Last.fm and Apple Music?

I was wondering wether or not there is any info about possibly srobbling to Last.fm with Apple Music both in iTunes on OS X (or any OS for that matter) and Apple Music in iOS? As I use a MacBook Pro and an iPhone, Apples ecosystem is of greater importance to me.


For what I've understood, before Apple Music it has been only possible to scrobble with the help of Last.fm Scrobbler from iTunes on your computer, and I believe it hasn't been possible to link Music in iOS to make scrobbling possible. On Spotify this has been possible since quite a while ago, which is why I fear that I need to stick with them instead of Apple Music. It is very important to me to be able to keep track of my listening and use Last.fm with my music listening services, and I believe (and hope) that I'm not the only one.


If someone has some insights about this, they would be highly appreciated.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Jun 30, 2015 10:56 AM

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Posted on Jul 2, 2015 9:07 AM

There's a lot of misinformation in this thread. It should be clear that any scrobbling app (bowtie for desktop, cloudscrob for ios, or the default scrobbler apps by last.fm) will work to scrobble any tracks played from your library. Nothing ever stopped working.

The only thing that's not working is streaming curated playlists. People should stop saying "I've found a fix" in their confusion. There is no fix that anyone can provide for this but Apple. If you like a curated playlist, save it to your library, navigate to your own playlists and play it from there. Any tool you use will then scrobble the plays even if they are not downloaded, so long as they are playing from your library.

I would also disagree that switching back to Spotify is a meaningful solution unless scrobbling is top priority. Spotify has offered a stagnant user experience since it's inception. It's a pain to manage your library especially on the mobile app. It's especially difficult and near unreasonable to play your own files that spotify doesn't offer. The only way to do this is through shoddy workarounds like having them in a pinned playlist. I'd rather patronize a music streaming service that adopts everything users have ever wanted in one package and REQUEST that they add last.fm support.

56 replies

Jul 1, 2015 2:45 AM in response to jacek_zieba

Cloudscrob has been proposed already. It's been tested and it turns out it only works for songs that have been added to your library. Anything your stream directly from Apple Music (from Radio, Playlist or Search results) won't be scrobbled to Last.fm, as (it appears) it doesn't log any information about play counts while only streaming.


I think JSt83 contacted the app developer (not sure if it's CloudScrob or QuietScrob), and he'll be looking into the issue, see if there's anything that can be done.

Jul 1, 2015 9:47 AM in response to AlexOscar

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet but the desktop last.fm app has always worked to scrobble tracks played on iOS. It just scrobbles them all when you sync the device to iTunes. For me this is more convenient than the scrobbling apps as they often seem to just stop working unless I constantly pull the apps back to the foreground. I still think the best solution is for enough people to voice demand for native last.fm integration into iOS and iTunes on OS X. With last.fm's new design, whether you like it or not, it may be getting more popular so this could become more feasible in the future.

Jul 8, 2015 12:54 AM in response to josephMAClord

I just gave sssmusic for iOS a test. The app is a little clunky on iPad but the today widget scrobble is a nice feature. Unfortunately, as of now it does not scrobble any content played via Apple Music Radio stations. Yes, it works for everything else as far as I can tell. But it's still no solution to the overall problem of complete scrobbles of Apple Music.

Aug 5, 2015 3:08 AM in response to AlexOscar

Like many here I've been using Bowtie to scrobble from Apple Music and have found that it works just fine with streamed tracks. It's an abandoned app (the developer went off to work for Apple I believe), which makes me a little unsure about it's utility as a long term solution, but for now it's fine.


FWIW I've found that version 1.4 actually works more reliably than 1.5 on both Yosemite and El Cap beta with almost no multiple scribbles (1.5 was routinely duplicating the same track 2, 3 and even 4 times when it had only been played once). If 1.5 is being buggy for you, I recommend rolling back to 1.4.


Longer term hopefully one of the developers behind some of the other scrobbling apps will step up and find a stable solution.

Dec 8, 2015 3:28 AM in response to AlexOscar

if iOS 9.1 ever gets a *censored by Apple*, I'll update my Google Music solution for Apple Music:

https://github.com/octalmage/lastgoogle


This app hooks into the native Google Music app and detects when songs are played, and logs the song and timestamp to a file. This would be easy to do with Apple Music too. This is the only way it's going to work unless:

  • Apple adds native Last.fm support.
  • Apple adds an API to retrieve information about your listening history.

I'm in the same boat as all of you. I have music logged since 2007 and I'm not ready to give this up. Thinking about using Spotify since I got a new iPhone and lost my *censored by Apple*.


Everyone should send Apple feedback here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Jul 1, 2015 1:37 PM in response to AlexOscar

Apple music has a gorgeous UI, and the fact that it is somewhat "cluttered" with new music vs. your exsiting collection can be overlooked. Since its launched, I've scoured the internet looking for ways to scrobble to last.fm and tried several apps but nothing has worked. This leads me to believe I will have to stick with what works and works very well: Spotify. I have 6 years of data in last.fm and I'm not about to sacrifice it for a service like Apple Music when Spotify suits my needs and does what it does flawlessly. This is disappointing bc I really want to love and use Apple Music.

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