This is the message on Audioscrobbler pages:

Audioscrobbler Has Evolved

We’ve been working on a brand new site for a few weeks now.

Here it is: The New Site!

Update your links and bookmarks if need be.
We’ll set up automatic-redirection next week, to ease the transition. Happy ‘scrobbling

The Audioscrobbler.com site will re-surface soon as a development platform,
which will allow lots more exciting applications to be built around your music profile.
There’ll be webservices and rss feeds for everything imaginable, we promise

See there, they are saying they WILL have official “audioscrobblerness” back again. Just have to wait.

OK, as long as the molasses stuff goes away. lastfm is still so slooowwww. It’s not my computer. I have a fast processor and DSL.

So I’ve done what I haven’t in the past though, actually tried to MAKE Last.fm work for me as a radio station. It’s working for me. I tried it a couple times in the old setup and didn’t have the patience to look for how to make it work (it wasn’t my lack of knowing what to do, I’m ‘puter savvy) so I was pleased to see how easy it was to get it working now with the new version of lastfm out.

It’s worked alright except though for awhile when I quit the player and then went to start it again it wouldn’t load a station, it was “trying” to connect, it was some kind of slower thing for the site, no doubt. I tried to load the page there and it wouldn’t load at all in IE and took forever in Firefox, but eventually came in. I use firefox all the time, and only IE when forced to. So then I went to look for a new station since the one I had been listening to wasn’t coming in, and I had to quit the player to get it to allow me to search for a new “similar artist” station. So I did, and it started the new one up right away.

I liked the first one, I looked for “def leppard” and the station had lots that I like but do not have to play on my equipment, CD, Vinyl, etc.

The one I have on now I’m going to quit and see if I can load something else. I don’t like it much. I won’t say what it is, I only typed in a group name I know of and that the genre was something I might like, but though I like some of the genre, I despise is overall.

OK, good, it let go of the old station and changed mid-stream. Yeah! But … first, I clicked “listen now” and as it was “connecting” the other song was still playing and I hit the don’t ever play again button and it didn’t stop at all, then the new station started to play and played several long seconds, then suddenly it stopped that song and went to a new one. So what happened was a sluggish button action caused me to slash out of a song that wasn’t yet playing, it didn’t register on the playing song, but registered on a song that played later, that I liked alright. Oh well. If the site gets faster I can change that in my profile, but when I did try to load that earlier, forget it. It wouldn’t load. A faster regular page load will convince me to try again.

As for the look of the site, I’ve seen some complaints on the color of the the header, etc. Saying it’s pink or pinkish. On my screen it’s red-cranberry-red. So it’s dependant on monitor settings and who knows who created it and what their monitor is like compared to this or that users monitor.

I know I have had that kind of struggle with this site trying to get colors on my comments boxes how I want. Looking at this monitor I’m using now and comparing to an LCD laptop you can see the colors render totally different. It’s frustrating with the reds and pinks, so that’s the deal with lastfm, it’s a red color. It’s not as deep red on some monitors, no doubt, since it’s a nice deep cranberry on mine.

technorati: audioscrobbler, lastfm

I’m a bit overwhelmed with audioscrobblers new look, there is so much to explore. One new thing is “journal” … journal pages. Another is “tags”. More charts, etc. Chocked full. But still slow, as I mentioned in the update to the last post.

The other very noticeable thing is that my “musical neighbors” list has dramatically changed, so there’s been updating there. And it all just has a more friendly look. Well, I’ll just post this and explore some more.

Check out the site: www.last.fm

technorati: audioscrobbler last.fm

Based on what I’ve seen on this site and what I see on Technorati there about audioscrobbler … it seems there are at least a *few* people interested, more like “crazed” to see what they have up their sleeves for audioscrobbler and lastfm.

It’s not just the service, what it’ll be upgraded to, but similar to what one of the blog-sters listed on the tag page mentioned, it looks fantastic just to peak at their current index page. It’s really sweet. I’m just a regular audioscrobbler user. I’ve not been with them THAT long. I love what they offer for free though. I love that you can donate anything and have more. I’ve yet to do that, I have been waiting. The wait may soon be over. At least that’s what the energizing vibes building higher and higher off this silly wait are doing to me.

I’m psyched up. I solved my DRM License problem with MusicMatch tracks. I didn’t solve the overall “activation” problem with them, but I did solve my ability to play the three tracks I bought from them.

Through the WMP store option they allow 5 PC to be activated. If you deactivate a computer you can never play a file from Musicmatch on that computer again.

I had two computer activated. Through sheer coincidence both computers went kablpunk in the same month.

One, the laptop, totally just not useable ever again. No pre-knowledge of hardware failure, since it was “a freak four-year-old-boy juice experiement” that caused the failure of the computer. So as an activated musicmatch computer, it’s history, I can’t use it, nor deactivate it.

Two, the desktop, the previous motherboard and harddrive worked one day, then the next day they wouldn’t work. So I did stuff and couldn’t get the computer to come on. We could upgrade pieces, so we did upgrade the Power Supply, Motherboard, and Processor. I had no choice but to do that. I was unable, therefore, to “deactivate” the previous setup before it refused to work. I had no way of knowing it wouldn’t work when I left it that one evening. DH turned it off, and in the morning it wouldn’t post. History that setup was then, and I had my second “activated PC” with musicmatch go “unavailable” to me in a short time space.

