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Audioscrobbler (Anyone Remember Firefly?)

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the distributed-recomendations dept.

asciirock writes "RJ, a University of Southampton grad student in the UK has just put his final year project online. Audioscrobbler is a free plug-in for Linux XMMS and Windows Winamp2. It tracks every tune you play, cross-references with others in the Audioscrobbler community and serves up recommendations. There's also msging, stats and user homepages. In other words... Firefly lives!"

4 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. But ... by halftrack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm getting this plug-in and I'm going to test it because it sounds great, but it sounds creapishly like certain other pieces of software and licensing clauses.

    Think about it; it profiles your music taste and make recommandations. That's what spyware does (or says it does.)

    I don't doubt that this piece of software is completely innocent (it being made by a student,) but who knows when someone makes a "new and improved Audioscrobbler." That really profiles you and stores this information for resale and profit without you really knowing it. Sure you might prefere targeted music adwertising, but be warned such advertising would only come from a preselected, narrow artist pool.

    Now, I'm using Audioscrobbler, but if it ever becomes mainstream I would be careful using any commercial equivalent (or even a commercial Audioscrobbler.)

    --
    Look a monkey!
    1. Re:But ... by tmark · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Think about it; it profiles your music taste and make recommandations. That's what spyware does (or says it does.)

      I don't know about anyone else, but I can't see how a system could possibly make intelligent recommendations without profiling me. If I happen to like listening to (say) Britney Spears, Metallica, and Herbie Hancock, I'd like to see what other people who also do the same are listening to. I DON'T want to know that people who listen to Britney Spears is likely to also listen to N'Sync.

      To me, the value-added here is precisely in the profiling.

  2. Re:Winamp 3? by NineNine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's probably because Winamp 3 is a bloated, nasty mess. I've tried Winamp 3 many times, and I always remove it to go back to Winamp 2. Most software reviewers tend to agree. Winamp 2 is pretty close to the perfect MP3 player.

  3. "Free" but apparently not Free by jamie · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I can't find any licensing anywhere that tells me the terms under which their collected information will be used.

    As far as I can tell from prowling over the site's FAQs and other documents, the student who put this together might collect a ton of data about your personal listening habits for a year and then (A) get bored with it and shut the project down without releasing that data back to the community who might want to actually keep the recommendation-system running, or (B) sell it all to marketers who promptly turn it into a paid service.

    We've learned from CDDB what happens when users volunteer to build something that isn't Free: if it becomes popular enough to do any good, someone will buy it and shut out the very people who built it.

    The creator has a good idea but needs to think it through before he'll get my participation.