Last.fm Desktop Scrobbler Released!

Thursday, 31 January 2013
by michaelc
filed under Announcements and Code
Comments: 26

Hello, scrobble fans! Were you wondering where your desktop app updates had gone? Well wonder no longer! With the last major version released back in 2007 (those were the days, eh?) you’d be forgiven for thinking there weren’t any more coming, but we’ve actually been hard at work on an update to bring us crashing into 2008, a little late.

We released this new desktop scrobbler as a beta a little under a year ago and have been spending the time since getting it ready for launch. A couple of weeks ago (15th Jan) that launch day finally arrived and we pushed it out to everyone on Windows, Mac, and Linux! If you’ve not already got it you can head over to our download page for a fresh copy.

Here’s a Youtube.com video of us reaching 200,000 authenticated users on the new app: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy_VwcGazE4. Just look at how much fun we’re having!

The app comes with a new design and some features we hope you’ll really love. There’s a now playing tab where information about your currently scrobbling track will show up, including related artists, tags, biography, and scrobble statistics. Tracks played from radio stations will also show you a little context as to why the track is being played. A scrobbles tab where you can see a history of what you’ve been scrobbling and find out more about those tracks. A profile tab where you can see your scrobble charts. A friends tab where you can see what your friends are listening to and start their library radios. There’s also a radio tab where you can start all your usual Last.fm radio stations including a history of your recent ones.

We’re looking at the app as a baseline with which we can add and improve upon. There’s been a few ideas bubbling away that we can’t wait to add, but for now the focus is stability. With a large change such as this there are bound to be teething troubles and we’ve been taking your feedback on the client support forum and making sure we address problems and implement anything we might have missed that you loved in the old app.

A reminder that, like our iOS and Android apps, the desktop Scrobbler is open source and hosted on our Last.fm github page (both the liblastfm and lastfm-desktop repositories make up the desktop app) where you’ll also be able to find other things Last.fm have open sourced. If you’d like to get involved with development then head over there and fork us!

It’s been a long road getting to this point and I’d like to thank all the client team members, contributors, and believers past and present for making it happen. You know who you are and you’re all very wonderful!

Last.fm Scrobbler for Linux

We at Last.fm love Linux. Not only does it power almost all of the server machines that bring Last.fm to you, it is also the operating system of choice of many of our developers at Last.HQ. For our desktop application Last.fm Scrobbler, Linux is a first class supported operating system. The source code is available on GitHub if you want to have a go at building it yourself, but we also provide ready built packages for those of you who are using Debian or Ubuntu. Just go to http://apt.last.fm and find out how to install them. Today we release an updated set of packages featuring the latest version of Last.fm scrobbler (2.1.33).

We are also proud to release official packages of Last.fm Scrobbler for the Raspberry Pi today. If you have not heard about Raspberry Pi, it is an ambitious project to bring better teaching of programming and the technology behind computers to children. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity that has designed and developed a mini computer that costs less than £40 and allows not only children to dive into the world of computer programming. Being so cheap, the Raspberry Pi has also attracted many hackers to make new things based on this mini computer. Media centre solutions are already very popular, which is not surprising because the Raspberry Pi has a network interface and video and audio outputs. We now contribute our Last.fm client application to the Raspberry Pi universe. If you have a Raspberry Pi and are running the Raspbian operating system on it, then head over to http://apt.last.fm quickly and install Last.fm Scrobbler for Raspberry Pi!

Comments

  1. Don
    31 January, 18:42

    thank you for supporting Linux add a first class citizen! yet another reason last.fm is better than everyone else. could you also add some packages for opensuse?

    I’d also like to see a blog post detailing the Linux setups you guys all have on your workstations.

    Don – 31 January, 18:42
  2. Bren
    31 January, 20:16

    What do I do if the authentication doesn’t work? It’s not opening anything in my browser and the “alternatively, copy this link” section just stays empty with nothing to copy. I’m not using any proxies. I’m on Windows 7, by the way, and my media player is Winamp (I did try an old standalone Winamp plugin instead but it caused Winamp to crash on startup). Any ideas? Can I authenticate some other way?

    Bren – 31 January, 20:16
  3. Louie
    1 February, 00:21

    It’s a shame it’s so broken because it doesn’t even scrobble for me properly and even scrobbles tracks twice when i’ve only listened to them once. Fix this shit, please. My friends are having similar problems.

    Louie – 1 February, 00:21
  4. Toffer
    1 February, 03:08

    I’m using 2.1.33 on Ubuntu 12.10 and I can’t get the new scrobbler to show anything in the Now Playing tab. Unlike on my Mac where the scrobbler is able to fingerprint and identify my music playing, on Linux not only is it unable to fingerprint the playing song (from either Spotify or Banshee) but even if I enable the last.fm reporting directly in those applications, while it will show the songs in the Scrobbles tab it still will not show anything in the Now Playing tab.

    Is there something I can do to fix this?

    Toffer – 1 February, 03:08
  5. Raven
    1 February, 03:55

    Can we have the option to only scrobble from certain folders back please?

    Raven – 1 February, 03:55
  6. Madhawa
    1 February, 04:38

    Still doesn’t make use of Facebook open graph, like Spotify and all.

