Libre.fm and Rhythmbox
I have made a Libre.fm account and am trying to get it to work with
Rhythmbox. I was able to sign into Libre.fm through Rhythmbox and can
see my username and a list of recently listened tracks (which I listened
to through the Libre.fm web player). I also see the option to create
radio stations. However, I can't get anything to work.
If I create a radio station by entering an artist's name, the station
appears in Rhythmbox's sidebar under Libre.fm, but attempting to use it
gives this error: "Error tuning station: 3 - Invalid Method - No method
with that name in this package". Even though I'm not interested in using
Last.fm, I made an account to see if I got the same error, and I did, so
I suspect that the problem is in Rhythmbox and not Libre.fm.
If I click on one of the recently listened tracks, I am shown the
options "View on Libre.fm", "Listen to Similar Artists Radio", and
"Listen to Top Fans Radio". The latter two options create radio
stations, that when used give the same error as the manually created
ones. "View on Libre.fm" opens a link in Abrowser. What's interesting is
that Abrowser tries to go to "http://https//libre.fm/artist/...", so I
guess that the link Rhythmbox gives is "https//libre.fm/artist/..." with
a ":" missing after the "https". I wonder if this is related to any of
the other problems.
I'm not sure whether the "Love", "Ban", or "Download" buttons will work,
since I can't get anything playing.
Has anyone gotten Libre.fm working with Rhythmbox? I'm also open to
an alternative client if someone has had more success with one.
I have the same issues. and didnt found any solution or good client for libre.fm...
I am a translator!
>I have the same issues. and didnt found any solution or good client for libre.fm...
I don't use any and I also do not have an account on libre.fm but a quick search turned out:
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/zomg
https://packages.debian.org/buster/mpdas
It would appear, and I just found this out, my favorite music player, cmus, can get you where you want to be with a script..
Here an old, still useful though I hope, guide -> http://www.tuxarena.com/static/cmus_guide.php
> I don't use any and I also do not have an account on libre.fm but a quick
> search turned out:
> https://packages.debian.org/stretch/zomg
> https://packages.debian.org/buster/mpdas
>
> It would appear, and I just found this out, my favorite music player,
> cmus, can get you where you want to be with a script..
I use cmus as well. However, I'm looking for a graphical solution to
recommend to normies.
Hi chaosmonk, I'm using Quod Libet¹ (QL) for this purpose. Not only can it scrobble to either Last.fm or Libre.fm, but it also can handle podcasts, and it interfaces with MusicBrainz², allowing for automated metadata and cover-art lookups. There is also a powerful scripting language built in to QL which is very handy for the serious digital audio archivist. Hope this helps.
----
[¹] https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Quod_Libet
[²] https://www.musicbrainz.org
@chaosmonk -
> If I create a radio station by entering an artist's name, the station
> appears in Rhythmbox's sidebar under Libre.fm, but attempting to use it
> gives this error: "Error tuning station: 3 - Invalid Method - No method
> with that name in this package". Even though I'm not interested in using
> Last.fm, I made an account to see if I got the same error, and I did, so
> I suspect that the problem is in Rhythmbox and not Libre.fm.
Clients to play last.fm music haven't worked since about 2010. There are still some clients which claim they can "scrobble" to last.fm (list the tracks you played on your desktop to the last.fm list of played tracks), but none of them will actually play the music in quite a few years in my experience. I expect libre.fm is the same - you probably won't get rhythmbox or any other client to play the music streams.
I simply use the libre.fm web player to play the tracks and find and download music. It is a fantastic service with a lot of really good undiscovered music. I use it quite often, and have downloaded a lot of free tracks.
@supertramp -
> I don't use any and I also do not have an account on libre.fm but a quick search turned out:
> https://packages.debian.org/stretch/zomg
> https://packages.debian.org/buster/mpdas
zomg hasn't been updated since 2008, and doesn't appear to be maintained at all. I highly doubt that it works. In reading through the old bug reports, I wonder if it ever worked much at all.
mpdas does not claim to play the music, only to "scrobble" it, or list your played tracks to the last.fm or libre.fm websites.
