I’ve been scrobbling from iTunes at home. My work environment isn’t conducive to music, so I’m not rockin’ any kind of cool home server setup like you have (even if I knew how to configure something like that).

I have tried listening to some of my neighbors’ radio stations on Last.fm. I’ve heard some interesting stuff, but also a lot of pretty random stuff. I think maybe the site’s parameters for associating one artist with another can be pretty wide. For example, I’m not sure how my scrobbled tracks of Louis Armstrong’s early Hot Fives & Sevens, Django Reinhardt, some Ella, the Nat King Cole Trio, a little Tony Bennett with Bill Evans, etc, add up to a steady stream of crunchy Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis free jazz. Similarly, it seems that my two Green Day discs have touched off a whole slew of random 90′s – 00′s prog rock: blink-182, Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, etc, none of whom have the kind of incisive wit that drew me to Green Day.

C’est la vie. There are plenty of other ways to customize what Last.fm plays to you, so I’m still pretty happy with it.

Dig the props in your blog. Respect.

I added that new LastFM widgit to my site a while ago, but decided that I didn’t like it. It shows your recent tracks while you are listening, but if you haven’t been scrobbling for some amount of time it becomes a LastFM ad. Blech…ads…. There is a work around: Instead of using that wigit, use the older image-based LastFM recent tracks charts here. The image charts seem to keep showing your last tracks even if it’s been days since you scrobbled.

I’ve recently begun modifying this LastFM drupal module and that is what I’m using on my site now. It uses PHP5 XML libraries to get your most recent tracks. It then caches your tracks to a file, which means that they are always there, even if the LastFM servers are non-responsive, as they will be sometimes. My modifications so far have been to add the day/time that the track was played and adjust the time based on the timezone set in your Drupal site. Aside from that I’ve hacked in tables and font size for formatting and added a “More Tracks” link. My future plans include using JQuery (an AJAX library supported by Drupal) to enable scrolling of track names and perhaps onMouseOver album covers like the fancy LastFM widgit.

As to the question of whether you should add Recent Tracks to your blog, you have to admit that it falls into the “why do I care?” category and makes the site look more “personal” and less “professional.”

When you get a chance try playing your neighbor’s “radio stations” on LastFM. You get to hear full tracks – nice way to discover new music.

How are you scrobbling? I wonder if there is an iPod/iTunes plugin that scrobbles. I have a scrobbler plugin for SlimServer which serves my SlimDevices Squeezeboxes at either end of the apartment. Since I stream most of the music I listen to at work via my home SlimServer, most of what I listen to gets submitted to LastFM.

…Thanks for coming out. Well be here every Friday night. Don’t forget to tip your servers…