SweetFM brings tasty Last.fm integration to your Mac

I'm a big music fan, and I spend a good portion of my day listening to an iPod or iTunes because music helps me concentrate and stay motivated. I have a pretty extensive music collection, but I also enjoy streaming music services like Last.fm and Pandora to find new music, listen to a mix of related artists, or just play something random. My problem with streaming services is twofold: I don't like having to have a web browser open and I like to be able to easily switch songs, pause playback or even go back to iTunes. For Pandora, the excellent PandoraJam that Scott covered a few years ago is a great option, but until today, I hadn't had any luck finding a good Mac Last.fm client.

SweetFM is a new Last.fm client that offers up a seriously sexy way to listen to your favorite Last.fm stations on your Mac. Here are some highlights:

You can pause songs mid-stream and resume playback
Unlimited song skipping
Compatible with both the Apple Remote and the media keys on your Mac Keyboard. I love this because it makes it really easy for me to skip ahead, stop or pause without having to pull up the app window.
Album art support from both Last.fm and Amazon.com
Mark songs as loved, banned or add them to a playlist
If you subscribe to one of the Last.fm pay plans, you can play your loved tracks
Easy access to tagged stations, artist stations and your library
Direct access to buy songs
Export tracks to iTunes: you can do this with all tracks or just tracks you "love," and the MP3 file that is coming from the Last.fm server is automatically added to a specific iTunes playlist.
Acts as a regular iTunes controller when not streaming

I've been playing with the app on and off all day, and I'm really, really impressed. One of the things that annoys me about Pandora is that I can't see what songs are next in the queue. Sometimes you just want to skip ahead. With SweetFM, I can see up to 4 upcoming tracks from the menu bar. That's seriously nice.

I also like that the app will automatically take me to the artist page in Last.fm in my web browser or to my profile page. You can also set-up a shortcut to hide/unhide the app, if you want to keep it running but not on top of anything.

Saving tunes directly to iTunes will appeal to lots of users. At first, I thought this was being achieved through some sort of analog-hole, but after looking at some of the meta-data (which sometimes indicates how the MP3 is encoded), I think that it is actually grabbing the MP3 file that is served from Last.fm from cache and then writing it directly to iTunes. We're talking 128 kbps quality, which doesn't do much for me -- but this is a great way to create a playlist of beloved tracks. The program is smart enough to NOT export a song already in your library.

This is a 1.0 release, but I did have a few problems. Sometimes after streaming for long periods of time (or even shorter periods), I might get a stream error and have to either restart the app or try to stop/restart the station. There also seem to be a few UI inconsistencies -- although for the most part I think the UI is nice. You can even create skins for SweetFM if you are so inclined.

I wish there was an option to switch an radio station to the artist being currently played or some in-program tagging options, but I really can't find much else to quibble with. I reset my Last.fm scrobble history a while ago and have never really gotten back into the habit of using the service, save CoverSutra's scrobble integration, and this has reminded me of the value of the service.

SweetFM is $29US for a single user license, $38 for a two-pack and $47 for a five-user pack. SweetFM requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. You can try the program before purchasing, you're just limited to a number of played songs per session.

How do you listen to music? Let me know in the comments!

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Source: http://www.chocomoko.com/

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I'm a big music fan, and I spend a good portion of my day listening to an iPod or iTunes because music helps me concentrate and stay...

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asdf

Get xcode from apple and open the file inside the files from github that ends in .xcodeproj or something. It's in the Source folder. Build the set of files that xcode opens, and you should find a SweetFM.app somewhere on your computer ( i think it's in the folder you just unzipped/untarred)

September 01 2009 at 12:25 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

buxtonmarauder

SweetFM appears to have moved.. ChocoMoko is now blank and the Google source code link returns forbidden. The source appears to have found a new home at GitHub..

http://github.com/MagicMoo/SweetFM/downloads

July 30 2009 at 5:41 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to buxtonmarauder's comment

cenenum

does any body knows how to compile that source code?

August 14 2009 at 9:40 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jake

So, it looks as SweetFM is a free (as in open source) application now! http://code.google.com/p/sweetfm/

July 15 2009 at 8:32 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

samu

I found this horribly buggy; it feels more like 0.6 than 1.0. And I'm always amused when someone wants payment for software that facilitates the piracy of other people's work. Between that, the unreliability and the likelihood of Last.fm locking it out in the future, it doesn't look like a smart buy, which is a shame, because in some ways it looks very promising.

June 16 2009 at 10:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Pixelwiese

Hey there,
I also use this app for nearly a month now.
By end of the beta phase I purchased the full version and worked out a slim skin.
It can be downloaded from my page:
http://www.pixelwiese.de/2009/06/16/sweetfm-feeble/
or directly via this link:
http://www.pixelwiese.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Skin.zip
Hope you'll like it!

June 16 2009 at 3:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Erik (Chocomoko.com)

Hi TUAW, SweetFM Dev here.

Doing a little Q&A.

Q: Does SweetFM scrobble?
A: Yes, Last.fm and iTunes for now. iPod will follow soon.

Q: Is stream recording legal?
A: It depends on your country's law.

And yes, no 1.0 is perfect and has some flaws :).
But there's nothing that can't be fixed!

June 16 2009 at 2:03 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Max Howell

I worked at Last.fm until last Friday.

Last.fm's terms and conditions state that you can't pause the stream, you can't show what is coming up and you definitely can't stream rip. These conditions are all what the music industry has insisted on when various deals were made.

So they are being pretty naughty really, especially since Last.fm get no money from them at all. Frankly, they are being pretty immoral. I wouldn't buy it, pirate it if you must, but they don't deserve your money for sure.

June 16 2009 at 2:00 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Max Howell's comment

George

Cry me a river on the immoral aspect of recording from radio. Welcome to the 1970's. It sucked there.

I have SweetFm, and I quite enjoy it. The streams are only 128 Mp3 quality, so it makes them just about worthless if you enjoy music quality in the least bit. But it is nice as filler when you work.

The best part of Last.fm radio is that you can hear songs you wouldn't buy but kinda like hearing once in a while. If I want to hear music like it should be heard, free from trendy compression, I'll put on my vinyl.

July 25 2009 at 6:12 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Raffi

Do you have to pay for this as well as a monthly fee for Last.FM's radio service? That would be pretty lame.

June 16 2009 at 1:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Aaron Richard

How is ripping the stream even remotely legal?

June 16 2009 at 1:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Gabe Beltran

Why doesn't anyone like the free last.fm player provided on the website?

June 16 2009 at 12:57 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply