If you visit Stompy a lot, but are annoyed by scrolling through pages and pages just to listen to new music, you might be interested in something that I created - it's called Stompy's Little Helper. It's kinda like Craig's Little Helper (search "craig's little helper" on google), but it's built specifically to aggregate and remember what tracks you've listened to on Stompy.

What my site does is pull the entire Stompy catalog into my local database and then it spits out a big list of all of their tracks. From there you can click on a link that will open up all of the tracks listed in WinAmp, Windows Media Player, or any other player that supports either m3u or asx playlists. To give you an idea of why this is cool, I can quickly preview about 100 tracks in a bout 5 minutes or less. If you have a laptop with media buttons on the front, you can open the playlist in Windows Media Player and use those buttons to listen to Stompy tracks while you do other stuff - no longer are you stuck at the Stompy site!

When you are done listening to those tracks, you click on "Mark these tracks as listened" and the site will remember what tracks you've listened to. No longer will you have to waste your time listening to tracks you've already listened to!!

I think this interface is WAAAAAAAAAAAY better than Stompy's, but I'll let you guys be the judge. I am willing to allow maybe 10 or so people in right now as it's still very rough around the edges and I don't know exactly how robust it is. I've been using it for at least a year so I know it works, but I think it would be cool to see how useful it is for other people. After I see that it's running smoothly for a bunch of people, I might open it up to more of you.

I don't like listening to the same track twice, so my goal is to see if I can get the music sites to do a better job of remember what tracks we've listened to. Why the sites haven't caught on and do this already is beyond me, but I would love it if we could convince them to have this functionality. If Beatport and Traxsource remembered my tracks, I would actually visit those sites and would definitely be purchasing tracks through their sites as well. But as it is, I just end up getting lost and do all my shopping through Stompy. It's not the worst thing in the world because Stompy has a great selection, but I feel that I could find so many other gems if I visited the other sites as well...


So, if you are a hard-core Stompy fan and want to hear all the latest tracks in one easy interface, please drop me a private message with your email address and I'll create an account for you. You don't have to give me your email address, but if you do it's easier for me to contact you should there be a problem or if I'm letting everyone know about updates - it's your choice.

And yes, I'd love to do this for other sites (i.e. traxsource and beatport), but I haven't figured out how. Maybe if enough people use this and like it, we can convince those sites to build in this kinda functionality.

Thanks!
Mike

Uhhh sounds pretty damn cool but can we get a direct Link (mods should give this a pass - sounds VERY USEFUL - i hate stompy's interface)

Ok, I just sent you a private message with your username and password. Because the site remembers all of the tracks you've listened to, I can't just let anyone in because I need some way of personalizing the information. I guess I could do something with cookies, but I figured using a username/password combo would work a little better.

Take a look and give it a try. As I mentioned on the help page, there are two ways you can use the site - you can either start with no tracks marked as listened and then slowly make your way through their entire catalog and mark tracks off as you go. I did this and it took me about a year to make it through all 70,000 or so tracks. Probably not realistic for most people, so it's probably just easier to click on "mark entire catalog as listened" and then come back in a few days. You will then see all of the new tracks since the last time you visited.

Essentially, you will always get a list of the newest tracks that they add to their site. Even though you're (currently) forced to listen to everything that they put up on their site, the time it takes is somewhat negligible.

Now, if it becomes too annoying and you want to be able to check off only certain genres that you'd like to filter by, let me know and I will see if I can make some check boxes. But honesly, they only release about 700 tracks a week, and if you go every week, that'll take you about 15-20 minutes to listen to everything...

Also, what you'll notice is that they update their catalog somewhat continuously throughout the week and sometimes during the weekend. If they do, the site will notice that there is a difference between my local database and theirs, and it will also tell you how many tracks were added/removed. They seem to make most of their updates from mon-wed, with wednesday being their weekly release day.

Have you tried it out yet? Lemme know if it's working for ya!

Mike

Yep, gave it a try, works but it gives a ton of stream files in itunes (messy) but they are easy to delete.

I guess I am so used to traxsource and the nicer interface, so I purchase more over there even though Stompy is cheaper.

you gotta mark the catalog as listened to. Then go back a week later and you'll see all the new tracks. As far as I know, traxsource doesn't offer that option (neither does stompy).

Now, if itunes is making a mess of things, then I can't do much there.. but it should just be playing the playlist..

also, I would recommend listening to the new tracks in chunks of 50 or 100. If you don't get through all 500, you won't know where you left off.