I wrote back in February about my Raspberry Pi and the plans to use it for a music rating and recommendation app.

Well, I actually wrote the app, and it has been running “in production” since before the summer. I’m really pleased with it – I achieved exactly what I had hoped. It often helps me rediscover music that I had forgotten we had, and listen to old favourites that I would probably have not remembered otherwise. And because it logs all the music we listen to, including music that Eric puts on, I also discover entirely new music.

The app shows me what is currently playing on our various Sonos devices so that I can rate these albums. I can also rate recently played ones. And based on those ratings I can ask for recommendations. I get a list of suggestions with albums I have rated highly, and another list of albums I have not rated yet (to gather more data).

I’ve been thinking of adding more smarts to it. It could suggest albums that we haven’t listened to recently (forgotten favourites, rather than all favourites). And maybe show some “flashbacks” like the blog has – “your most listened album last year” etc. Maybe a project for the Christmas break.

From a technical point of view, I learned more Vue.js than I knew before, and played around with flex layout in CSS. My CSS is mostly hacks piled on other hacks, but in a tiny project like this that’s fine!