Upload file play counts

[sauyon]

I believe the gmusic client uploads song playcount metadata, which is pretty much useless but is good eyecandy, I suppose :P.

It might be helpful for things like the gmusic filesystem for people who like to keep track of music play counts, like me.

[simon-weber]

I think mediaplayers typically just store playcount in their internal database, which isn't something that's available when uploading.

There is a PCNT frame in id3 2.4, but I have no idea if anyone actually uses it.

[sauyon]

Well, might as well use it, if it's there, right?

I use quodlibet, which also uses mutagen, so maybe they're using PCNT. I'll have to check when I have access to my music library.

[simon-weber]

Sounds good. I'll check to see if any of my files have it set.

[sauyon]

I'd suggest you check the POPM tag that effectively replaces the PCNT tag.

[sauyon]

About my library, there's an option in quodlibet to write the POPM tags, and I have it enabled. As for which email to use, I would add an option and use the google email as the default.

[simon-weber]

I had thought POPM == rating and was surprised to find that it stored rating and playcount by email.

For posterity's sake:

4.17. Popularimeter

The purpose of this frame is to specify how good an audio file is. Many interesting applications could be found to this frame such as a playlist that features better audio files more often than others or it could be used to profile a person's taste and find other 'good' files by comparing people's profiles. The frame contains the email address to the user, one rating byte and a four byte play counter, intended to be increased with one for every time the file is played. The email is a terminated string. The rating is 1-255 where 1 is worst and 255 is best. 0 is unknown. If no personal counter is wanted it may be omitted. When the counter reaches all one's, one byte is inserted in front of the counter thus making the counter eight bits bigger in the same away as the play counter ("PCNT"). There may be more than one "POPM" frame in each tag, but only one with the same email address.

Email to user $00 Rating $xx Counter $xx xx xx xx (xx ...)

(from http://id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames)

Your suggestions sound good. Maybe PCNT could be checked if there's no POPM frame.

[sauyon]

Yeah, that definitely sounds good.