W(e)blinks | Notes

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JUL

Read the last.fm blog post.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the new look. Maybe it'll grow on me, but for now it just gives off a MySpace kind of vibe (and I *hate* MySpace with a passion). While I don't mind change, as I think it's nice to change things around once in a while to not make it stale and boring, they've changed a *lot* of things, and I'm having trouble finding where everything is. But obviously, that'll change the more I use it, so it'll probably grow on me after a while...

My main gripe at the moment is the width. The old style was variable width, which looked really good on my widescreen monitor. Now I just have loads of whitespace, which seems like a waste.

I do like the new design for the recommendations area though.

What's with the microfont for the login box? I don't understand this fascination websites currently have with using really small fonts. I have a big screen and pretty good eye sight, so it doesn't really matter for me, but I'm sure it's a pain in the arse for others. I've always thought it was good design practice to not make fonts really small? Maybe that's just me.

Also, the banner image looks like it was made in MS Paint. Just sayin'.

This appears to be the replacement to the "Dashboard" that was on the old version. Recommendations are a tab click away, which is irritating because they were just on the page on the old version. They've added an extra click into my life! *shakes fist*. The recommendations page itself though has quite a bit of an overhaul and is much easier to navigate. It's also got a lot more recommendations on display, I shall certainly be using this page the most.

Why is everyone making "ID Card" style profile pages all of a sudden? The "bio" information is now way over on the right, away from my profile pic and info, it's just separating information that should be together. A very odd decision in my opinion. I also now need to scroll right to the bottom to see the "shouts", Facebook wall style. They've changed the focus of the page to be the big userpic and info about me at the top, but it's a music site, so I'd expect the focus to be my recent tracks and music tastes, which are now under it all. Still though, the recent tracks are above the fold, so I guess I shouldn't moan.

Tags : design, web, music

JAN

Last.fm Frees the Music

@14:39 Leave a comment

Last.fm announced today a new service on their site. As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free!!

This is BIG. Not only can you listen to an entire track before you buy it, rather than the usual 30 second clips, but they will be paying artists directly. This is going to be great for unsigned artists, who will be able to let people listen to their music on Last.fm and actually get paid for it!

They're also going to be releasing a subscription service soon. At the moment you can listen to a track in full, 3 times before being told about the subscription service. Apparently it will let you listen to the track unlimited times. The article doesn't say how much the subscription will be, so you'll have to keep an eye on the website for more information.

It does however say that artists will be paid a share of the advertising revenue from the website, so they'll still get paid even if people are listening to the full tracks without a subscription.

It's been a long time coming, and I for one welcome our new music overlords. All glory to Last.fm!

Tags : music, internet

MAY

iTunes Music Store goes DRM-Free!

@12:32 Leave a comment

Just went to purchase a song on iTMS, and it popped up with a little message.

"Perhaps you'd prefer to use iTunes Plus? iTunes Plus music is our DRM-free, highest quality audio format. iTunes Plus music videos now contain our highest-quality audio tracks and are also DRM-free."

Finally, they're getting the idea that DRM is bad.

For those wanting to test it out, you'll need to the new version of iTunes (7.2), which you can get from here.

When Apple were first discussing the idea with EMI (Tech Digest Article) it seems they were going to increase the price for the DRM-Free tracks. So far I haven't seen a price increase, however I may have just missed the tracks the prices have been increased on. So keep an eye out for that.

Added at 17:44 - Ok, they want 20p per song for DRM-Free versions. Not sure why it didn't charge me the first time (although to be fair.. it probably did charge me the 20p, but it hasn't come out of my account yet). There's also an option to upgrade your library here.

Despite the fact they're charging more for the DRM-Free versions, something which I'm not sure if I'm willing to pay the extra for, it's still a step in the right direction. At least in my opinion.

Tags : Music

MAR

Music Recommendation

@12:34 Leave a comment

The final part of my degree is the final year project. My masters project is based on music recommendation. While in principle it sounds quite simple, I can assure you that it is not.

The approach I'm using is to combine two techniques. User-based collaborative filtering and Item-based collaborative filtering using what is known as similarity fusion. Along with that, I'll be generating implicit ratings based upon certain criteria such as how many times a track has been listened to, and how many times a track has been skipped. This is the main bulk of the project, and the part that's causing me the most headaches. But progress is being made, and I'm *nearly* there.

However, one of the other features of the project is that I'm going to create a visualization tool that will allow the user to see exactly why a recommendation has been given to them. Generating the recommendations is easy in comparison to this.

I'm over half way through the project now, and it needs to be completed in the next 10 weeks. If you're interested in testing, then head on over to project.wblinks.com and sign up. You need to be running iTunes in Windows, or Amarok in Linux. If you're feeling adventurous, you can make your own plugin to use my system by reading the App Server Documentation. There's also part of an AppleScript to use iTunes in OSX, but I don't own a Mac, so I can't test it, so if you know AppleScript and want to finish it, go right ahead.

If you're already a tester, then just keep listening to music and you'll be getting some recommendations soon.

Notes > music

All notes with the tag music.

Last.fm Redesign

@12:46 Leave a comment