Foobar2000:Components/Playback Statistics v3.x (foo playcount)

This component collects and maintains statistics for played songs.

The statistics include:

Time/date first played
Time/date last played
Playback count
Time/date added to the Media Library
Rating

New playback statistics data pinning scheme introduced in version 3.0

Playback statistics are now pinned to a combination of artist + album + disc number + track number + track title information, contrary to pre-3.0 versions which would pin data to file paths.

The consequences of this behavior are:

Statistics are shared between redundant copies of the same tracks - useful when you keep separate copies of your music in different formats such as lossy + lossless.
Automatic carrying over of statistics when acquiring the same music in another format, as long as tags match.
No risk of data loss when moving files around or between computers.

When editing tags, affected playback statistics records are transferred accordingly.

Starting from version 3.0, collection of playback statistics is no longer restricted to your Media Library content. You can use this component without using Media Library at all, however, you should keep your non-ML music referenced from a playlist for foobar2000 to maintain the statistics.

Playback statistics data is no longer dropped when the tracks are removed from the media library. A record gets removed when no matching track has been seen by foobar2000 (in Media Library or in any playlist or in an imported XML backup of playback statistics) for four weeks.

Backwards compatibility

As with all previous releases, this component is fully backwards compatible with databases created by any versions released publicly before. If you have used an earlier version of the Playback Statistics component before, your existing data will be automatically imported on first run.

If you wish to keep the ability to revert to an older 2.x version, please back up your PlaybackStatistics.dat file before running the new component first time.

XML backup functionality

You can export playback statistics to an XML file and import them later, through Library => Playback Statistics menu commands, or through context menu on specific tracks. This can be used to easily transfer playback statistics between different foobar2000 installations or profiles.

Title formatting fields

%first_played% - date/time at which the song was played for the first time.
%last_played% - date/time at which the song was played last time.
%play_count% - how many times the song has been played.
%played_per_day% - estimate how many times per day the song has been played, based on time first played, time last played and times played.
%added% - date/time at which the song was added to the Media Library.
%rating% - song's rating, on a 1..5 scale.
%rating_stars% - song's rating, formatted as up to five stars, e.g. ★★★
%rating_stars_fixed% - song's rating, formatted as five stars, e.g. ★★★☆☆

Note that you may need to change your fonts for the stars-formatting fields to produce readable output.

Detailed Information about Title formatting for Playback Statistics can be found here.

Common problems after installing

Please note that this component takes over %rating%, showing rating according to its own database. If you store rating in tags, use $meta(rating) to access it. This behavior has changed in version 3.0, previous versions would fall back to tag contents when rating information was not present in the database.

Compatibility

foobar2000 v1.1 or newer is required, beta versions included.