it run as a media library plug-in is something that really wasn't needed if the plug-in had just been tweaked a bit & stems from it seemingly being more reliable in getting metadata for files than the general purpose plug-in. The only reason that could be the case at times was due to the loading order of the plug-ins & how that could vary which in some setups (more so when people used FAT32 drives) the plug-in would be loaded before the library was loaded & it didn't like that. Later Winamp releases changed to pre-load the native plug-ins first & so that issue with the scrobbler plug-in was resolved.



Just looking at the filenames in the github repository indicates it's the standalone plug-in hacked up for the needs of their desktop client. With the plug-in that I'd be adding the support to, it's really down to just getting the client-server communication working as it does the handing to notify new plays & so on - though I might need to tweak it a bit depending on what the playback restrictions are nowadays (vaguely remember some sort of time limit or other going on).

I'll definitely have to look into the api & authentication changes overall as not using passwords is something I'd prefer anyway vs having to contend with keeping them safe.

-dro

hans-jürgen

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #8 on: September 27, 2019, 07:14:13 AM »
Thanks for checking, the current developer who did the modifications for the Catalina/Apple Music version is ben-xo. If you have questions or suggestions, he will probably reply to you on GitHub. I don't know if the staff has any dev resources left at the moment to fix something for the legacy scrobbler and/or plugins, but the upcoming Catalina issue seemed to be urgent enough to release a new version 2.1.39.

I wonder why simply copying the installed Last.fm Winamp plugin to the WACUP Plugin folder did not work for me first, only after renaming the WACUP installation to Winamp. But it's even better of course, and it still works fine now, I could scrobble some ZZ Top albums without problems: https://www.last.fm/user/hjbardenhagen
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hans-jürgen

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #9 on: September 28, 2019, 10:41:41 AM »
That's why I think it' better to just implement the support directly than rely upon their client solution which as one of the longer term goals is to provide native 64-bit clients means I've got to provide such support where possible otherwise it cripples feature support & that's not ideal.

Either way, I need to move it up the todo list instead of just talking about it :)

[edit]
I'd missed the edits whilst making my reply. That's interesting to know they dropped support even for the favoured fb2k (I can remember when Winamp was in the initial set of clients supported). Having worked a bit on the original standalone plug-in, it's honestly better to just start afresh & have it support the appropriate protocol changes as I'd also have to assume they don't really support them (has been a while since I've looked up what's going on to know for certain what I'd need to look at working with).

There is a new problem with the legacy desktop scrobbler on Windows XP caused by the ongoing move of all Last.fm images to a new host, as this host affords support of the TLS 1.2 protocol with SNI, see Jon's latest reply in this thread. So some users are reporting sudden crashes and/or freezes with the legacy scrobbler on XP and Windows 7 (where TLS 1.2 could be enabled by editing the registry). I guess your stand-alone plugin would circumvent this problem and still support WACUP on XP, right?
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dro

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #10 on: September 28, 2019, 01:03:36 PM »
WACUP is Win7 and newer only & the standalone plug-in has other OS compatibility issues which is why it's better to not use it as a base imho. I'd likely be using something based on libcurl to generally not have to worry about having to change OS settings to get things working. I'll look at the link later this weekend.


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hans-jürgen

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #11 on: September 28, 2019, 01:13:48 PM »
OK, thanks for the reply. :-)
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Dr.Flay

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Re: Artist / Band Info lookup
« Reply #12 on: October 16, 2019, 06:13:47 AM »
I have the old scrobbler working fine on both my x64 windows 7 and 10.
On the win10 PC there is no Winamp or folder. The plugin was manually moved to the WACUP folder and works just fine.

The client uses standard OpenSSL libs so can easily be updated. That may also fix the issue for XP users.
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