Scrobble Scrobble Last.fm

For some reason it seems like all of our new features go out on Fridays. Generally, that’s not a good idea because there’s nobody around on weekends to fix any bugs that we didn’t find in our “Agile, eXtreme Programming” development cycle (read: we spent 20min looking for bugs). But we get all excited about this stuff too so we want to let it loose, and since we call the shots (when Brian isn’t looking), here’s your new Friday goodness.

Now each song you listen to on Blip.fm can scrobble back to Last.fm. WTF is a “scrobble” you might ask? A scrobble is when we tell Last.fm what you’re currently listening to. And, if you listen to most of the song, its added to your listening history on your Last.fm profile. Just like iTunes… but more social.

To get your scrobbles scrobbling, log in and go to your external account settings (http://blip.fm/settings/integration) and create an account for last.fm by selecting “audioscrobbler” and entering your Last.fm username. Click “OK” and you’ll be redirected to a page on Last.fm asking permission to let Blip.fm access your profile, click “Yes, allow access” and you’re brought back to Blip.fm. Yer Dun.

If you already have a Last.fm account set up, you can enable the new scrobbling feature by clicking on the username or icon for that account. That takes you to a page where you can click a link (”Enable Last.fm song tracking”) and you’ll be guided through the same process as above.

Once these steps have been completed the songs you listen to on Blip.fm will automatically be sent to your Last.fm account. It’s done in the background so you won’t really notice anything going on. Just listen like normal and the next time you go to your Last.fm profile you’ll see all the songs listed under the “Recently Listened Tracks” section.

As always, if you have any trouble with this don’t hesitate to email support@blip.fm or leave a comment below and we’ll respond as soon as we can. Also, I’m usually on #blipfm on irc.freenode.net so you could try to catch me there or ask the other friendly blippers for help.

Have a good weekend, it’s nice and warm here in SF. Summer’s just getting started for us!
-ian

Improved Search

In order to give you more flexibility with the song search we’ve added some features that will allow you to be more specific about what you want. By default the search looks at each of the keywords you enter and sorts the matches ranked by relevance so that you see the best match first. That’s in an ideal world, of course, and sometimes the system doesn’t get it right.

If you’re getting a bunch of results but not finding what you’re looking for, you can try narrowing your search a little with the following techniques:

* To get results that match an exact phrase, wrap the phrase in double quotes
(e.g. “Medeski Martin and Wood”).

* To get results that must contain a particular word, stick a “+” before the word
(e.g. Chemical Brothers +remix)

* To get results that do not contain a particular keyword, stick a “-” before the word
(e.g. Morrison -Van +Jim)

This should greatly improve the accuracy of the results without being too difficult to use. We’re not stopping here, of course, and we’ll be continually looking for different ways to improve both the quantity and the quality of search results.

As a side note, If you keep getting ringtones or partial songs feel free to email the search term you used to feedback@blip.fm.

Props to my DJ’s

“Props” are the currency we use for earning and showing respect among Blip.fm DJ’s. We start everyone out with 10 credits to give when you sign up. If you appreciate a particular DJ, show ‘em by giving them props. Each time you give a DJ props, it costs you one credit. If you want to increase your props score, there is only one way: by getting props from other DJ’s. There’s lots of ways to increase your credits, but for each props you get, you also get one credit.

Timezone Support Added

Hey Blippers,

Just wanted to let you know we’ve added time zone support to your Blip.fm settings under the ‘Account’ section (http://blip.fm/settings/account) so now you view blips relative to your own time wherever that may be. If for some reason we missed your particular locale, just shoot us an email at support@blip.fm or leave a comment and we’ll be happy to help you out. Hope this makes the Blip.fm experience a little more seamless for everybody.

New listeners are people too

I’ve had a few people ask me if the emails they’ve been getting about new listeners on Blip.fm are fake users or possibly someone using a bot to sign up a bunch of accounts. Rest assured, they really are new users who have added you as a favorite DJ.

We recently rolled out a way for new users to find other DJ’s on Blip.fm with similar musical taste based on what artists and songs they’ve blipped. New users can then add the top 30 matches to their favorites, making their personal station (the one at http://blip.fm/home) immediately useful with blips from people they actually have something in common with. So each of the emails you’ve received means that a new user searched for an artist or song you blipped and you were in the top results.

We thought this would be a better way to introduce people to the site, and a good way to connect people with similar taste. You can try the new flow yourself by going to http://blip.fm/welcome. You can also search for people who’ve blipped similar artists/songs by clicking on “Search by music” under the search box in the right column.