> Clients to play last.fm music haven't worked since about 2010. There are
> still some clients which claim they can "scrobble" to last.fm (list the
> tracks you played on your desktop to the last.fm list of played tracks),
> but none of them will actually play the music in quite a few years in my
> experience. I expect libre.fm is the same - you probably won't get
> rhythmbox or any other client to play the music streams.
That's disappointing. The Libre.fm wiki recommends clients for various
platforms. I'm not sure why if none works. I'll bring it up there.
> I simply use the libre.fm web player to play the tracks and find and
> download music.
Yeah, I've tried to make sense of the web interface. Is there any way to
make use of the scrobbling data to recommend new music? If not, what is
the point of scrobbling? Why collect data that isn't used for anything?
Scrobbling was a new thing with last.fm about 15 years ago, when it first became a service and it envisioned itself as a social network platform. Basically, you would form communities of people that had similar listening histories based on songs they had scrobbled, you could find friends, share recommendations amongst each other, have discussions about favorite songs, etc. As you can imagine, it never really took off as a major social network platform, and today is mainly just used as another music streaming service. In fact, last.fm doesn't even stream its own music anymore. The only way to use the site is to enable youtube or spotify to handle the music streaming backend.
Libre.fm, by contrast, has always used the GNU FM streaming backend, which is a project of the FSF. Libre.fm doesn't seem to have such a huge catalog of songs that they offer up many recommendations. But if you like a certain type of music you can search for it, such as "slow jazz", and libre.fm will play you a big playlist of songs that users have tagged with that characteristic. The scrobbling aspect of libre.fm seems to be simply to keep track of your own listening habits. This is really good on a service like libre.fm, where you are constantly being introduced to new music you've never heard of. If you did not have a listening history, you would not be easily able to figure out which song it was that you really liked that you listened to at some point in the past. Also, as with last.fm, if you had friends on libre.fm you would be able to share your scrobbled listening histories with each other, and learn about some new songs.
At one time, last.fm had some algorithms they used to send you music recommendations based on your scrobbled listening history. People actually used to pay them a monthly fee for services like that. Today, I figure they are probably just using the recommendations from spotify or youtube.
If you want to view my scrobble reports, you can see my last.fm one here: https://www.last.fm/user/andyprough, and my libre.fm one here: https://libre.fm/user/andyprough/stats. On libre.fm, I highly recommend any music by Keffy Kay (https://libre.fm/artist/Keffy+Kay/), all of which is free to download. On last.fm I'm partial to Germany's Ulrich Schnauss and England's Zero 7 (both of whom made it big via last.fm), and I am last.fm friends with a Netherlands musician named Jap Jap and a Finnish musician named Lackluster.
If someone can help me find documentation on how to get data from libre.fm (Didn't find any information about that in the web site). I can work on a desktop app (GTK) for it.
I'm using the livestream / internet radio and podcast features in Quod Libet to listen to Creative Commons music from places like Starfrosch Radio¹, ccMixter², and Free Music Archive³ and then scrobbling out to LibreFM. When I find something that I particularly like, I'll download it, and possibly even download the wider discography of that artist, from Jamendo⁴. I'm really enjoying listening to free (as in freedom) music. My scrobbles are at https://libre.fm/user/TrisquelWhare/recent-tracks
----
[¹] https://starfrosch.com
[²] http://ccmixter.org
[³] https://freemusicarchive.org
[⁴] https://www.jamendo.com
Very nice! I had found jamendo before, but the other three are all new to me. That's a lot of music.
> I'm using the livestream / internet radio and podcast features in Quod
> Libet to listen to Creative Commons music from places like Starfrosch
> Radio¹, ccMixter², and Free Music Archive³ and then scrobbling out to
> LibreFM.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try these out this weekend.
