Impossible to scrobble to Last.FM since Catalina?

Log some feedback with the folks that work at Apple: Product Feedback - Apple

If a third-party app can “scrobble”, then so too could Last FM.

The folks at LastFM are also also not using iTunes to access the library (unless they’re doing something really creative, like actually scripting iTunes), they’re preferably using the existing frameworks to access the music library, and those frameworks have been available for a while (iTunesLibrary debuted in macOS High Sierra 10.13, for instance). More recently, Apple has added a framework allowing apps to access Apple Music, too: MusicKit.

It's not that it's impossible to scrobble in Catalina, it's just become more challenging. I use Neptunes to scrobble Apple Music plays. Though since the iTunes to Apple Music transition scrobbling has been a mess. It's no longer really possible to scrobble on Mac and iOS cleanly. They're often tripping over each other, where the iOS app will submit the same scrobbles that had already been sent from macOS. I just submitted a feature request asking for last.fm support to be baked into the app like Spotify has.

I do think you may be getting in tough moving forward with iPod Classic support, as Apple probably isn't going to go out of their way to build support in their new app. You may have to stick with Mojave for awhile to keep the iTunes. I did try using Retroactive to install iTunes in Catalina, but it didn't resolve my scrobbling issues. I think since it's doing a workaround none of the current scrobbling apps identify iTunes properly as the source. Silicio does allow you to choose source, Apple Music/Spotify/iTunes/Vox, but it unfortunately doesn't work when you choose iTunes. My guess is it would work fine if I was using Mojave with standard iTunes.

I, too, have an iPod classic that I use as my main non-home listening device (I also have an iPhone SE with a scrobbling app that is working smoothly for now). I offloaded my music library to an older (2011) iMac running High Sierra due to space reasons–my MBA with Catalina has a 128GB hard drive and barely fits the library on its own–and use NepTunes while I'm on there. I'm still not sure how to get the iPod classic's plays scrobbled though... do I need to use the official app? I only got back into last.fm recently, and that's what I seem to remember doing years ago when I was active on last.fm.