Allow me to spread the word about ListenBrainz. ListenBrainz is a FOSS project that aims to crowdsource listening data from digital music and release it under an open license. Basically it’s Last.fm but better. Whatever you use to listen to music, you can probably link it up with ListenBrainz. All ListenBrainz listening data is available for all to use, commercially or not. Why should we give our listening data only to proprietary companies like Spotify and depend on them, when we can share it. If you’ve kept track of your what music you’ve listened to up to this point, don’t worry, there are several ways to import them into ListenBrainz so you can keep an overview of all your music listening.

I am not working for ListenBrainz in any way, I just really like this project, and I had not seen much on Lemmy about them, so I’m happy to spread the word.

  • N-E-NEnglish
    6•11 months ago

    While I like the concept of it being FOSS, I admit I think Last.fm is just the much more pleasant to use service

    I even pay for Last.fm Premium cause I think it’s worth paying for

    • e$tGyr#J2pqM8vOPEnglish
      3•11 months ago

      I used to like last.fm. But i felt like it was only becoming worse over the years. For instance, I used to like groups and was quite active in some. Then suddenly they were removed. With ListenBrainz I feel like there is much to improve still, and perhaps it’s not on the level of Last.fm on some aspects. But ListenBrainz is getting better by the year and will only improve as more people join the project.

      • N-E-NEnglish
        3•11 months ago

        Fair, For the time being, I see no reason not to keep using both

    • @[email protected]English
      2•11 months ago

      Fair enough - I use both for different reasons, and am also thinking on getting Last.fm Pro in the future.

      ListenBrainz has the ability of submitting more accurate data (i.e. specific recordings and releases, tied to MusicBrainz ofc) while last.fm has the better developer ecosystem (a lot of apps support it e.g. third party Apple Music Clients, the .fmbot Discord bot which I do pay monthly for). Not a huuuuge fan of Last.fm’s way of handling artist names that have collabs or featured artists in them, but that might be the obsessive data nerd in me I guess (and I guess last.fm Pro can fix that)

      • N-E-NEnglish
        1•11 months ago

        Yes the artist and stuff handling could def be better

        What’s the discord bot you pay for do?

        I use AMWin Rich Precense for AM on Windows which connects to Discord

        • @[email protected]English
          3•11 months ago

          .fmbot is essentially a social bot for Discord that handles last.fm stuff that you can drop into a server. It’s essentially the site but as a Discord bot, with some little trinkets here and there. It’s all good fun, really, if you like the social aspect. I pay for the bot as my Last.fm account is relatively new, and it allows importing your listens from Spotify (through a GDPR request for extended listening history). I have requested ListenBrainz user dump support; they have considered supporting ListenBrainz but the main issue is that the API limits are worse than Last.fm’s.

          A lot of music servers use it for the social aspect. Chuu (named after the k-pop star) is a similar bot.