20 June 2005

last.fm personal radio tips

-once or twice I've clicked on it only to find that it didn't find the part of the code that tells it to load the radio for "transferwindow" and so it doesn't play anything because it doesn't know whose radio to play.

-you probably already figured this out, but you have to download a plugin for your music player (winamp, windows media player, itunes, etc). apparently the plugin is what tells the desktop that clicking THERE on the button means "pull up the music player and play the stream from this server for this user".

-check Jen's blog and try hers, just to see if it's something wrong with ours or if it's your end somehow.

-try going to last.fm, logging in with your account there, then go to the search and look for transferwindow as a user. see if the personal radio link on that page works. if it does, there may be something up with the code on our page.

-if it still doesn't work, find me on instant message, and I'll try to think of something else.

Comments:
also, this is still in beta, so you may just be catching the server at a bad moment...
 
Every moment seems to be bad. I tried everything you suggested, and I can't get it to play a damn thing, no matter whose station I try listening to. It loads up playlist.m3u, then sits there doing nothing. I'm feeling incredibly stupid.
 
what music player are you using? and what browser? (versions too, please)
 
Winamp 5.03, IE 6.0.2800.1106. My OS is Windows 2k.
 
yeah, you're pretty up to date-- can you get the radio of jen's page?

maybe try the windows media player with plugin instead?
 
Nope, that doesn't work, although the visualisation in WMP does show that it's trying to do something. But I can't hear anything, and the lastfm popup doesn't provide any details of track, album or artist.
 
what about going to the last.fm home page and finding our radio by our username?
 
and did you try sherm's?
 
Yes. And it doesn't play anything. Nil. Nada. Nowt.
 
okay, so, when you click on the personal radio, you said "it loads up playlist.m3u", but what exactly is it doing?
 
I hit the personal radio button (or any personal or profile radio button). It loads up the How to tune in.. window. I click on the link for the Last.fm playlist file. It launches my media player (let's say Winamp). It claims to load playlist[1].m3u. Nothing happens. Evens if I hit Next. Flummoxed.
 
hrm. well, I wasn't going to suggest this, because as an IT professional, I generally don't suggest changing things when something isn't working, preferring instead to fix the not-working thing before making any other changes, but...

try firefox. all the cool kids are using it anyway, and many people (myself included) really do like it better than IE.
 
Not a pretty solution, but effective. :)

REM. Nice. Ooh. And Bowie.

Good job too, as I'm sure we've lost everyone else with this. Thanks Jen. You're great!
 
WOOHOO!!

ain't it cool when technology actually works?
 
Re them begging, how much did you guys pay?
 
we started with $5/month, 'cause we didn't know how much we'd use it. we may up the donation if it turns out to be a frequently used tool rather than just a new exciting toy.
 
Sounds fair. But it certainly is an exciting new toy. Where did you find it?
 
random browsing for something to stream a playlist from the blog. I knew about audioscrobbler ages ago, but hadn't realized those folks were doing anything like this too.
 
Well, I'm certainly enjoying listening to your radio. Damn, you kids have taste. Wish I could say the same for me. :)
 
see, the way it works is you go through the music on last.fm and add stuff to your tracklist. it's easiest to add entire albums, but you can just add specific tracks. we got lazy after a while, though, so I know there's stuff in there that I'll want to take out (once I hear it).

and the other drawback is that you're limited to the music that last.fm has gotten from the record labels. so, it's cool that it's legal, but there's some stuff I really want up there that they don't have yet.
 
oh, and the other cool thing is that every user gets their own stream, even if listening at the same time to another user.

me geek. me big geek.
 
Oh, I worked out how it works long before I (or rather you) made it work. It's just that I have this penchant for Kylie and early Madge nestling among the "better" stuff.

I'd noticed they were missing things. No Ben solo stuff, for instance, and no Hilltop Hoods or Cat Empire.
 
well, there's not enough Crowded House/Finn solo stuff to indulge my Finn brothers obsession, so they lose points for that.

and as far as Kylie goes, I have my fair share of 80's pop in there, so I can't make fun (too much).
 
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