WipeoutZone audioscrobbler/Last FM group

[infoxicated]

I cant find the original thread for this, but we have a WipeoutZone group on Audioscrobbler/Last FM and I thought it would be a cool idea to populate it in the same way as we did the Frappr one. :)

Here's a link to the group - tell a friend:

http://www.last.fm/group/WipEoutZone

Here's a link to my profile - add me as a friend:

http://www.last.fm/user/infoxicated/

All you need to do is download the audioscrobbler plugin for whichever media player you use and all the music you listen to will be added to your profile. What's so good about that? Well, it recommends neighbours (people who listen to similar stuff) so you can broaden your horizons, and eventually you can listen to your own radio station populated by your kind of music.

[Task]

Done and done!

Now to play me some music so I can subject you all to my horrible musical tastes! Mbwa-ha-ha-ha! 8 )

[Hellfire_WZ]

Yep, all signed up! Can't upload my music though 'cos of this shitty college connection, I'll sort that out when I get my rig back home.

EDIT: I lie, it HAS uploaded. :)

[Mobius]

Ooh, im on now. Ah theres me looking all emo...oops...

[Tomahawk]

I'm on too - the name is "TomatoJoe". I might need some help how this whole "radio thing" works, though. I'll try out the programms I downloaded this weekend and I'll post all my questions here if I have any by then, ok?

[infoxicated]

No problems Tom - the radio thing for me is just an added bonus, I've only used it a couple of times to try it out and it does work. What is cool about the radio is that if I forget to bring in some discs I know that I still have access to most of the music I'm into as well as some stuff I might not have considered before.

The fun bit for me is just building my profile and seeing how it grows, seeing what neighbours I have, and checking out others' profiles to see what they're listening to. It makes my choice of which CD's to bring in to work a bit more considered, as I like to keep expanding my profile. :)

[Thruster2097]

no problem, done and done.
just one thing, found this existing group of pretenders.. http://www.last.fm/group/wipEout

do we be friends with them now or later or never ever?

[infoxicated]

No idea - looking at their activity rate their group is about as quiet as ours... might be wise to combine forces. :)

[Daylight]

yay audioscrobbler :D now we can all reveal our darkes innermost musical secrets (britney anyone?)

[infoxicated]

LOL!

Funny you should say that - my girlfriend listened to a lot of Britney and it all got logged to my profile. As soon as they gave the ability to delete artists from your profile I was right in there.

This kind of flies in the face of that time I stuck up for Britney over Sophie Ellis Bextor (http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=948), I know, but for my own peace of mind she had to be erased! :D

It can happen to anyone - check out this guy's "about me" box:
http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/Alias88/

[Lance]

[reveals dark secrets] i've recently been listening to a lot of western-style country music, i.e., Merle Haggard, Jerry Jeff Walker, Emmy Lou Harris, Big and Rich, Billy Joe Shaver, and uh, Death Cab For Cutie.

[infoxicated]

I've been known to listen to a bit of Garth Brooks in my time, too. ;)

[Lance]

my current Garth Brooks faves: Standing Outside the Fire, Friend To Me

[Lion]

I'm more of a Johnny Cash man, (no I haven't seen walk the line yet)
and a bit of Kenny Rogers from time to time...

they're the gateway drugs of country ;)

[stin]

I`d thought I was bad! but I do listen mostly eighties alot the like of Maddonna, yazoo, etcra.

stevie:)

[Lance]

yazoo. yahoo! yaz was a good combination, vince clarke and alison moyet. both of them pretty much tops at what they do. did anybody but me ever notice how much andy bell sounds like alison?

edit: er.. not that any of you macho fellas would ever listen to Erasure. *cof* ;)

Re: Garth's 'Rodeo': i sorta like it, but right now i'm on an 'honest unaffected real emotion' kick, so the artificially styled vocals, though fun, just don't strike me the right way in my current phase.

[infoxicated]

Standing outside the fire is a brilliant song - sometimes overlooked because Ain't going down 'til the sun comes up and Callin' Baton Rouge are on the same album and they're probably better airplay songs.

I wonder if I'll get any Garth Brooks on my Last FM personal radio if I listen long enough? I have listened to an album or two, so I guess his tracks will be mixed in there somewhere. :)

[Zero [RG] [HG]]

I'm in. Hah!

[infoxicated]

Nice one - we need four more members to get our weekly charts generated.

