Winamp Causes Last.fm metadata messup

[DocStrange]

First off, Full disclosure: I'm a moderator for the last.fm website.

Phew, now I have that out of the way, on with the post

OK, now i've been having this problem involving Winamp and the client agreeing on what metadata i'm playing.

I've started a thread in the forum about this, but to so you don't have to click on that thread to read all that, I'll quote my first post

when I physically changed a track to another just now on Winamp, the client told me the incorrect album and title. It claimed the song "Daniel" by Bat for Lashes from the album "Two Suns" was playing as "Now We Can See" by Bat for Lashes from the album "Rubber Soul". "Now We Can See" is a song from The Thermals and "Rubber Soul" is a Beatles album, and all these are in my Winamp library. If I stop the track and start again its gone and never comes back.

I've noticed this before on a few things and I remember others have too, but I actually snagged a screencap before I stopped it.

The times I've seen it before though, it was while shuffling on Winamp, not physically changing a track (ie selecting it from the media library), and in every case, Winamp still shows the correct album, title and artist.

I take it this just a wee glitch and nothing to worry about?

This problem happens on one of my computers, but not the other, but I totally think that's a coincidence.

I thought this was a client problem, but i've discovered no less than four threads in the last.fm forum with this problem (the earliest being from March) with more or less the same problem i'm having (I link to one in a post in that thread, and three more in my most recent post). All those users see this with Winamp and with Winamp only, regardless if they uninstall/reinstall Winamp, the Winamp Last.fm plugin and/or the Last.fm player itself.

I take it then, that this is a bug with Winamp since it only happens with Winamp. Any help?

[robdog2004]

strange since im using the official plugin you(or your co workers) created and im not getting this issue
they are either using the cracked version of the plugin (version without the last.fm program) or a broken version

now i also believe there is/was a issue where the file might say one thing but the id3 tag says something completely different, this maybe a contributing issue to the clients but without seeing the files in question i cant tell

[DocStrange]

Oh, i'm not nearly as important as you make me out to be. I'm actually just a volunteer moderator (redundant, huh?) who lives across the ocean from the last.fm HQ. nothing important. Sorry if there was any confusion with that. I just wanted to point that out since I linked to the forum post and someone might have wondered about the whole moderator thing.

All the threads i've found about this were all from this year and everyone that went full out and uninstalled and reinstalled Winamp and/or the plugin and/or The Client, that it still came back. All my ID3 tags are fine and correct. I don't think its that because it tends to happen at random. If I stop the song and restart it, the problem's gone.

I like your "broken plugin" theory though. It only happens with Winamp (aside from WMP 11 - which because i've used Winamp for so long, my last interaction with WMP was WMP7 and I have forgotten how WMP works - my only other media player is VLC which has built in last.fm support) and maybe there's something up with the Winamp plugin...I don't know.

I'm currently talking to everyone who has had this problem and seeing what their remedy was, if any.

[DrO]

the track detection in the official & standalone plug-in was never that great even at the best of times as it was working on a hackish way so it'd work with 2.x clients instead of the correct 5.x method which removes the ambiguity that could happen (ie it stores the correct track name instead of trying to work out the index of the track).

i had been working on making the standalone version 5.x compatible but i've lost interest in last.fm and my test version was crashing due to a load of the changes i was making which maybe i should find the time to resolve but it's of low interest now.

-daz

[robdog2004]

hopefully someone will come up with a patch

[DrO]

the information on how to do it was passed on to the person who was maintaining their plug-in back in 2007 and from what i can tell that was never applied... *shrugs*

-daz

[DocStrange]

well, they're supposed to have a new version of the client coming out soon (hopefully by the end of the year?) and maybe your information will be implemented then (as the last major version of the client came out around 2007)

[DrO]

well it really doesn't need a full client update to resolve issues with a small plug-in but i'm now so far out of the loop with last.fm that i've no idea what is/isn't happening, even what the protocol spec version now is and not too bothered either.

-daz

[robdog2004]

the client probably has to update so the plugin will update

and yes 3 years is a long time since winamp is constantly changing

[DocStrange]

well, there's only been reports of this problem on the last.fm forum since about March, so maybe it wasn't a problem before then, I don't know.

[robdog2004]

i wonder what changed in the settings that would cause it with only the latest releases