Last.fm pushed out a new web-based music player that has some nifty new features including an artist slideshow, multi-tag radio and multi-artist radio. It is pretty nice.
I like the new artist slide show (it is very Snapp Radio like), but they seem to run out of unique artist images rather quickly – and what’s with the grid? It looks like I am looking at the artists through a screen window.
I really like the multi-tag radio, but it is not 100% clear to me whether it is finding music that has been tagged with all the tags or whether it just alternates between the tags. Hopefully it is the former. Update: It is the former.
It is nice to see Multi-tag radio come out of the playground and into the main Last.fm player. It is a great way to get a much more fined-tuned listening experience. I do worry that Last.fm is de-emphasizing tags though. They only show a couple of tags in the player and it is hard to tell whether these are artist, album or track tags. Last.fm’s biggest treasure trove is their tag data, so they should be very careful to avoid any interface tweaks that may reduce the number of tags they collect.
Music Machinery 
#1 by Klaas on May 6, 2009 - 12:55 pm
As far as I know, the multi-tag radio plays music that has been tagged with ALL the given tags.
#2 by Norman Casagrande on May 6, 2009 - 12:57 pm
Hey Paul,
The multi-tag radio is using intersection, that’s the main reason why we limit them to 3.
We primarily use track tags, but if those are not available (or they are too few) the track can “inherit” them from the album or the artist with a lower weight.
#3 by plamere on May 6, 2009 - 1:29 pm
Thanks Norman. Well done.
#4 by kurt on February 12, 2010 - 3:17 pm
What happened to snapp radio? I loved it…
#5 by Paul on February 12, 2010 - 3:44 pm
Hey Kurt … thanks … I switched jobs, so the server where it was running at Sun has been turned off, sigh … One day I’ll code it anew with Echo Nest goodness.
P