Windows Media Top 10 Plugin --------------------------- by Ben Watson http://www.philosophicalgeek.com Requirements ------------ Windows XP/2003/Vista* Windows Media Player 11** * May work under Windows 98/2000, but I haven't tested. **should work with Windows Media Player 10 as well, but have noticed an intermittent crashing problem with this Introduction ------------ WMTop10 is a set of two plugins that monitor your most popular music as it is played in Windows Media Player. It monitors the most popular songs, albums, artists, album artists, composers, genres, and languages. Description ----------- The "Windows Media Top 10 (Monitor)" plugin is what does the actual monitoring. A separate display plugin displays the actual lists of most popular titles, artists, etc. The reason there are two plugins is because you may want your music monitored all the time in order to accurately rank popularity, but you may not always want the display to be on. This way, the background plugin can continue to watch your songs while you use a graphic visualizer, for example. Options ------- Upon installation, both plugins will be set as active, and the plug-in properties dialog will be displayed. To view these options later, go to Tools | Plugins | Options | Background | Windows Media Top 10 (Monitor) | Properties. The available options are: When to track: * When Song Starts - song play is recorded as soon as it starts playing. This is less desirable because even if you just skip through tracks, each one will be recorded. * When Song Ends - this is preferred because a song is recorded when it ends-- when it's more likely you've actually listened to the whole thing. What to track: * Mark blank song attributes - If this is checked, a song attribute that is not present can be put into a catch-all category called . Database: * Clear all information - clears all the statistics collected and starts from scratch.