The internet radio streams from Jamendo are very good, and they target many specific music genres. However, I'm using Starfrosch instead mostly at present, as I prefer to use an external player rather than a browser-based player. The Icecast / Shoutcast streams from Jamendo are not working properly right now, and it looks like¹ they haven't worked since at least December 2017. Jamendo state on their developer website² that they intend to address this problem "during quarter 3 of 2019". Once this is fixed, I'll look forward to setting up the Jamendo internet radio streams for myself in Quod Libet.
For now though, Starfrosch suits my needs. They have three radio streams³ available, including Starfrosch Radio 1 which is a mix of genres, Starfrosch Radio 2 which is mostly electronic / EDM music, and Starfrosch Radio 3 which is mainly hip-hop & RnB music. The feed addresses are easy to obtain from their website, but be aware that they use a proprietary back end (SHOUTcast) and a proprietary format/codec (MP3) rather than freedom-respecting Icecast and Ogg Vorbis options.
[EDIT]: I've just been corrected, it seems that Starfrosch do not use SHOUTcast at all; they are using Liquidsoap and Icecast2. The feed that I got the information from above must have been a re-packaged feed which was using SHOUTcast. So that's great news. As to the MP3 vs Ogg debate, I suggest reading this⁴ Wikipedia article and draw your own conclusions. Personally I still prefer Ogg.
----
[¹] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/jamendo-dev/fhJoRyy-pnc/Ts9ZIRcsBQAJ
[²] https://developer.jamendo.com/v3.0/radios/stream
[³] https://starfrosch.com/radio/
[⁴] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing,_ownership_and_legislation
chaosmonk:
> The Libre.fm wiki recommends clients for various platforms. I'm not sure why if none works.
It doesn't seem like GNU FM/ Libre.fm is getting much development energy any more, maybe for the same reason GNU social hasn't yet merged ActivityPub support, and MediaGoblin is all but dead. Newer projects like FunkWhale, Mastodon/ Pleroma, and PeerTube, are doing the same thing with more modern tooling, so the people who were driving those projects have mostly moved on to other things.
TrisquelWhare:
> The Icecast / Shoutcast streams from Jamendo are not working properly right now, and it looks like¹ they haven't worked since at least December 2017.
I wouldn't hold you breath ;) That was around the time they did the big re-skin of their website and de-emphasized the CC licenses in their UI. I'm assuming they were running out of runway and the VCs who invested in them, when CC media was the Next Big Thing(TM) in ethical consumption, started demanding a return on their investment.
https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/07/digital-music-startup-jamendo-runs-out-of-steam-mulls-sale/
http://www.onthecommons.org/jamendo-global-commons-music
It was also around the time the music industry started moving its focus from pay-per-download models like iTunes to subscription services like Spotify.
BTW Long time no see TW! Hope you're well :)
> It doesn't seem like GNU FM/ Libre.fm is getting much development
> energy any more,
Unfortunately it looks like you're right. The last sign of activity I
see is a question from you that has gone answered for two months. This
is a shame, as I feel like the concept behind these projects has a lot
of potential.
One thing I find interesting is that although only free artists appear
in search results and are streamable through the site, when I scrobble
non-free artists from Rhythmbox they show up on my Libre.fm profile,
where there are links to their artist page. See Bjork's[1] for an
example.
What interests me is that at the bottom of the page is a list of similar
free artists. I would like to see data like this used to create a music
streaming platform whose recommendation system helps users discover free
artists who are similar to their favorite non-free artists.
[1] https://libre.fm/artist/Björk/
Maybe I overlooked this, but why doesn't Rhythmbox open up from the Mate menu? I checked the box in System>Preferences>Look and Feel>Main Menu> to make the Rhythmbox icon appear in the Sound & Video menu, but when I click it, the program doesn't open up, and I have to open from the command line. The radio stations don't load, either. Any help? Thanks.
> Maybe I overlooked this, but why doesn't Rhythmbox open up from the Mate
> menu?
It's a bug. Workaround:
$ sudo pluma /usr/share/applications/rhythmbox.desktop
and change
^_Name=Rhythmbox Music Player
to
Name=Rhythmbox Music Player
Thank you, CM.