I finally got around to experimenting with the last.fm / Audioscrobbler API to generate song recommendations. It turned out to be fairly simple to write a rudimentary Python script to automate the task. For example, here's all the code for retrieving data in XML form from last.fm:
import urllib def service( str_url ): sock = urllib.urlopen( str_url ) str_xml = sock.read() sock.close() return str_xml
The script is fairly pragmatic / specific / hackish. I just wanted my recommendations. Here's a breakdown of the automation:
Below are my top 10 recommendations without tracks already in my top 10. Each row is a song recommendation. The left column is the match count in padded decimal. The center column is the artist. The right columns is the title.
0080: Coldplay - Viva la Vida 0070: The Killers - When You Were Young 0066: Paramore - Misery Business 0050: Metro Station - Shake It 0049: The Postal Service - Such Great Heights 0047: Coldplay - Violet Hill 0046: Muse - Starlight 0046: Death Cab for Cutie - I Will Follow You Into the Dark 0043: Jason Mraz - I'm Yours 0041: Death Cab for Cutie - Soul Meets Body
So, I listened to the recommendations! Out of the above 10, there was one song I enjoy (Starlight, for the record) and the rest didn't do anything for me. BAH! I think that in order to get better results I would need to make a significantly more sophisticated selection.
At any rate, you may download my hackjob here.