Allow me to spread the word about ListenBrainz , the occasion being that ListenBrainz is about to hit 100.000 users.
ListenBrainz is a FOSS project that aims to crowdsource listening data 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. For instance you can connect Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Last.fm . You can link it up with loads of music players . 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.
All ListenBrainz listening data is available for all to use. This means that we don’t need to rely on big companies like Spotify for recommendation algorithms. We can use whatever algorithm suits us best. All sorts of other services could be build to make use of the ListenBrainz data set. The dataset can also help analyze other services’ algorithms, for instance the Fair MusE project uses LB-data and LB-users to investigate the fairness of different music service algorithms.
Obviously ListenBrainz initially suffered from being a comparatively small service, For good recommendations you need loads of data. But it’s growing every day and I feel like the 1 billion listens is an impressive milestone. And ListenBrainz has the advantage of having listening data from several services, Spotify could never recommend you music that’s not on Spotify. ListenBrainz, because it’s open, doesn’t have such inherent blindspots.
I am not working for ListenBrainz in any way, I just really like this project as well as MusicBrainz , and I like to spread the word. I think the aims of the ListenBrainz probably align with some Fediverse-folks. If you don’t care about the service itself, you could still link up to support FOSS music services, not only LB itself, but other services that are, can and will be built using LB’s data. If you use another service to store your own listening data, for instance Last.fm, you could use ListenBrainz as a backup for you data in case the other sevice ever enshittifies. Note: you shouldn’t sign up if you want your listening data to be private, that’s not what LB is for. I care very much about privacy, but in the case of LB I consciously choose to share my music listening data with others for my own benefit.
Curious to hear peoples thought on all this.
P.S. I have posted about LB over a year ago. I don’t intend to spam this service, but i feel like it could be useful for folks on here, and I think most of you folks would support the spreading of FOSS. And LBs usercount rising from 36k january last year to 100k now seemed like a good celebratory occasion to spread the love once more.
As someone who only cares about the stats and social features , i still do not see what listenbrainz has over lastfm
Such a great service.
Both it and musicbrainz.Hear hear! I love me the brainz projects. Their player is a bit buggy still but so so good to avoid being locked in
Is there no way of connecting it to Qobuz? I can’t seem to find it.
This is pretty much the step I need to get back to listening to my own music rather than streaming. Can it plugin to ‘offline’ apps?
apparently it has navidrome support :) navidrome enables you to have your own music library on a device from that you then stream it on your other devices
The other way around, and yes.
https://kawaiidango.github.io/pano-scrobbler/ is one example, but most decent Desktop/Mobile applications have some sort of plugin.
Depends on the app.
If it caches the plays and syncs it back to the scrobble service?
Probably possible.
Afaik it’s not possible for Jellyfin.There was a time I used Plex with PlexAmp for music, pretty sure it kept stats
“Give us more data so we can take any of the effort out of deciding what to like.” is a big miss for me.
I’ll happily take my 30 minutes of scrolling Bandcamp and YouTube at bedtime for new artists if it means that my preferences and habits are none of your fucking business.
I’m the exact opposite. I love services recommending new artists and songs I would have never stumbled into on my own
Fair enough, personally I don’t mind using algorithms as long as they are fully transparent
Meta said at the outset that they were fully transparent.
Pass on further delegating my brain to a machine.
MetaBrainz is a non-profit dedicated to open-source and open-data. So if people don’t like the algorithms LB has integrated, they can just build their own.
About not delegating your brain to machines, that’s a fair point, and I would encourage people to consciously choose where to use machines and where to use their brain. If you enjoy searching for music, it would be foolish to delegate it to a machine. For me personally though it’s usefull, using an algorith here allows me to spend energy on other things that are equally stimulating for my brain. I particularly like LBs ‘fresh releases’ feature, which gives you heads up about new releases by artists that you’ve listened to.
Used Last.fm for like 3 months before finding out about ListenBrainz and making the switch. Truly amazing app, love all of their services (Picard my goat) and I’m happy to hear more people are joining!
I wish the social aspect was a bit more active though, I always follow people with similar taste but I never get a follow back (and the accounts always have 0 people they follow). Also I never see pinned songs and such :(
I agree on the social aspect lacking a bit. But who knows, ListenBrainz got better and better over the past years, perhaps with more users there will be more demand for social functionalities aswell, and perhaps they’ll be implemented in the future. LB was very rudimentary when I signed up, it’s nice seeing it grow and improve.
Listenbrqinz seems to keep prioritizing the discovery aspect rather than the stats
Thank you for the reminder! Donated today. Such a great service
Got the app on my phone and the player on my PC is linked and donated $5. Listen brainz is a treasure that will pay dividends to open source for years to come.
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Doesn’t look like it has Plex support?
- Eavesdrop.FM, submits Plex music listening data to ListenBrainz
- phooks, a python script that submits local Plex listens using web hooks and file lookups
Thanks!
If there is a plugin, everything is (sort of) supported.
Jellyfin has a listenbrainz plugin.
I like using symfonium for my music player, maybe it could be integrated.