Come on people - where are all you music buffs when we need you? ;)

[eLhabib]

I'm in! Hope you guys are okay with lots of prodigy, punk and new beat rock ;)

[Sausehuhn]

I'm in.

[Thruster2097]

alright, one more and we got ourselves charts... come on the musicists!:rock

[Lion]

I was number 12 yesterday.. surely there's one more person interested?
I had some trouble getting iScrobbler happy on my mac, but it's all go now :)

[Rapier Racer]

Yeeey it's all installed and working, now I can't listen to christina any more

[Sausehuhn]

does anybody know why it doesn't show wma-files and a few other tracks that are named "01" for example?

[infoxicated]

Not sure why it would matter what format the music is in, so long as it is named in the correct way. I think it has to be in the artist - track format for it to recognise it. Compilations tend to confuse it, as usually they're compilation name - artist - track. It doesn't recognise internet radio either.

On that note, I listened to my personal radio station for most of yesterday evening and it's quite cool how much variety there was just from my profile. :)

[Sausehuhn]

when I listen to internet radio via my favourite player last.fm does recognize these tracks as well?! :o

[Tomahawk]

AFAIK the audioscrobbler only recognizes the files stored in the directories you can select in the winamp/audioscrobbler preferences menu or the music you listen to via the Last.fm player. If there are some files not shown in your profile on Last.fm, it might be that these files are stored in directories you did not select as "free to upload" in the audioscrobbler prefs. I'm pretty sure that if the file is named correctly, your player plays it correctly and the directory the file is kept is selected in the preferences menu, then audiscrobbler will recognize it and will upload the information on your Last.fm profile.

[Mobius]

Well, we need one more person to make it compile charts - as it seems to wan't over 15 rather than 15.

I've been trying out the radio section for our group, and its brilliant. Who's been listening to Radiohead's the Bends? I've never heard it untill now. 8)

[Lance]

ah yes, the Bends. one of the greatest albums ever. and one of the greatest bands ever.

[Lion]

street spirit is one of my favourite songs... have you heard the darkness' version?

[Lance]

that song tends to make me cry. [hey, i'm gay; i can be emotional if i want to.] i love that song.

no, i've not heard the darkness version. what is it? where is it?

[Daylight]

ah yes, the Bends. one of the greatest albums ever. and one of the greatest bands ever.

indeed indeed although i did like OK Computer a bit better (only a bit because Street Spirit always blows me away, especially the video.)

[Lance]

i also like OK Computer even better than The Bends; great as the Bends is, OKC is even greater. i got it the day before official release. [i was eager.] i had heard Paranoid Android way back before the release on the Rock Over London show. what ever happened to that show? does it still exist and is just not played on my local stations or what?

[Shem]

hmm, hells , i dunno about that. I just added moi to last.fm, feel free to ...you know what. OK Computer - definitely one of the best albums in history, no doubt about that.

[Lion]

I'll up and link a copy of The Darkness - Street Spirit when I get home

also since there's now 16 members I guess we just need to wait for the week to end for the charts to be calculated

[infoxicated]

Well, our first weekly chart has been compiled and I have to say there's some weird stuff in there mixed in with what you'd expect:
http://www.last.fm/group/WipEoutZone/charts

Paul Van Dyk, Underworld, Orbital, and the Prodigy were kind of a given, along with all the usual electronica. But who the fark listened to Dexy's Midnight Runners?! :D

I didn't help matters by having quite a retro end to the week, whereby I listened to some truly "you had to be there" stuff. It could be quite fun, actually, listening to the odd obscure track just to throw a curevall into the weekly charts. :)

When I first found out about Audioscrobbler I put Scatman John's "I'm the Scat Man" song on every morning while I was in the shower. One, for it's comedy value, two to see if I'd get any Scatman John fans as neighbours!

And I did! :D

[eLhabib]

I have to say, we have a really good musical taste in our group!

only one thing bothers me: WHO THE HELL LISTENS TO BLÜMCHEN?! (for those who don't know, she's a german pop singer, one of the really REALLY annoying stupid naive Britney Spears type)

[Tomahawk]

Who was listening to Smash Mouth last week? It's one of my favourite bands, but I did not have time to convert all their albums to mp3 so they do not appear in my Last.fm profile, yet.

