smirky
awesome add-on! very simple and to the point... Thanks!
(the links seem to open in the current browser tab, maybe make an option for opening a new one as well?)

Music Recommendations searches for similar artists (powered by Last.fm), and provides links to these artists in your library.
Comments, feature requests, bug reports welcome :)
Translations also welcome (just post translated strings as comments below).
The source is on Google Code, feel free to use it or learn from it.
awesome add-on! very simple and to the point... Thanks!
(the links seem to open in the current browser tab, maybe make an option for opening a new one as well?)
Look forward to trying this. Definitely expect to get some utility from it -- a simple and valuable idea. Can't wait for in-library recommendations. Thanks for your work!
Nice!
It'd nice to have more intelligent matching - e.g. not only band name but also album name (to prevent name collisions for bands with the same name).
Great addon! Would be cool if artists clicked would open the last.fm page in a new tab rather than the existing one, but minor detail... good work!
Media Library integration will rock it!
The only gripe I can come up with is that the "Powered by Audioscrobbler" image has some nasty artifacts.
Greate work!
Could you please make text selectable? And it lacks scroll bar, vertical especially.
well now, how would i go about pointing you to a good 'powered by audioscrobbler' image?
try this:
tinypic.com/2luut8j.png
Just thinking aloud... it would be super cool if the name of the current artist playing (at the top of the sidebar) was a link to their Last.fm page ...
thanks again!!
:D I got very bored one night and made it in illustrator. enjoy
I like this, but I think it could be a lot better. I think that the ideal would be that it could function like the last.fm "similar artist" radio but feeding off of your library instead of last.fm - i.e., being able to find an artist (Radiohead for example) and instantly making a temporary playlist comprised of Radiohead and their (x) most similar artists. (Or perhaps instead of having a set number of similar artists, using whatever is at a given last.fm similarity rating)
If that was extended to last.fm's tags, this would be an unstoppable add-on. If I could pick a tag (post-punk, for example) and have the addon pull a list of artists in my library that have that tag and then make a playlist based on it, I would die.
I'd like to echo grampybone's comment about generating a playlist of similar artists.
It would make this plugin much stronger if as a user you could pick an artist that you like the sound of and have this plugin recommend a temporary playlist of similar artists.
I'd use it all the time.
Jast added ru-RU translation on BabelZilla.
Just some followup thoughts - the problem with having a big library sometimes is trying to find music to please other people who might be listening too. Last.fm is nice because I can tell someone to name a band/genre that they like and then not have to worry about having death metal or something pop up on my shuffled library and having to skip tracks until I find something we both like.
I am loving this add-on so much, it just speeds up making playlists!
What would be fantastic is if we could expand this add-on to include the actual creation of playlists (if at all possible), much like the current new toy in iTunes (you know the one I mean).
Wouldn't that be lovely? :D
COOL!!!
Very cool add-on although I currnelty have lyricsMaster in my left hand pane leaving nowhere for this add-on to go.
My I suggest that you offer alternative layouts that can use the middle pane as an option as well. I mocked up a few layouts myself to give you an idea of what I thought may be possible.

A version containing artist and suggestions

A lightweight version containing only similar artists

An alternate version with a column based design
I would also love to have the option to disable the web links as I generally only wish to search my own library, rather than redirect to the web.
Nonetheless, its a really clever little add-on that i hope more people will pay attention to.
I hate how this plugin has to go to the internet to retrieve this information before playing the damn song. Sometimes the internet does go right a way and it takes a few songs for the song to play. Ridiculous guys...
This looks really cook, but now that I installed it how do I make it work? Is there a man page anywhere? Is it broke on 64 bit Linux?
Ok, it works on 64bit Linux, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. Can't I make it work in a tab? Right now it overwrites the album navigation. Also I don't think it will work right for me as it can't figure out what track is playing as Songbird has no clue how to read a cue file. I think I'm just going to have to go back to xmms as it supports cue files correctly. Any chance for a xmms version of this plugin?
hi all !
how does this work ?, i have installed the plugin, but in the preferences i can click on the configuration button from "music recommendations" and also in the player i see nothing and no window or so pops up with similar artists ? also there is nothing overwritten on the lyrics tab....
i use ubuntu linux 32bit and the newest songbird (1.xx)
Hi, I think a nice addition would be having the ability to right click the artists names, then on the menu have "search for on SkreemR" and "search for on The Hype Machine"
and awesome program btw
newmario..
it works on ubuntu linux 32bit and the newest songbird (1.xx)
u just have to select the right display pane to make it visible
Nice work here btw
Thanks for your great addon !
Is that a way to select what information is view/not view in your panel ?
It's awesome add-on!!!!
bat it don't work if artist name was written by 2byte character(example :Japanese).
Thanks for developing this add-on, it's a good start. The only trouble is that it's rare for any of the top five Last.fm matches to an artist to actually be in my library.
