last.fm tracks inserted into playlist

[Leo Franchi]

On 13 Nov 2008, at 12:32, Peter Saffrey wrote:

> I listen to Amarok using the Random Mix dynamic playlist. I like the
> fact it shows me what tracks are coming up - I can remove ones I don't
> feel like hearing, or dump in whole albums to listen to with random
> resuming after that.
>
> I would like to augment this behaviour by including a track  
> recommended
> by last.fm (not from my collection), say, once every 10 songs. Can I  
> do
> this with Amarok? How?

You cannot do this. If it is not in your collection, how can you play  
it? Last.fm does not provide links to play individual songs, indeed,  
this would make no sense from a licensing point of view.

> Amarok seems to implement last.fm as a single virtual track, that just
> plays without moving on. I prefer the method used by Banshee, where it
> puts a few recommended tracks into the playlist where I can see what
> they are.

I don't know how banshee works, never having used it and being unable  
to try it on OS X.

Amarok does not implement *all* of last.fm as a virtual track. It  
implements each last.fm *stream* as a virtual track. There is no other  
coherent way of doing it: last.fm only provides streams, even though  
it uses a metaphor of tracks. It is only possible to fetch 5 tracks at  
a time to play from a stream, and they are only valid until the next 5  
are fetched. So it doesn't make any sense to implement it in any other  
way.

leo

---
Leo Franchi				(650) 704 3680
Tufts University 2010

l.franchi at ucl.ac.uk
lfranchi at kde.org
leonardo.franchi at tufts.edu