[Lion]

WHO THE HELL LISTENS TO BLÜMCHEN?!guilty :redface:
apologies for the william shatner too

[Mobius]

On of the 6th formers at my school decide to plaster the a wall with Willam Shatner pictures, all labled with Sh@na... That made me smile when I saw that.

Anyway.. how is the chart compiled? By what we listen to on the radio or merging our charts?

[Lance]

you guys on Scrobbler shouldn't feel too bad about weird song choices; one of the commercials during the Olympics had me listening to Adam Ant's 'Goody TwoShoes' and i even added 'Stand and Deliver' to my personal local playlist.

but what the hell, it was fun. :D

[currently listening to 'Six Foot Town' by Big and Rich.]

[Lion]

if the chart is compiled as I think it is.. ie: based on the number of users listening to that artist/group, then that would make the number on the right equal the number of listeners... meaning I'm not the only one that listened to Shatner :p

[eLhabib]

hey, there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with listening to William Shatner the man himself. I played 'Common People' on my winamp last week, too. He teh MAN! ;)

Blümchen, however, is a whole different game. Actually, it's a whole different ballpark!

[Lion]

In my defense none of the pop music we get here sounds anything like what she does. We get mostly American pop with a much stronger hiphop influence, as compared to what she does (did?) which is electronica/dance music with pop vocals.
Anyway... everyone can do with a bit of cheese from time to time :p

So that's two of the people that listened to Common People, who was the third? The whole of Has Been was a good album.
Pity I can't say the same for "Spaced Out - The Best of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy"

[eLhabib]

True, sadly. I was SO hoping for this album to be great!

[infoxicated]

Okay, I'm working hard today to restore the balance that my Status Quo binge on Friday truly knocked for six.

I have two Chemical Brothers albums and Orbital's Work in with me.

Granted I also have three Jackyl albums, so I could undo it all again with my redneck rock! :D

[Lance]

Jackyl?! omg. they used to be popular in Metal Edge magazine when i read that as a regular thing. [i had the very very long 'heavy metal hair' that was popular with the metal fans at the time.] but never really got into that band. i mostly followed the ones that had great singers. do you like any of the other bands that were big then?

[infoxicated]

Jackyl and Rockhead are my only carry overs from the early 90's. :)

I had a Jackyl tape that I listened to when I worked out on my weight bench in the old house. One day I wondered if I could get the album on CD - figuring I wouldn't be able to as a decade had gone by. Turned out I could, and two of their later albums too, although I cant say they live up to the quality of their self titled debut.

From what I've been able to glean from the interweb they've toured under a few differing line ups over the years and still do. They're still a favourite of mine to this day - the Lumberjack song on their first album has to be the only time I've heard a guy play lead chainsaw! :D

[Mobius]

"He puts on women's clothing and hangs around in bars..."

Oh, wrong one, sorry. :)

[Rapier Racer]

How come the chart doesn't appear when I click the wipeoutzone group link on my profile page? what did I miss?

[Lion]

that doesn't work for me either (weird) but following rob's link works

[Tomahawk]

To view the charts of the group you've to click the button "charts" on the group's page (it's on the top of the page, right under the group's name). The charts are not shown on the group overview page.

[Rapier Racer]

Ah yeah there it is :)

[infoxicated]

Quite an interesting mix from last week, actually - I copied up to 21st to include MKL. :)


The Prodigy
Queens of the Stone Age
The Chemical Brothers
Moby
Underworld
Beck
Radiohead
Utah Saints
Foo Fighters
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Kasabian
Orbital
Paul van Dyk
Sneaker Pimps
Franz Ferdinand
Fluke
Propellerheads
Green Day
Fatboy Slim
Evanescence
MKL

I've been off sick all week, so I haven't been listening to much - should have a Fort Minor album sitting on my desk for my return, though, so that should skew things nicely. :D

[Zero [RG] [HG]]

I just started listening again a couple weeks ago, and no new tracks are appearing on my account. Hmph...

[eLhabib]

could be that your firewal doesn't allow your mp3-app to the web...

btw, YAY! LOTS of my favorite artists in there!

[Zero [RG] [HG]]

I only have a spyware blocker on.

[Zero [RG] [HG]]

and HA! It's working. =/ Something to do with the plugin menu.

[rdmx]

And I'm in! We now have 20 members.:rock
Rock on pilots!

EDIT: I was listening to the group radio when Kylie Minogue's song "Love at First Sight" came on. I thought most people on here weren't mainstream!

