(2012-12-11, 22:06)mad-max Wrote: Sorry to dig out this thread, but I have a general question.
Is there any official statement to this:
(2012-12-07, 23:16)ronie Wrote: we will not be fixing this issue and are going to remove last.fm radio support in xbmc.
i admit that may sound a bit harsh, so let me explain things a bit...
two years ago, right before the release of Dharma, shoutcast radio support broke in xbmc.
last year, weeks before the release of Eden, weather.com decided to switch to a paid api,
which broke weather support in xbmc.
this year, again short before the release of the next stable version of xbmc, last.fm breaks.
add to that, the various similar situations we had with internal scrapers...
so it was decided long time ago we should move any external service we depend upon out of the xbmc core.
our addon system is the ideal place for such services as addons can be updated quickly should any of these services break.
in the case of last.fm, there are two other things that make it less interesting to keep in inside xbmc:
- their new radio api will only stream to paid subscribers (it's not free anymore)
- you're not allowed to use the new api on mobile phones...and xbmc does run on mobile phones
i should add, the reason last.fm switched to paid subscriptions is because they are a legitimate source
that actually pays royalties to the artists of the tracks you play.
also the exclusion of mobile phones is not something the invented themselves, but it's part of the
licensing deal they have with the music industry.