Re: Online music database?

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Parents:

On Mon, Nov 13, 2000, Ian Jacobs wrote:
> I would like to catalog my CD collection on the
> Web. I thought
> I would do this by pointing to Amazon, for example, but the first
> CD I looked at isn't in their database. Are there better music
> database (the "imdb" of music) that I might point to?
>
> Anyone have any good ideas for this type of project?

I thought about that, and I think that I have been somehow contaminated
by Gerald, because I now want to log everything.

So in addition to creating a catalog of CD's, I would like to keep track
of all the CD's I listen to. The concept is actually pretty simple: if
you have the list of your CD's, you just indicate (by clicking on a
button in a GUI or entering a reference) the one you were listening to,
associated with a date.

The reason for that is that I noticed that there are cycles in the music
I listen to, and that would be interesting to analyze them. For example,
since I saw Steve Vai live last year[1,2], I keep listening to his music
again and again.

I realize that if I had all my CD's converted in MP3's, that tracking
would be easier and could be automated, but I like putting my CD's in
the CD tray, plus I am religious about music and I like to listen to
entire albums as a whole. Of course, you can do that with MP3's too, but
I would be tempted to listen to my favorite songs. :-)

To close on music, Steve Vai, and considering albums as whole thing,
Steve Vai just released a very interesting compilation of songs, called
The 7th Song[3]. He took the 7th track of each of his records, which has
always been a balad. I am not sure I want to buy it because I basically
have all the songs already except the 3 bonus tracks and one of them
(Boston Rain Melody) was distributed in MP3 on his site[4] at some
point, but it is definitely interesting.

 1. http://larve.net/people/hugo/1999/09/08-vai
 2. http://larve.net/people/hugo/1999/11/19-vai
 3. http://www.vai.com/News/images/7thsong_larger.jpg
 4. http://www.vai.com/

--
Hugo Haas <[email protected]> - http://larve.net/people/hugo/
Ok children, today we're going to learn about a Japanese poem called
haiku. A haiku is just like an American poem, except that it doesn't
rhyme and it's totally stupid. -- Mr Garrisson

Re: Online music database?

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  • None.

Parents:

On Sat, Nov 18, 2000, Hugo Haas wrote:
> So in addition to creating a catalog of CD's, I would like to keep track
> of all the CD's I listen to. The concept is actually pretty simple: if
> you have the list of your CD's, you just indicate (by clicking on a
> button in a GUI or entering a reference) the one you were listening to,
> associated with a date.

I wanted to try this out, so I quickly hacked something (almost no
documentation, flat files, overly simple interface) which would do the
job[1].

I will see if I find this useful. Everything is in a standard format
(e.g. CDDB native format for the disc information) so it will be easy to
reuse any part of it for something else.

 1. http://larve.net/people/hugo/2000/11/cdlog

--
Hugo Haas <[email protected]> - http://larve.net/people/hugo/
I met a devil named Buena Buena.

Re: Online music database?

Replies:

  • None.

Parents:

On Sat, Nov 18, 2000 at 09:17:24PM -0500, Hugo Haas wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 13, 2000, Ian Jacobs wrote:
> > I would like to catalog my CD collection on the Web. I thought
> > I would do this by pointing to Amazon, for example, but the first
> > CD I looked at isn't in their database. Are there better music
> > database (the "imdb" of music) that I might point to?
> >
> > Anyone have any good ideas for this type of project?

I ripped almost all my CDs (150 out of of 200 or so) to MP3s a
while ago, so creating a list of them is now a Unix one-liner.
I haven't put the list online yet for privacy reasons (though I
don't really know why.)

> I thought about that, and I think that I have been somehow contaminated
> by Gerald, because I now want to log everything.

:)

> So in addition to creating a catalog of CD's, I would like to keep track
> of all the CD's I listen to. The concept is actually pretty simple: if
> you have the list of your CD's, you just indicate (by clicking on a
> button in a GUI or entering a reference) the one you were listening to,
> associated with a date.
>
> The reason for that is that I noticed that there are cycles in the music
> I listen to, and that would be interesting to analyze them. For example,
> since I saw Steve Vai live last year[1,2], I keep listening to his music
> again and again.

Yeah... I would love to find out what my favorite music was last
year or the year before, but I can't because I didn't keep track
of that anywhere.

Fortunately I fixed that a month ago, using xmms' "Song Change"
plugin; I configured it to execute this whenever a song changes:

   echo `date +"%Y-%m-%d %T"` "%f %r %F %lms %s" >> misc/mm/whatson

(~/misc/mm is a symlink to ~/misc/2000/11, updated monthly)

The 25 most recent tracks I have listened to:

   http://impressive.net/people/gerald/2000/10/whatson

(currently just a dump of recent log entries, but eventually I'll
fix it up, link each artist/album to amazon.com or whatever.)

Unfortunately it doesn't log individual tracks from shoutcast/
icecast streams; I've been listening to this stream a lot in the
last week or so:

   http://www.monkeyradio.net/

but it only shows up as a single entry in my log. (I can probably
fix that by actively querying xmms once in a while.)

> I realize that if I had all my CD's converted in MP3's, that tracking
> would be easier and could be automated, but I like putting my CD's in
> the CD tray, plus I am religious about music and I like to listen to
> entire albums as a whole. Of course, you can do that with MP3's too, but
> I would be tempted to listen to my favorite songs. :-)

Come on, CDs are obsolete! The first thing I do when I get a new
CD is rip it, then put it back in the case and never touch it again.
I still haven't unpacked my box of CDs since I moved last summer.
(one of the heaviest boxes, btw; what a waste of atoms)

Having random access to thousands of tracks at once is so cool.
If I'm lazy, I can put a certain playlist or a bunch of CDs on
shuffle, but a lot of the time I listen to entire albums, and I
can use my shell's tab-completion to type the names in for me
instead of having to take my hands off the keyboard to grab a CD :)

I think I listen to entire albums more than I shuffle; I'll be
able to tell you for sure once I have more log data to analyze ;)

I don't know what I'll do about this stuff when I buy a car: either
find a good in-car MP3 player or just listen to the radio. (I like
to check what all the kids are listening to once in a while anyway.)

> To close on music, Steve Vai, and considering albums as whole thing,
> Steve Vai just released a very interesting compilation of songs, called
> The 7th Song[3]. He took the 7th track of each of his records, which has
> always been a balad. I am not sure I want to buy it because I basically
> have all the songs already except the 3 bonus tracks and one of them
> (Boston Rain Melody) was distributed in MP3 on his site[4] at some
> point, but it is definitely interesting.

See, with my setup I could just do "xmms /home/mp3s/mine/steve_vai/*/07*"

Or I could be creative and do "06*" instead, and voila: a new album,
The 6th Song.

>   1. http://larve.net/people/hugo/1999/09/08-vai
>   2. http://larve.net/people/hugo/1999/11/19-vai
>   3. http://www.vai.com/News/images/7thsong_larger.jpg
>   4. http://www.vai.com/

--
Gerald Oskoboiny <[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/

HURL: fogo mailing list archives, maintained by Gerald Oskoboiny