[Zerow]

Just added myself. :)

I have the group radio on right now!

[infoxicated]

I've never actually tried the WipeoutZon Group Radio station... might give it a go this afternoon. :+

[Zerow]

One problem I have with Last.fm though is that it dosen't support SonicStage or RealPlayer, my primary media players of choice.

As I only have five songs on iTunes, none whatsoever on Windows Media Player (*shudders at mentioning the name*), and have only just installed WinAmp, I can't exactly scrobble much from my personal library.

Other than that, this is an amazing tool to discover new artists and songs that you may never have been able to otherwise. :+

[infoxicated]

Agreed - they really should support more players.

Since they've said they cant possibly normalise all of their tracks, due to the sheer number of them and the time it would take, they should at least provide some kind of normalising setting in the Last FM player, too. I find it really annoying when there's a big difference in volume between one track to the next.

[Lion]

if only there was some way of tying it in with pandora... never gonna happen :\

[Zerow]

I heard 'We Have Explosive' by The Future Sound Of London yesterday on the group radio, and I discovered once and for all that the end of the song had been trimmed abrubtly for 2097. I had a feeling that that wasn't supposed to be where the song ended.

[rdmx]

Woah.

Top song: Rammstein - Du Hast and Franz Ferdinand - This Fire
Top Artists: Beck, U2, BT, Cold Sotrage, My Chemical Romance and Franz Ferdinand!

I didn't know that many people listened to 'Du! Du Hast!...etc." and "This Fire is out of control! We gonna burn this city...etc"

Actually, I stand guilty of listening to all those things...

[infoxicated]

Me too.

We need to start listening to the kind of music we'll be expecting on the next Wipeout, before we end up with Rammstein on the soundtrack! :D ;)

[Rapier Racer]

My Chemical Romance, whos been listning to that nonsense.........

[andy]

I am on, hurrah!

[Lion]

We need to start listening to the kind of music we'll be expecting on the next Wipeout, before we end up with Rammstein on the soundtrack! :D ;) you say that like you don't want to hear "Scatman" playing in the menus :)

[infoxicated]

Not really! :D

I best ease off my favourite JILF, the Donnas, and get some more appropriate Wipeout stuff to the top of my play lists.

[Mobius]

My Chemical Romance, whos been listning to that nonsense.........

I am so, so, sorry. It just the one song, honest...or two...

Anyway, its funny, durign the summer, most of my music made up the chart...so it was pretty much Muse all then. :)

[Rapier Racer]

lol I'm sure it's mostly my fault they got into the group chart

1 My Chemical Romance (http://www.last.fm/music/My+Chemical+Romance) 631
2 Muse (http://www.last.fm/music/Muse) 477
3 Tiësto (http://www.last.fm/music/Ti%C3%ABsto) 438
4 Battery (http://www.last.fm/music/Battery) 264

[infoxicated]

Okay, I'm taking one for the team this afternoon - I have a solid few hours of Chemical Brothers and Paul van Dyk ahead of me. :D

[lunar]

I`ve listened to Wipeoutzone Radio quite a few times, but there is a lot of "rock" on there for supposedly electro-loving AG Racers like us. :guitar :naughty

Last FM doesn`t seem to have any of my music available to put on the radio, which may not be a bad thing for the rest of you. :)

[rdmx]

Member Demographics

17 Male, 1 Female, 7 Unsure.
Average age: 22

Unsure? Can you please set your gender? I find it a bit kinky for 7 people to be unsure about their gender. :dizzy

[Zerow]

Any chance of getting a picture or image for the WZ group? In the same way that there's pictures/images for individual members.

That plain default one looks soooo wrong.

[infoxicated]

I don't control the group, sadly, so I've asked if I can be co-leader in order to add an image. Not sure how long that'll take. :)

[infoxicated]

Welcome to the Revolution, comrades! :rock

They made me leader of the group, so I'll upload an appropriate group image as soon as I can get one together.

[kowareta|vojeet]

Hell yeah!! Arrr!:pirate

[Zerow]

Has anyone else here had problems with Last.fm over the past day? I was only able to log-in on the main site about half an hour ago, and the radio quite simply will not play anything. The only music I could listen to via Last.fm was the full-length tracks on my dashboard.

EDIT - Never mind, it's working again now.

