Technology

Yes you can.

Oh that's pretty cool! I agree about sharing playlists being way too difficult.

I have been working on a solution for sharing playlists as part of my music sharing side-project Bongo. Right now you can technically do it but it doesn't work very well. My algorithm looks for the closest match when finding a playlist but sometimes they aren't exactly equivalent across different services.

That's probably confusing since I didn't explain what Bongo does right now. You can take a link from Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music and Bongo makes a page with links to that media on all three of the services. The idea was to make it easier to share music with friends.

You can check it out here: https://bongo.to

Here's an example of a shared song: https://bongo.to/?am=album%2Fback-on-74%2F1676151993%3Fi%3D1676152328

It allows for data analysis. This helps you to discover new music, keep track of new releases coming out. It also allows you to easily share your musical interests with others. And it doesn't have blind spots. Spotify would never recommend you something that's not on Spotify. Because people submit listens to ListenBrainz from Spotify but also from other platforms and from local files there are no inherent blind spots. My listening behavior is no secret, anyone can have a look at it, I choose for it to not be private. But I wouldn't want to just gift it to any one particular company that can use it to make money. By submitting listens to ListenBrainz you basically gift it to everyone.

Recording of listens and then sharing it publicly allows to discoverability of more music.

I already use MusicBrainz data to properly name a file away my digital music collection. I contribute release info and revisions whenever I can to further that same goal. Plex uses MusicBrainz data to help me search, filter, and play through a music library that is honestly bigger than I could ever fully listen to. It just makes sense that I be able to integrate and leverage my listening data so that I can better find the tracks and releases I've "lost" in my own collection and find new music. It's even more of a bonus that all that data is open, so I feel more like I'm actually contributing something to society (even if it's as trivial as music data and listening habits) instead of just giving it away to a private company to sell or keep secret as they see fit.

I'd recommend PanoScrobbler instead on your phone

I used to like last.fm. But i felt like it was only becoming worse over the years. For instance, I used to like groups and was quite active in some. Then suddenly they were removed. With ListenBrainz I feel like there is much to improve still, and perhaps it's not on the level of Last.fm on some aspects. But ListenBrainz is getting better by the year and will only improve as more people join the project.

Fair enough - I use both for different reasons, and am also thinking on getting Last.fm Pro in the future.

ListenBrainz has the ability of submitting more accurate data (i.e. specific recordings and releases, tied to MusicBrainz ofc) while last.fm has the better developer ecosystem (a lot of apps support it e.g. third party Apple Music Clients, the .fmbot Discord bot which I do pay monthly for). Not a huuuuge fan of Last.fm's way of handling artist names that have collabs or featured artists in them, but that might be the obsessive data nerd in me I guess (and I guess last.fm Pro can fix that)

if need be you can periodically import your listens from last.fm or libre.fm. I use both Last.fm and ListenBrainz since LB is better at storing accurate listen data (supported players can submit MusicBrainz IDs) but last.fm has a better developer ecosystem (apps like .fmbot have better integration with last.fm)

Are you aware of eavesdrop.fm?

sentences that sound made up but have actual meaning

I have no experience with it myself, but from this overview I see there is this service called eavesdrop.fm

Agree but Seems unlikely to happen. Couldn't it just run in background like a Shazam and identity songs by audio signatures regardless of source? Might be a bit resource intense but I don't think it will be long before most phones could support this.

I couldn't really tell you. The ListenBrainz android app was first released in February. I imagine it has improved over the year. I can't tell you because I don't use the app. I personally have my Tauon Music Box audioplayer on PC linked up with Listenbrainz, and I don't listen to music on android. But on the forums I don't hear a lot of complaints so I would assume it's reasonably good.