Last.fm on Desktop!!!

(This is the second time I've tried to write this. The first one ended with me accidentally deleting hours of progress, so let's hope not to do that this time)

HELLO!!! Welcome back everyone to my big ol' blog. today I got around to watching Conclave (inspired by recent events), organising my room, and also playing a few CDs, as well as buying two new ones!! Now, something that isn't much of a secret about me is that I'm a MASSIVE FAN of physical media. I've forayed into collecting vinyl records, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, and even cassette tapes! You can see my collection over here, if you're curious :D

I've always been a big fan of physical media, and CDs were my best friend growing up. You see, I grew up in the generation just before the big ol' streaming take-over. I also didn't partake in MP3s as I was too young to buy anything online at the time. Most of my time as a very young kid was spent listening to CDs or watching DVDs, as I don't think I really had anything else to do.

One CD I loved to absolute death was one called "Triple J's Hottest 100: Volume 19." For those of you who may be unaware, Triple J is an alt-rock and indie focused Australian radio station that do annual compilations of the one-hundred top songs of a given year. Now, I've no idea why, but the 2011 edition was in my shelf as a child, and there's no denying that it was my favourite.

It introduced me to a fair few good songs, such as "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye & Kimbra, "Lonely Boy" by the Black Keys, "Lotus Flower" by Radiohead, "Awkward" by San Cisco, "Midnight City" by M83, and dozens of other great tracks.

This compilation came in two CDs, packed into a jewel case. However, at some point, I misplaced the case for the CDs, with one of them inside. For years (wouldn't be surprised if it was a decade), I only had the first CD that rested irregularly in my shelf until a few months ago; I was cleaning one of the rooms in my house (not my bedroom, weirdly), and I saw it right on one of the highest shelves, with it being obvious that it hadn't been touched in quite a long while.

To say that I was ecstatic was an understatement. I was over the moon, and immediately rushed to my CD player to play the long lost missing disc. It immediately started to cause childhood memories to flood and rush right through me, and it was a feeling that was entirely immeasurable. Ever since, I've been listening to CDs and vinyls more and more.

One of the biggest downsides about physical media, however, is the fact that it's not "recorded" anywhere. I'm a huge fan of keeping track of stuff and looking at data about the stuff I partake in (like when I watch films or listen to music). When I listen to songs on Spotify, a service automatically logs (or, "scrobbles") what I listened to and keeps track of it. This is done by last.fm.

Last.fm keeps all of this data, and allows you to see the tracks you've recently listened to, the artists you most frequently listen to in a given timeframe, make friends and look up information about music, and so much more. Not to make this sound like an advertisement, but it really is one of my favourite websites.

But, as I've mentioned, I believed that it only tracked what you listened to on Spotify or Apple Music, thus making it impossible for it to know when you're listening to something physical, like a CD or Vinyl.
What I did to get around this was that when I would listen to a record or a CD, I would simultaneously play the same album or compilation on Spotify, and then mute it and listen to the physical version. This was a little annoying, but for the longest time, it was the best I had. That was, until, very recently. I was exploring through last.fm until I came to the bottom and noticed this:

I assumed that this might've been some kind of fork of last.fm for Desktop, like a clone of the website but just on your desktop. However, I thought wrong. It was instead a way to connect the stuff you listened to on your Desktop to last.fm!! This didn't just apply to MP3 files, but also to the CDs that you listened to!!

I downloaded the Legacy edition, because it was a lot more flashy that the up-to-date one (a simple, dull text menu compared to a whole interface with a neat, Windows 7 vibe to it).

I took a while looking around to see what it could do, and it immediately blew my mind. I reached for my CD/DVD external drive (btw, we need to put CD players back built-in to laptops 🙏) and started playing my Triple J CD and it started to scrobble on the app. Now I didn't have to play the album on Spotify anymore!

Pictured above is the interface up close; I was listening to Magical Mystery Tour whilst writing this lmfao. You can see where you're scrobbling from (I use the legacy version of Windows Media Player because I like its aesthetic, it can run CDs, and I think it's the only one that's compatible with the legacy version of the Last.fm app), information about the track, information about the artist, how many times you've scrobbled the song or band/artist you're currently listening to, a quick run-down of your profile, information about your friends on last.fm, and more!!

And as I've mentioned, this also works for any MP3's (or other audio files that last.fm recognises as songs) that you have on your computer, so you can scrobble them that as well!! I think this little thing is so nifty, and such a great way to encourage more people to listen in older formats. Unfortunately, as I'm sure you might've figured, this doesn't work with Vinyls or Cassettes, as they need their own player to run instead of being able to be plugged right into your computer.

Thus, that concludes my big ol' rant about this!! I hope more people find out about this, I think it's honestly super rad, and it adds a fun spin on when I sit down to listen to my physical media. I've also just bought Computer World by Kraftwerk and The Pleasure Principle by Gary Numan because I have no self control and I'm terrible with money but they're beautiful albums sooooo..... shhh.

Aside from that, I hope you have a really lovely rest of your night!! Thank goodness that I didn't accidentally delete all of this again LMAOOOO. Stay fresh, see ya later <3