That computer then, upgraded, wouldn’t play my tracks from musicmatch, it “couldn’t get the license” for either of the three files.

Musicmatch never helped me. I’m still waiting for a reply from my initial reply to their first answer to my problem. Their first answer was no help, just Q’s … urg. So now I sent them another help, asking them to just delete my other two activations, I can’t do that, and that I helped myself with the rest of the problem:

Go here, read this page at MS about “licenses for your media files are corrupted …:

support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810422&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

It’s DRM related. Basically, if you only have musicmatch tracks with licenses, forget about the article, just do what I did, find your DRM folder, which for Win XP is in “All Users” and is a protected file, so you have to allow yourself access to it via Tools, File Options …, View and go down to Hidden Files and Folder and choose the radio button for “Show Hidden Files and Folders” and then go down further and uncheck “Hide Protected System Operating Files”. Click “Apply” and “OK” then the DRM folder should be viewable.

Right-click on it and name it DRMbackup.

Then go here:

drmlicense.one.microsoft.com/Indivsite/en/indivit.asp

You HAVE to go there in Internet Explorer. So if you have Firefox or something, you might have the View in IE right-click context extention, that’s useful here. If you don’t have it, make a note to get it installed later for other usefulnesses. This time then just copy the URL and paste it into IE and go there. The button to “upgrade” will be active, just click it and wait for it to be done.

Then open WMP and click to play one of those dumb musicmatch tracks.

It’ll aquire the license, might want you to input your password for musicmatch, maybe your user name too (which is your registered email address with them.)

You have to OK a screen to activate your PC, it tells you how many are already activated.

Immediately the license is updated and you are good to go. All other tracks update their licenses when you click to play them immediately. (All this contingent with being online, DSL connection preferred.)

Maybe the shortcut for this is to just go to the second URL in IE and do that part only, maybe you don’t have to read and do the previous linked page. I read through it and I did it “just because you never know”. No situation existed for me to ‘backup’ licenses, or reinstate them. So it was only a shortcut through it to the DRM folder to rename it and get it out of the way.

This help was buried in the microsoft site. It wasn’t easy to find. I will say that windows media player threw an error when it couldn’t download the license, and the web page for more info had no clue what that error meant, of course. I wish so much that they could link to REAL HELP like the actual files I turned up finally, as suggestions, or at least a menu to search through that I would have found them in.

It’s precisely annoying of them to have so much info to sort through, and to have to go and find stuff on their site, or in the support feature search on Win XP. Real-time help for issues without having to “call” someone, would be nice. Automatic connection if you ask for help with an error, to the right links that you can use to resarch help you actually need. Pie in the sky stuff, it is.

Anyhow, my three little tracks are back, I can play them now. I only want to get them to release the other 2 activated PC’s from my account, I can’t do that, and I’m not so sure they will do that. I know they can. Of course they can. It’s just WILL they.

I also found this article Copyright Crackdown, posted on Aug. 1, 2005, about licensing and protections on products that are coming out from Sony BMG and others. It’s an article worth reading for anyone who buys music online as DRM tracks, or transfers music to devices, copies CD’s, even just plays CD’s in their own computer. It’s an article side-related to my own post here.

I’m glad to have a computer to use again. I’ve been catching up on some things I hadn’t done in awhile and now have found myself the only one up, everyone else gone to bed without totally telling me. It’s been awhile since I’ve had the computer like this, and now I’m stuck down in Frank’s “office” since it’s the only logistical place in which I can access an ethernet connection right now.

The biggest downer to this whole experience is that I have three “songs” I downloaded previously from MusicMatch in Window’s Media Player. One on my Vaio laptop and two on this desktop.

In order to listen to the songs on any computer you have to have that PC “activated” to work with Music Match’s licensing.

:rolleyes:

It’s nothing but trouble for me now. I can’t get a license for my three songs since I have messed up licensing with the upgrade of the mobo and processor, I can not deactivate my old Vaio, since I can’t get onto the computer anymore. Music Match lets you have 5 PC activated with their service. So I have two unavailable Activations which I can’t deactivate nor activate.

I sent the tech support an email through their form system, I surely hope they solve my problem, but I am not holding out hope.

I want my access to my songs back, it’s only three though, and I can get them again if I must. I don’t know though if Music Match is going to work with my new computer setup, though it’s still the same stuff, just new hardware. Even Microsoft dufeses insisted on “reactivating” my desktop computer once I logged on successfully after the upgraded hardware worked. At least it worked, whereas Music Match says “just click on one of your songs that you got from us and the license aquisition will automatically start” or “you’ll be able to activate your PC as soon as you play one of the songs you got from us” Nope. Error! Can’t … Urg.

I’m glad I only got three songs, and that I have no plans to download whole albums and never bunches of songs. Licensing is for the birds. Buy the CD’s. It’s less of a hassle. Even just for one song. I wasn’t liking the agreement in the first place, but figured “for this one song and the occasional odd song, OK, it’ll workout”. But now I see what happens when you have computers crash and never revive, and when computers crash and need new parts and come back to life but “not as they were before” and this nightmarish stuff begins. Augh!