    Madhawa – 1 February, 04:38
  7. daniel
    1 February, 12:40

    To me is fine. The only thing that I don’t like is the smaller size of the window, but.. no problem

    daniel – 1 February, 12:40
  8. tburny
    1 February, 16:40

    I really need to buy a few Raspberry Pi now :)

    tburny – 1 February, 16:40
  9. Haythem
    2 February, 02:14

    You guys = awesome

    Haythem – 2 February, 02:14
  10. skopp
    2 February, 04:38

    It doesn’t seem to be working with the Skype API anymore to show the “Now Playing” status. Skype build 6.1.0.129, Last.fm scrobbler build 2.1.33; Windows 7 ×86

    skopp – 2 February, 04:38
  11. Sockymon
    2 February, 09:35

    I’m a Linux noob with a Raspberry Pi and I don’t understand the syntax of the commands described in the example. Could some one spell it out for me, because I’m confused.

    Sockymon – 2 February, 09:35
  12. TMK
    5 February, 18:36

    I’ve been nagged for a while to install the new version so I thought I’d give it a go.

    It’s a bit unfortunate that at no point during the process of a) notifying the user of the update, b) uninstalling the old scrobbler and c) installing the new version is a simple check of the OS version performed, and if an unsupported OS version (say, Windows 2000 – it could happen) found then the process aborted.

    TMK – 5 February, 18:36
  13. TMK
    5 February, 18:45

    PS, using a sans-serif italic font on this blog is really unfriendly to people with vision problems. But then if you can’t do basic version-checking then I suppose accessibility has got to be way down your list!

    TMK – 5 February, 18:45
  14. Joe
    6 February, 05:40

    I agree that an OS check is necessary. My girlfriend uses an older unsupported version of OSX and was prompted to update, only to be told she could no longer run the program afterwards.

    Joe – 6 February, 05:40
  15. Pat
    8 February, 23:45

    Michael,

    How does it feel to release a software that is not only unstable as hell, but also has less features than before (no scrobble directories is a deal-breaker) and is universally bashed by Last.fm users?

    You say it’s been a long road for you, but I feel sad that your team had to settle for such a failure in coding design. I was so appalled by this release that, despite my best efforts in coping with it, I had to downgrade after two weeks.

    Now if only I could disable the constant update notifications in the old client, I would be a happy scrobbler. Why breaking something that was working fine?

    Pat – 8 February, 23:45
  16. effigy
    10 February, 17:39

    add specific folder scrobble support back please.

    also an option to CLOSE when media player closes.

    effigy – 10 February, 17:39
  17. manjula
    14 February, 09:22

    Yeah, its supporting Linux,i love it, thanks.

    manjula – 14 February, 09:22
  18. Cal
    16 February, 03:58

    It’s unfortunate that whether here or in the last.fm support forums, those with any sort of authority are utterly silent about many of the problems users are experiencing. You say you’ve been “taking our feedback” but it’s been weeks since even the “known issues” thread has been updated, and there are many known issues not covered there. We’re all into the music-geekery thing, you know. And we’re really frustrated that we can no longer indulge.

    Cal – 16 February, 03:58
  19. yarra64
    16 February, 06:29

    This is junk. I had it working but it wouldn’t scrobble, said it was the first time I’d played the flaming lips contradicting my charts, which say over 1800 plays and I have no friends (apparently)! :-( I removed my account and tried to add it again and now I get this proy issue others are reporting – the one with the invisible link. Please roll back.

    yarra64 – 16 February, 06:29
  20. Kim
    17 February, 18:49

    Since I now cannot choose to not see your icon in my menubar on OS X, I fear that our relationship is coming to an end. I have enough stuff up there that I need to use and find..

    When your scrobbling service ran in the background quietly, I found it mildly amusing, but now I just find it annoying.

    Kim – 17 February, 18:49
  21. editor_b
    19 February, 01:26

    Well I like the new scrobbler.

    But…

    One thing I liked about the old scrobbler was how it displayed the album release date and total tracks right there in the window. That was handy. I would love if you brought that back.

    editor_b – 19 February, 01:26
  22. skopp
    28 February, 21:42

    All you “thank you for being kind to us linux folk sir. please can we lick your b…” dumbasses – I was scrobbling from
    Amarok in 2007 already. So what the hen’s testicles are you on about? You stupids.

    THIS THING MAKES MY PC SLOWER. I’m serious. Interferes with network ports, it pulls unnecessary crap from my profile that’s …uh, already on my damn profile.

    The old one, I had configured to show “now playing x” in GTalk.
    And it connected to Skype for the same.

    YOU BROKED IT. YOU 855holes

    skopp – 28 February, 21:42
  23. nikki rosetti
    4 March, 16:11

    no more radio unless I pay? If you had told me that when you asked me to install this new version, I wouldn.t have done it!! So no more Last.fm for me.
    I’ve been robbed.

    nikki rosetti – 4 March, 16:11
  24. eddie
    5 March, 01:22

    wHAT THE HELL EVERYTIE I SCROBBLE SOMETHING IT JUST CRASHES

    eddie – 5 March, 01:22
  25. Kirinyale
    7 March, 12:09

    “Can we have the option to only scrobble from certain folders back please?”

    I second this. Absence of this option is the reason I’ve reverted back to 1.5.xxx as soon as I found out that otherwise I won’t have any control over my scrobbler anymore. And now I have to live with a non-disablable auto-updater which is constantly trying to make me “upgrade” which I obviously DON’T WANT.

    Please. I don’t really care about any new features. Just don’t take away old and useful ones, ok?

    Kirinyale – 7 March, 12:09
  26. kareay
    11 March, 20:57

    :D

    kareay – 11 March, 20:57

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