Automated & manual Artist disambiguation: How to drastically improve this site,…

^^ agree with IRONICtypo. I get through a lot of music a day. I don't particularly want to, or care to, spend the entire time doing admin.

IRONICtypo said:
well, the most important thing for me in this disambiguation thing (as a last.fm user and not as a mod) is pre-existing scrobbles, because it would totally suck if however it is decided to disambiguate, everyone that already has scrobbles of disambiguated artists would have to start over again OR if there's a couple songs for each artist (like a non-album single or soundtrack song with technically no album) that are stuck on the multi-artist page

Why, would they have to start over again? The new API would just move the scrobbles to their correct artist under you play count.

My other big thing is that users don't have to rename all their artists in their music player, like if I want the song "1901" to go to the French Phoenix's page, I would have to re-tag it as "Phoenix (1)" or "Phoenix (FR)", which would look awkward in my music player.

You said you didn't read the whole thread, but did you at least read the first couple pages, because I addressed this concern. The number, unlike on discogs would only be attached to the artists URL page for lfm. The scrobbler would determine whether it was "Artists" or "Artist+(2)" by looking at the available ID3 data, if the ID3 data was incomplete and did not have enough for the API to differentiate, only then would it (by option set by the user) ask the user, if the user chose not to fill in the data. If they chose to abstain from it, because they were lazy, didn't care, or went through too much music in a day. That track would stay flagged until someone else played the same track with the missing ID3 data.

The scrobbler should also be able to:

*determine simple differences in the same track, like using parenthesis vs brackets
*determine secondary artist names inside ID3 data, so that feat. pres. vs. & artist combos all get a scrobble and artists that remix tracks. The scrobble would do this again, when looking at the ID3 data by seeing those keywords or artists name.

Basically, the user should have to do as little as possible on their end and the last.fm client or website does all the work.

That's pretty much what I'm advocating, but at the same time opening up other areas to the sections of the community that DO want to be active and do as much as possible for the artists they like, such as:

*disambiguation
*uploading higher image album covers
*track correcting
*connecting tracks under compiled releases
*et cetra

So, can you think of anything else on top of the last two posts that you think may be missing to drastically improve the site? Specifically related to artist disambiguation, but also to site technique integration in general.

It would never be by country, but a simple number order, as it is on discogs. The only true option with that is the order in which each artist joined the site. This could be determined by which artist with the same name was scrobbled first.

There would be no changes necessary to the ID3 tags in your library. It would simply show up on the URL as "Artist" or "Artist+(2)".

I also believe that while on discogs every instance of that artist name on that page needs to have the "(2)" to link back to it, with the help of the scrobbler and pop up with a "which artist?" window including picture and top tags last.fm could allow each artist page even though under a different URL to have the same artist name..

In the event of a google search of the artist, lfm could have them subtree under the first artist, with tags and such in the basic spider information.

Couple things Snyde...

Did you read the last page here, I basically addressed everything you said in that post.

If you were looking at a disambiguation popup or page of a group of artists with the same name it would contain the pic from each page and their top tags/tracks this would easily differentiate for the user without having to browse each artist until they found the right one.

As I also stated right above you, the order in which the artists would be chosen, would not be up to the users whim, but would only be decided on which order the artists with the same name were chronologically scrobbled.

It's the only fair way to do it. You can't do popularity because the URL's would be constantly changing. So anyone who was complaining just didn't get it.

We're trying to maximize automated disambiguation, but allow users who want to participate to participate in a more integral fashion, with much more abilities to edit and catalog the music properly.

Just the occasional "we're working on it" comment. Nothing concrete.

OK, thanks for the info. It's a pity nothing's happened.

my 2 cents...
have multiple pages created for the same artist ie:
http://www.last.fm/music/artist_1/
http://www.last.fm/music/artist_2/
http://www.last.fm/music/artist_3/
etc
Though the artist name will always remain as ARTIST for all pages.
The scrobble app can determine which track goes to which artist based on previous scrobbles.
If this is not possible because the track is new, a notification should pop up on the user's profile asking the user in which bucket the track should be put, so with which artist it should be linked to. The user should see ie a dropdown list with the same artist name, but also some additional info like the genre, COO and band members to make it easier for the user to select the correct group.
Now if the user ignores this action (ie within 24hrs) you could perhaps auto-move the track to a temp bucket that collects all unlinked tracks until someone links them.

Don't think you can handle this without user input.

Additionally, you can give certain people admin rights who are more devoted to LastFM (like me :D) than the average user, so they can do the cleaning up.

"The imperfection of language would continually give rise to errors, if it were not balanced and corrected by the good sense of those who use it."

- Sir Jonathan Frederick Pollock

iTranscendence said:
@ronB that is essentially what I proposed as the process in this post
http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/532454/_/12869442

In that case you can consider my post as a readable summary :)

So I read all 10 pages and i am still in a flutter of what would happen.

This what i think i read:

(1) we want to have a point system like discogs for multi-artists
(2) we want genre or countries for the artists

On these, (2) b is the best, countries. You know where they are from, you know what page they be. However, you may have a same country in an artist. However, then you can split them by state/town/city based in etc via a wiki info GDFL. Then again, the wikis are a mess, i did try to make users aware of this here as i founded that group But it doesn't seem like anyone has made my guides or anything, as i would have done. If i didn't get banned by stupid rules (they are ridiculous nowadays, its like the 1997 human rights act, its fucking stupid).

Anyway, i digress as always, so overall these are the facts..

EDIT Hang on scrap above i just saw iTranscendence post above me. Would you mind puting that on the first post, with edit: Post ideas so far. As i read about 5 same posts with different users lol. That means they have come in read your post gone 'RRRRRRRAAAAAAAA' tap tap tap. then someones gone underneath 'well i just said that' then that user goes 'oh thanks'. See its repittive and users (majority) don't read history of 10 pages.