Hi Last.fm folks!

We have made another step towards the metadata cleaning project: the first beta of a usable fingerprint client is out!

For the moment it's just a command line program, but we are working hard to include the library in the official last.fm client as soon as possible!

Here is how it works: get your OS version (see below), and just type:

lastfmfpclient yourMp3File.mp3

141878 Spank Rock Chilly Will 0.8913763 25 28
141878 Spank Rock Track 09 0.04141196 1 28
141878 Spank Rock/Rosalie Parker Chilly…

Maybe some of you have already noticed that we changed slightly the composition of the tag clouds. The reason is simple: we updated the algorithm which is "arranging" the tags you provide, so that it now reflects more what real fans think about their beloved artists/tracks/albums.

This does not mean that some tags are being trashed: every tag is precious! What we have done is develop an algorithm that combines a wide set of elements to avoid - as much as possible - spammers and organized mobs (as the listeners of a famous female "artist" know very well.. ;) ).…

Hi everybody!

Maybe some of you have already noticed: there is a new artists similarity algorithm running. We decided to be conservative and keep the old one with the (new) addition of a special filter that takes out the stuff that is clearly not related to the style of the artist. For instance, Beethoven had, among his top 100 similar artists, groups like Pink Floyd, The Beatles and the omnipresent Radiohead. Hopefully this is now fixed, yeah!

We are very well aware that there are still tons of issues about these lists (which, by the way, are computed…

Hi everybody!

The new taste-o-meter is online. And the new neighborhood too!
Now the two things are directly related, so it should not happen that you get "medium" or "low" on your neighbor anymore.

How it works? Well, the whole neighbor computation is derived from a rather standard user-based collaborative filtering technique, with some additional "tricks". Bwahahahahah! ;)

This technique returns a (real) value between 0 and 1, that represent the "compatibility" between two users. Since it is rather uncommon that two users share exactly the same set of artists, that number is generally between 0.4 and 0, with a…