I think it would be far more useful if the add-on took all the "similar artists" available from Last.fm's API (currently 20, I think)...then also found all 20 similar artists for those artists...then took anything from my library by those 400 artists and put them into a playlist called "Last.fm Similar," for instance.
Hi Necimal!
I just wanted to say I really love this add-on. There's only a couple of things I miss:
1. Like someone's mentioned it would be great if it could be used to produce playlists (for instance, working with the Now Playing List add-on to queue the recommendations);
2. Just like MichaelMH mentioned above, it would also be great if we could use it to immediately search a song in skreemr, tagoo, hypemachine or other...
Please consider these suggestions and keep up your excellent work!
Thanks!
Thought this was a bug in Songbird isteslf bug but having uninstalled it (and deleted all the reg settings profiles etc) it came back when I installed your 'Music Recommendations' sidebar add-on. Here's the prob:
Currently hearing track two of disc (1 album filtered) yet speaker icon is against track 1.
Track 1 seems to be skipped with track 2 playing instead - when track 2 ends it's simply repeated once but then moves onto track 3 the next time. Track 1 will play if double-clicked on.
It seems to happen when listening to one album and then changing the filtering to another - play a track, fast forward towards the end, quickly filter for another (different) album, and then wait for the track to finish and the new album to start playing (you should hear track 2 of the new album). I can replicate it without any trouble - I reckon I could even make a video with FRAPS if you want!
Running Build 860 on Windows XP SP3 but I can also mimic it on Linux machine (Build 860 too). Not album or artist specific. Removing 'Music Recommendations' add-on resolves problem.
Can you please include an option for font color or display style as lyrics master has? The rubber ducky style in lyrics master is very nice. I can't see your current style with my feather (sparkle).
Thanks for all the work you have done so far!
This plugin seems to be having problems with diacritics, e.g. playing Icelandic band Múm (http://www.last.fm/music/m%C3%BAm/+wiki) yields just empty tab.
Hi necimal!
First! I really like this add-on! Very good idea and very useful. :)
But I have a problem:
I prefer to use the middle bottom display pane for this add-on, because the right display pane is the best for read lyrics (LyricMaster).
But every time when I want to see the Music Recommendations in the middle bottom display pane, the status bar is disappear and the display pane covers the whole content display pane!
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/3585/sbmr02.png
I have to resize the display pane to see the content display pane and the status bar.
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/9193/sbmr03.png
This is OK, once!
But when I hide the display pane and if I want to see later again, it covers the whole content display pane again! Very annoying!!
Could you make this add-on to memorize the size of the middle bottom display pane what I used last time?
And a little color issue:
When I hover the mouse cursor over the recent played artist or a similar artist from the library, the highlight colors are very bad on YABS feather (light gray on lightener gray)!
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/1839/sbmr04.png
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/363/sbmr05.png
Could you do something to make this add-on more compatible with YABS feather?
Thanks! ;)
ps: I could use the right click feature too to search text or copy text as well. :P
Nice add-on.
I'd like to ad my name, though, to the pple calling for it to be extended so that it could automatically create a play list.
If this could be made to work a few things I'd like to see would be:
1. After each song finished it would play on to the next nearest song in your library
2. It would keep track of songs played so that no song was repeated
3. It would keep track of the artists of the last x (maybe 10?) songs played so as not to just keep repeating the same artists over and over.
4. If no similar song exists in library then it should then play a random song of the same genre
5. If no song existed in library of the same genre then it should play any random song
This feature would be great for parties when you can't be bothered to set up a playlist - just select a song with the kind of vibe your after and let it go.
Something weird happened to my music recommendations-addon the other day. It just doesn´t look right anymore. All of the text is on a single line, so i have to scroll for a mile to read it all. I have tried to re-install the addon several times, but it doesn´t work. Has this happened to anyone else? And does someone here knows how to fix it? http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/2919/38538692.png
Can i change the language in german?
The layout is messed up: The description is in one single line, and there are no Images for the "similar artists":
http://i43.tinypic.com/2eznwyf.png
http://i41.tinypic.com/11kkvnt.png
Songbird 1.1.1, XP SP3.
Special letter problem!
Music Recommendations can't show artists with special letter!
For example: Lesiëm.
Hi, this is a great extension but I would like to have it on the bottom pane like some others have shown in screen shots. I can't figure out how to set that up. Can anyone help?
Thanks!
@GruvyPunk: Before Songbird 1.1 (before Music Recommendations 1.0) I used this extension on the bottom pane, but now it appears only on the right pane. So I stopped to use it, because there are too much stuffs on the right pane. Actually at the moment I have only mashTape extension on the bottom pan. I don't understand why. The bottom pane so useless. All pane extensions use the right pane. :-/
I have a problem with this. I can only click on the bottom "similar artists", and I can't read how many tracks I have of each one - only the very tops of the letters actually show, because the boundary around each selection is too small.
