One of the most exciting events of music people every year is the Spotify wrapped or whatever it’s called on other platforms. It’s fun knowing how much we’ve actually listened to something. However, most streaming services version of this kinda sucks. You can only get it once a year, there’s no way of seeing all your previous years, it’s just very limited. Not only does this not need to be a timed event, but you can get far better information.
What is a scrobbler?
A scrobbler is something that just tracks what you listen to for your own data. A “scrobble” is what one data entry would be. For example, if you listen to 90210 by Travis Scott on August 10th 2022, that would be a scrobble once added into the database. Weird name, but once you get used to it it makes sense. Anything you listen to music on probably has an automatic tracking feature, but they don’t give you the data. This is specifically a database for you. Here is an example that shows you what it looks like
Options for scrobbling
The obvious answer here is Last.fm as they are by far the biggest. They require a subscription for some features, but none of the missing features are essentials. Last.fm is going to have the most robust community and widest out of the box support. If you’re fine with it being proprietary, just make the account there now. You don’t have to use Last.fm’s scrobbler if you don’t want to though, so you can still use open source software to collect your own data before it goes to the servers. Last.fm is very streamlined and has good recommendations for music. Here’s an example of my page so you guys can see what it looks like
There is a self-hosted alternative that I’ve never tried called Majola. The layout is really nice, it looks good, but it’s far more about having control over your scrobbling than being universal so it’s missing some of the social aspect of Last.fm. (music recommendations, comments, ect.). Some people will prefer that, others won’t. I don’t know much about the project, but if it’s lightweight enough and could actually support multi user, it would be so cool to get an instance of it hosted by us. Here is an example that shows you what it looks like](https://maloja.krateng.ch/)
Conclusion
Scrobbling is cool and gives you better ideas on your own listening habits. I’d strongly recommend it. It makes for lively discussion
Listenbrainz is a great alternative to last.fm and is supported by Spotify and there are ways to use it with various offline players. I think you can work it into Google Play music as well, or you could before it became YouTube music.
Thank you for adding this. I added the other one because I want to suggest open source solutions for the sake of being on Lemmy but couldn’t find this
Of course. I used the last.fm import and it worked great. Always happy to offer open source solutions when I can. I haven’t used last.fm in probably a decade so I’m not too sure how the features differ but listenbrainz has been great for me.