gHacks technology news » last.fm music http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:26:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Download Music From Last.fm http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/27/download-music-from-lastfm/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/27/download-music-from-lastfm/#comments Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:28:41 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=7901 Last.fm is one of the largest music websites on the Internet. Users can listen to music on the site, discover related musicians and communicate with other users. The music portal provides access to a feature called Radio which essentially makes it possible to stream music that is related to artists, tags or users.

This radio feature is being used by Last Sharp, an application that can be used to download music from Last.fm. Last Sharp requires the Microsoft .net framework 2.0 and an operating system that is either Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista. The application itself can be unpacked and started from any directory on the hard drive without installation. The only other requirement is a Last.fm user account to be able to tune in and download the music.

The default language of the interface is German but it can be set to English in the options. The options are in the lower left corner. The user can set the download directory, add a proxy, enable continuous downloads or select to normalize mp3 files with MP3 Gain.

last fm

The heart of the program is the Tune In section which can be used to load a 30 track playlist filtered by tag, similar artists or account specific parameters. All tracks of the playlist are selected by default and can be downloaded by right-clicking in the window and selecting the Download option from the context menu. Tracks that are not wanted can be unchecked. The Remember Downloads setting in the option is handy to prevent that already downloaded tracks are downloaded again.

It should be noted that the downloads have to be in order. Selecting a download from the middle will prevent downloads of tracks that are listed above it in the playlist. It is however still possible to recreate the playlist which will be populated with songs that can be downloaded.

One interesting parameter is continuous download. It will automatically pull the next 30 track playlist from Last.fm once the end of the last has been reached. This effectively means unlimited downloads for as long as the application is running.

Last Sharp is available on a German website. Just scroll down to the section called Aktuelle Version and click on the Download link which leads to Rapidshare where the application can be downloaded.

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