OS X only Audioscrobbler

While I was still at Last.fm we were working on a lot of stuff, of which one was a plain Cocoa scrobbler. We decided the scrobbling part of our software should be light (nobody here is clear who initially thought shoving everything into the same app was a good idea), so we split it out on each platform.

The cocoa one was most finished when I left, so I forked it and began making it exactly how I want it.

I've been using it for a few weeks and it seems stable and doesn't leak memory. So I am releasing it.

http://www.methylblue.com/audioscrobbler/Audioscrobbler-0.9.9-mxcl.zip

Fork it: http://github.com/mxcl/lastfm-cocoa/tree/minimalist

It is the "minimalist" branch, I want to scrobble, but with as little overhead as possible (while still being useful). So it's just a menu item, and after playing with various metadata display possibilities, I settled on a dashboard widget, with a 4 minute inactivity timeout for showing the dashboard. This is surprsingly useful (I use my dashboard in many new ways now while before I never used it). And obviously completely optional.

Notable Features:
* Global shortcuts for tag and share
* If you update the metadata for the playing track in iTunes, it scrobbles with the new metadata
* Last.fm password stored in key chain (well it stores the session key, and the password is never asked for, but you get the idea).
* Native Growl notifications (not the hacked ones in the current official client)
* Shows artwork from iTunes in growl notifications
* Dashboard widget showing current highest voted artist image
* Scrobbles Playdar (http://github.com/RJ/playdar)
* Sparkle updates

Some points:
* It doesn't do iPod scrobbling [1]
* My fork is not officially supported, but I support it, and I wrote all the code, so… :)
* It uses the new scrobsub (http://github.com/mxcl/scrobsub) so can scrobble from any source, not just iTunes. It even has an Applescript interface for scrobbling (which is what Playdar uses).
* It is Leopard only (OS X 10.5), it shouldn't be too tricky to port it to Tiger, so feel free to try. But there are features of Leopard that are convenient and I don't want to lose in order to support Tiger.
* The dashboard widget needs some love for the "nothing playing" state. I figured your friends' recent tracks would be cool. Someone needs to write that for me ;)
* No fingerprinting. The master branch will have this if you object to not contributing to the dataz.

The homepage is the github page above (be sure if you do fork you checkout the minimalist branch, the master branch is what should become part of client 2 on mac). You can leave me feedback here or via twitter: http://twitter.com/mxcl

The github page also has an issue tracker for any bug reports you may have.




[1] Although I know a way to do a 100% successful but completely manual iPod scrobbling solution. It sucks usability-wise relative to the official route, but is much simpler and doesn't require an iTunes plugin. I guess eventually I'll write it, but at the moment I don't use my iPod.

mxcl said:
Firstly can I say, I am no longer staff. I left 6 weeks ago. Eventually I will lose my red icon, I expect :)

Well now you pointed it out I have no choice ;)

Exactly what I've been waiting for a long time. Also, thanks for open sourcing it.

This is great. Thanks for releasing it. I look forward to iPod support.

I released 0.9.8: http://bit.ly/EYxFp

Fixed a bug with empty Artists stopping scrobbling for that session.
Added feature to prompt you to love tracks you rate 4 stars or above.

If it's already installed just do "Check for updates…"

Can't make any promises on an iPod scrobbling timeline…

A wonderful slim scrobbler. I love how it integrates iTunes with last.fm without being bloated, and have actually disabled last.fm "support" (how come everybody say they support last.fm when all they do is supporting scrobbling, by the way?) in my iTunes controller. Kudos!

What I'd love however is a bit more love for the Love function (yes, very lame pun, but there you go):

• a global hotkey! There are global hotkeys for Tag and Share, why not for Love?
• smoother iTunes rating to Love transfer. I'm thinking automatic loving for tracks rated above a certain threshold (hardcoded to 4 stars if you don't want to make that a preference), with a side dish of loving already rated tracks, loving tracks whose rating is raised beyond the threshold, and unloving tracks whose rating is lowered below it (right now, the rate to Love logic of Audioscrobbler only kicks in on previously unrated tracks, and the "click this Growl notice" procedure feels clumsy).

Track and album related last.fm links would also be a great addition to the widget. Finally, it would be nice for Audioscrobbler to relay the correct player name to last.fm's Now Playing notice, i.e. iTunes :).

dr_zepsuj said:
Feature request: ability to scrobble from which album a song came from.

We do scrobble the album, so it's up to Last.fm to show that data.