MusicBee AutoDJ - Creating a custom radio

Last.fm radio has an option to build a standard radio based on a maximum of 3 tags, however these are used as an AND-station: play music that is Rock AND Hip-Hop AND Opera. This will usually result in very few tracks since there isn't a lot of music like that.

It is however possible to create a radio that is build with much more options since the Last.fm uses RQL (Radio Query Language) and it looks like a long series of letters. Thankfully you don't have to know (another) tech language since there is an excellent web-interface that takes care of this:

ComboFM

(http://www.combofm.de)
When you first enter the site you only need to enter your (or anybody else') Last.fm username to start building your own custom radio. You can add artists, tags, specific peoples libraries or their friends libraries, personal radio (Library, Mix Radio, Neighbours, Recommendations and (all) Friends), just click on any you want to add to your current Query or enter the name of one that isn't shown. You can delete items from it by clicking on the [X] and drag'n'drop items to get a different sequence.

When you have multiple items in your query, you get an extra option that makes this work even better than Last.fm's default: you can set the option to AND (the tracks needs to be both items), OR (the track can be either item) and NOT (the track can not be in the following item).

Some examples of when this is useful: say you want to play your recommendations but only the ones that are tagged with electronic, or the library of that friend with excellent taste in Blues but not the tracks that you already know.

Note however that this works only at track-level not artist-level: So a track from an artist tagged as dark ambient would play if it isn't tagged as dark ambient itself. (http://www.last.fm/forum/21716/_/616299/_/14770039)

When you've added+sorted your items you then copy the link for Last.fm Software to Notepad and copy everything after "lastfm://", next you go to "stream tracks from:" in the AutoDJ, change it to custom and paste it in "lastfm://". Press Start DJ

Some examples:
folk OR cajun OR bluegrass NOT classic rock NOT female vocalists
will give the following link:
lastfm://rql/dGFnOiJmb2xrIiBvciB0YWc6ImNhanVuIiBvciB0YWc6ImJsdWVncmFzcyIgbm90IHRhZzoiY2xhc3NpYyByb2NrIiBub3QgdGFnOiJmZW1hbGUgdm9jYWxpc3RzIiBvcHQ6ZGlzY292ZXJ5fHRydWU=

Tag vandalism

Since tags for artists are added by the listeners there will be some people who find it funny to tag artists like Justin Bieber with "speedmetal" or "death metal", very "funny" until you want to listen to a tag like that. A workaround for this is to make a radio where the tracks need to be tagged with more versions:
(tag:"death metal" and tag:"brutal death metal")
(tag:"hip-hop" and tag:"rap")

You can add these parenthesis by using an encoder/decoder like http://rumkin.com/tools/compression/base64.php (webinterface), just copy everything after "rql/", paste into the decoder and you see the normal version of your radio. Make the changes you want, press "Encode to base64" and paste the resulting string in its proper place.

List of possible items

Name   Value   Description
user           [username]   personal station
library   [username]   a users library
loved   [username]   loved tracks of user. After Nov 17 2010 this station is not available anymore!
rec      [username]   recommendations for a user
neigh   [username]   neighbour radio of user
adv      [username]   Play a user's mix radio.
simart   "[artist name]"   Similiar artists of an artist. Keep the quotes around.
tag      [tag]   Global tag radio
group   "Group Name" or [groupid]   Group radio
opt:rep|   [0-1](default: 0.5)   Specifies the track repetition, means how long it will take until the track is played again
opt:mainstr|   [0-1] (default: 0.5)   Type of tracks played(obscure to popular)
opt:discovery|   [true|false] (default: false)   Discovery mode on/off

Note: if the radio uses 240+ characters it only works with the AutoDJ, Radio Stations in MB can't use links of this length.

Sources

Source code and bug tracker: https://github.com/tburny/combofm
Blog post with the list of possible items: http://burnysblog.blogspot.nl/2010/04/combo-station-urls.html
Last.fm forum thread about ComboFM: http://www.last.fm/forum/21716/_/616299/1
interesting info in that thread:
Discovery-mode is outdated (http://www.last.fm/forum/21716/_/616299/_/18505455)