[Zerow]

k, so I've been trying to get Last.fm to recognise some songs by CoLD SToRAGE (which I downloaded from his website) while I play them in Winamp, but it just dosen't seem to want to register them. I've tried editing the song properties in every way I can think of, but no luck.

How exactly should the song properties (artist name, album name, etc) be set out, or what should they be called?

[Tomahawk]

Did you check your players preferences and open up the right directories of your pc for scrobbling? I usually use winamp to play my music on my pc. Before any songdatas were uploaded to Last.fm via the audioscrobbler plugin I had to configure the plugin correctly - meaning I had to tell the plugin what directories I want to open up for uploading songdata. If you didn't configure anything, yet, then most likely no music will be scrobbled at all.

To configure the plugin go to "preferences" -> "plugins" in your player's menu and select "configure audioscrobbler plugin". PM me if you need any help.

[omega329]

I've got audioscrobbler now, all configured, we need to raise awareness of this on the forums...

[TearsToShreds]

I've had my current profile for over a year now, although I haven't been actively scrobbling for a few months. My most played artist is prolly still Elliott Smith. My username is TearsToShreds. Look me up and drop me a line. Can't link to it with a PSP, sorry.

[SuperNova]

Oh sweet, we have a last.fm group!:P

*joins*

[FrenkyV]

I've been a last.fm user for 4 years+. I'm in :)

[O_BR]

Just joined myself too!

[SonicChaos]

Me as well, though it tends to scrobble when it wants to.

[Task]

You can scrobble if you want to, you can leave your friends behind...

[rdmx]

'Cause your friends don't scrobble and if they don't scrobble
Well they're no friends of mine

[SonicChaos]

Congratulations, you've just invented the Scrobble Dance.

[infoxicated]

Anyway... I discovered recently that European cellphone provider, Vodafone, had created an application in conjunction with Last.fm that I can use to scrobble your music on the go.

I feel a bit late to the party with this, as it's been out since December, but in my defence it's not exactly well advertised on the Last.fm site or by Vodafone and I only stumbled across it when I was searching for an alternative to Mobbler, which doesn't work properly with my phone.

I've been trying it out this morning and it works great - you just leave it running in the background and you can choose whether you want live scrobbling or deferred updates of, say, once per day. If you view the app while playing music you can view the artist bio, as with with the full desktop application. The only thing I couldn't seem to do is love tracks, but that's hardly a show stopper. :)

[SonicChaos]

Indeed. I don't have a phone to use that with and apps on US cellular require and access fee of $10 a month to even browse apps. It's stupid and I don't bother. WinAmp FTW!

[infoxicated]

We are fortunate, in Britain anyway, that in the early 2000's the cellphone companies went all out to be the first to offer 3G services. Back about 2004 there were a flood of adverts trying to get people to upgrade to video phones, but the uptake was minimal and it looked like the huge investment had been for nothing, as people were quite content with the voice and SMS facilities they had.

Then some bright spark realised that they had the perfect infrastructure for data transfer, and there was a change in approach by the network providers. So now you can get a 3.5G dongle for a laptop for very little and have pretty data speeds where ever you go. It's only in the last of year or so (with the introduction of the iPhone) that the actual consumer cellphones have started to make use of that infrastructure, and because all the investment was made years ago the charges are quite reasonable.

It only costs me a few £ per month for pretty much unlimited data use on my phone. I'm actually typing this on my laptop which is connected via Bluetooth to my cellphone, which I'm using as a modem. I get a data rate of around 150kbs and that's fine for light internet use... and scrobbling, to bring us back on topic! ;)

[Harvai]

I can't believe I haven't read this sooner! This sounds too awesome to miss out on.

Does Last.FM have a problem with Hotmail email addresses? I've been refreshing my inbox or about 10 mins now, and nothing. Not even my junk mail has gotten any love...

Oh well, I'll see if it sent in the morning.

[Rapier Racer]

Similar to the app for the cell phone had anyone mentioned its also available on ipod touch? Again this info is a bit late to the party.

[SonicChaos]

Yes it is. Last.fm might have some issues with hotmail, hence why I use gmail.

[Harvai]

Hurrah! Got the email thismorning, and now I'm all set up. Gonna join the group, too

[SonicChaos]

Sweet. Hope to see you on there soon!

[AspenExcel]

Cool, I just joined. Here's my link: http://www.last.fm/user/Symmetry1618 ;)