This is very disappointing, because for a long time this was working fine, updated my Ubuntu to 8.10 and now it's all messed up, and looks so un-neat that I can't bear to have it running anymore ..
Nice add-on! I’m with those who are requesting this have an option in the settings to have it oriented for the bottom pane instead of the right pane. I prefer the this add-on’s simple look to mash tape, but there are too many other extensions that use the right pane exclusively right now. Thanks for developing this!
I've got the same issue as atreiu above. Used to work fine and loved it! Now, it's unusable :(
Pretty impressive. I like it. : )
Very good feature! Used it for ten minutes and already found two new interesting bands!
Great!
But (there's always a 'but' isn't there?) I noticed that whenever I use an artists-tag that has Kanjis in it I get no recommendations at all.
Although last.fm has no problems with a search for ... say: 天野月子
Now is it a bug, or me being stupid?
I'm using Ubuntu 9.04
Don't Work for me, i need make something more?.
Win Xp
Versión: Songbird 1.1.2, Build 1042
I'm sorry the program its ok, just could not find where the option to view the recommendations... :P
Kool..
I have just downoaded songbird on my mac.. and i had been serching something like this add-onn.. The itunes genius Sucks...
Thanks
P.S I also have the issue regarding if there is no recommendations then it shud just play the next song so some customizable action or something like that.
Is there an ETA for a version that works with Songbird 1.2? Just upgraded and sadly my favorite add-on does not work. I hate to uninstall and go back to the prior version if it's coming soon.
there is a way to get the add-on to work with the betas :)
(1) download "music-recommendations-1.0.0.xpi"
(2) open it with your zip/rar unpacker
(3) unpack "install.rdf"
(4) search for the line
<em:maxversion>1.2.0a</em:maxversion>
and replace it with
<em:maxversion>1.3.0</em:maxversion>
(5) save your edited "install.rdf" and replace it with the original one located in "open music-recommendations-1.0.0.xpi".
(6) install the add-on in songbird
@ dc0c25
Thank you very much.
Just installed Songbird 1.2 (not beta) and your tip worked out great!
@ dc0c25
I did exactly what you said and I still get the message "Music Recommendations 1.0.0 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Songbird 1.2.0".
Any ideas why? :(
Download compatible version with Songbird 1.2.0:
http://files.getdropbox.com/u/605980/music-recommendations-1.0.0.xpi
The way to get the add-on work from dc0c25 is good but linux is case sensitive... maxversion is wrong, maxVersion is good ;-)
That new Music Recommendations only goes on the bottom pane, whereas the old one went on the right pane, now I can't use mashtape :(
@cameraman I Will send you updated add-on that goes on the right pane.
@cameraman Here is a version compatible with Songbird 1.2.0 and that can go in the right panel : http://files.getdropbox.com/u/158415/music-recommendations-1.0.0.xpi
Anyone knows what happened to this add-on ? It used to be my favorite but is not supported in 1.2 and has missing been for a long time. I don't want to the hack above or download the add-on from untrusted source. Is the author still working on it ?
I have updated the extension so it works with the newly released Songbird 1.4b3.
Here is the link:
http://files.getdropbox.com/u/158415/music-recommendations-1.0.0.xpi
@vladak: Just download it, really, it's safe. I have just edited the install.rdf file:
<em:maxversion>1.4.*</em:maxversion>
<songbird:suggestedcontentgroups>contentpane;sidebar</songbird:suggestedcontentgroups>
@sjuganga, @atreiu, @wasframed: These layout problems were probably due to a conflict with my add-on Spotbird Artist Browser. This is fixed in the latest version, so now you can use both add-ons. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
how come I cant download it. The "Install" button is in gray....help
As "dc0c25" says (for install):
(1) download "music-recommendations-1.0.0.xpi"
(2) open it with your zip/rar unpacker
(3) unpack "install.rdf"
(4) search for the line
<em:maxversion>1.2.0a</em:maxversion>
and replace it with
<em:maxversion>1.4.0</em:maxversion>
(5) save your edited "install.rdf" and replace it with the original one located in "open music-recommendations-1.0.0.xpi".
(6) install the add-on in songbird
And I add this (to view the info in your language):
1) Go to the following line:
var requestUri = "http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/artist/info.xml?artist=" + escape(artistName);
2) Delete the ";" and add this :
+ "&lang=XX";
Where XX is your lenguage (e.g. ES)
3) It would like it (for Spanish):
var requestUri = "http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/artist/info.xml?artist=" + escape(artistName) + "&lang=es";
Bye.
While you are at it, I would also change "escape" in the code to "encodeURIComponent". This way artist names with special characters in them like é and ä work too, which they do not with "escape".
Hei,
Can someone help me with the source code of this add-on? I am suppose to build a similar thing for a school project and it will be really helpful. I tried the link on google code but there was no file.
Thanks,Bye.
steffyhome, the addon is the source, rename the xpi to a zip and unzip it.
GeekShadow
Cool !