beaTunes News

Today I want to tell you about two new beaTunes 4 features I have not mentioned extensively yet. Both have to do with Last.fm.

Let's start with scrobbling. That's what Last.fm calls the process of logging the music you play in your Last.fm account. The data is used by Last.fm to recommend songs and artists to you. But more interestingly, it builds a listening history you can check out later. To configure beaTunes to scrobble to your Last.fm account, open the Preferences, then the Playback tab, and click on the Authorize button. This will open a Last.fm webpage in your default browser that lets you authorize beaTunes to send scrobbles to your account.

On Last.fm you can contribute by tagging songs, i.e. assigning keywords like "sad" or "danceable" to individual songs. And this brings us to the other Last.fm-related feature. Previously only available as plugin for beaTunes 3.5, version 4 allows you to import exactly those tags into beaTunes, which in turn helps you find songs and determine similarities. But that's not all. A number of commonly used tags have clear mood-related meanings. Good examples are "sad", "happy", or "depressing". beaTunes can take these tags and infer a mood value. Currently, this is the best way to automatically fill beaTunes' mood field. Which naturally can help you to build better playlists or find a certain kind of song.

Labels: Last.fm, Mood