Review: Mobbler
Score:
77%
If you're into music discovery in a big way then here's another system that's going to appeal. Following on from yesterday's Spotify review, Ewan's been looking at Mobbler, which attempts to stream you music that 'it thinks you might like'. Here's the Mobbler review, which explains more about its modus operandis in more detail.
Version Reviewed: 1.095
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We've looked at Mobbler before on All About Symbian, back in mid 2008 (here's the review), but since then it has gone through a huge amount of development work, become a more polished and rounded application, and in a certain sense has left behind the teenage rebellious years and has settled down to a nice life.
But it's still performing the same core function it did all those years ago. It's an open-source client for Last.FM, a web-based music service that records what music you listen to on your computer or portable media player. This profile is then analysed and the service provides you with a list of other people on the Last.FM social network that have the same musical tastes as yourself.
This client is less focussed on getting the social network running, and more on making sure your music played returns to the Last.FM service for scrobbling (the name they give to analysing your music), and suggesting new music for you to listen to.
The big change now in Mobbler (aside from the cosmetic reworking and wider device compatibility) is that it has become Symbian Signed, as opposed to being self-signed by the authors. This allows more access to the phone's functions, so web links now open in the full web browser application, as opposed to an embedded window, and you can set the album art of the currently playing track to be your phone's wallpaper.
Other changes to make Mobbler a more user friendly application (not that it wasn't already) include the smart usage of your music library on your phone. If a track is due to be streamed to you, and you have it on your phone's memory, then Mobbler will cancel the streaming, play the local version of the track, and then switch back to streaming without you having to lift a finger. A nice touch that will save on battery power, network usage and bandwidth.
Of course the biggest change is that the hand drawn icons have been replaced with a more professional look, which does a lot to give Mobbler more credit as a full blown application, as opposed to something hacked together just to get it working – but hey, lots of projects start out that way.
Mobbler makes scrobbling your music easy – just leave it running in the background and it will pick up what you play on the built in music player. If you're online at the time, they'll go straight into the Last.FM database, otherwise it will queue them up until you do go online. You could start Mobbler running, never look at it again, and it'll carry on doing its thing and building up a profile of your music that you can explore online.
Or you could start really using it by streaming some music.
Unlike streaming services such as Spotify, Last.Fm won't play you any piece of music that you ask it to play. Rather it will look at your profile, and play music that it thinks you will like. While that means you're not going to get your favourite Iron Maiden track, it might suddenly introduce you to Finnish power metal band Stratovarius. Spookily, most of the time it'll hit your sweet spot of good music and you'll be on a road of musical discovery.
It's not just your “recommended [by Last.FM]” that you can listen to, these 'radio' stations can be seeded by an artist name, a specific tag or keyword (“Love” or “Depression” give some amazing results), or you investigate the “Loved Tracks” option. This is only open to those who subscribe to the paid Last.FM account, (currently £3 a month) but plays back a random track from your loved tracks – which you can mark from inside Mobbler while listening to music by pressing the heart icon.
One of the great things about the continuing evolution of Mobbler is that, when there are problems, you can expect a fix for them in short order. Sometimes the volume keys on the X6, which normally work no matter what app you are in, are 'locked out' when Mobbler is running – the only way to change the volume is to actually go into the Mobbler application. Will that still be there in the next build? I don't know, but I've more confidence that this will be fixed and updated than in other music based applications on S60.
What Mobbler needs to do now is improve deep integration into the handset – while it's not noticeable on older handsets, the X6's (and 5800's, etc.) quick media bar allowing speedy access to the music player is not configurable by the end user. The process of jumping to Mobbler is actually quite slow and involves holding down the app button to pop up the Task Manager - so that volume control bug can get annoying very quickly. Mobbler is still a separate application to the S60 music player, and while that's sufficient for the more experienced user happy to tinker with their phone, something a little bit more joined up is needed for true mass market appeal.
With Symbian now going Open Source, perhaps the Mobbler version for Symbian^3 will sit inside the music player application and everything will go together seamlessly? It's a nice thought, but until then Mobbler is probably as joined up as it's going to be. For a third party application, this is as perfect example of what Web Services (which allow programmers access to their functions via an API) can do for you - and for the music lover in you, I'd recommend it (and Last.FM) in a heartbeat.
-- Ewan Spence, Feb 2010.
PS: In terms of data usage, if you run Mobbler on the default options, streaming five tracks took 16MB. This is the natural file size for an MP3 sampled at a bitrate of 128k. Over my 3G connection, there was no dropping of the music, it stayed solid through the whole five tracks. You can toggle this bitrate to 64k if you are having bandwidth or connection problems, and the size of the music buffer can be varied from between 1 and 15 seconds - but 5 seconds worked for me. Mind you, the numbers mean that, unless you have a generous data plan, you should only use Mobbler’s streaming on Wifi!
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at