Mobbler and Mobiles in mind

A while ago a wrote briefly in a post that I had acquired a new phone, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. I’m still using it and it’s still a good phone. I can watch films, listen to music, play games and of course I get access to the Ovi Store. At first Ovi really got hammered by the press, specifically over obvious comparisons with the iPhone and it’s store. To be honest, yes, the first few apps to appear where few and far between and not necessarily all that good. With a chance to find it’s feet though,  I feel they’re now catching up and more importantly you don’t have to pay for all of them! Over the next few months I will be posting about some of the most useful apps I’ve found and prove you don’t have to spend money to gain new functionality – nor do you need anything with a fruit for a logo…

So, to start these posts off I will begin with Mobbler: a scrobbling application for your nokia phone which also functions as an internet radio using the great free service from last.fm.

First of all, for those of you already hooked on Spotify who missed last.fm it’s a similar kind of service. Thankfully it lacks the really loud announcements which feature periodically whilst using the free spotify account (don’t they just drive you mad?!) but does still provide a great way to listen to music you know and discover more you don’t. It works by running a small program which ‘listens’ to the music you play on your computer. Plugins are available for most MS players (obviously, Windows Media Player, Winamp and iTunes) as well as those available in Linux (Rythmbox, Banshee, Exaile, XMMS to name but a few). The app on your phone, if left to run in the background, does the same thing.

After this program has listened to what you play for a while last.fm begins to collate the bands/artists’ songs that you play and compares them with a database of similar artists on their website. Now, when you load up the radio on your phone it will play you a personalised station of songs you have played with similar artists you may or may not have heard of mixed in. If you really like a track which it generates, click the love button to tell last.fm so and their clever algorithm will take that into account as it creates your specialised radio-feed. Brilliant or what!?

So to start off with you’ll need a last.fm account – luckily it’s free so head over and sign up now. Like spotify you can upgrade your account for extra features if you like but it’s really up to you. I haven’t. While you’re on their website don’t forget to have a poke around. The last.fm community have made quite a few cool little widgets and social networking addons to do more things with your music data. The least of which is the chart which you can display anywhere – it might even look slightly like this:

Especially if you listen to as much Frank Turner as me…

If it were harder to set this program up on your own computer I would go into detail here but it’s really so very easy. On windows download the program and install the plugin for your chosen music player. In linux, you can do the same or just use the aforementioned programs built in capabilities to scrobble.

So what are you waiting for? Get scrobbling! Anyone can do it and anyone can discover new music. Now you can be a snooty music snob, if you really want to be (?) or not…