How to Submit Tracks From Your iPod

Here is a non-technical description of what is required for your iPod plays to be submitted:


Everyday at work you listen to your iPod. However, you leave your iPod in the car and never sync it until Friday. Every night though, you use iTunes to play some music. Now on Friday you want your tracks played on the iPod to be submitted. They won't be.

But if you would take your iPod in with you every night and sync it with iTunes before using iTunes the iPod tracks would be submitted.


If you select the correct playlist in the prefs and then follow the above rule everything should be fine.

And here's the technical instructions:

The following instructions were given by frankko in Ipod update and I have extracted them here to make them more visible.

Is your iPod set to auto sync or manual sync? When it's set to auto sync, when you plug it in, iTunes automatically copies songs/playlists to and from your iPod and you do nothing to help it along (this includes only automatically updated "selected playlists"). When it's set to manual sync, you have to copy/delete songs/playlists yourself.

If your iPod is set to auto sync:

iTunes, by default, ships with a smart playlist called "Recently Played". If you haven't deleted it and haven't edited it, then you can skip to step 5.

1. Open iTunes
2. Create a new Smart Playlist by going to File | New Smart Playlist... in the iTunes menu, or pressing command+option+n on your keyboard, or option-clicking the New Playlist button at the bottom right of iTunes (you'll notice the + icon turn to sort of a *).
3. In that new window that appears, do the following:
- check "Match the following rule:" (if it isn't already selected);
- change the first select box from Artist (or whatever it says) to "Last Played";
- change "is" to "is in the last";
- change the "1" to a "7";
- leave it as "days"
- uncheck "Limit to" & "Match only checked songs" (if they are checked) and check "Live updating" (if it isn't already);
- click OK;
4. your new smart playlist is created with a default name. Change it to "Recently Played".
5. open iScrobbler's preferences
- check Enable iPod Submissions;
- Using Playlist should be set to "Recently Played" (if not, find it in the select menu)
6. if your iPod is plugged in, unplug it. Then plug it in to get a sync going.

That should be it. In auto mode, you DO NOT use the "Update iPod" menu item. That's only for manual/disk mode. In auto mode, iScrobbler does its thing automatically.

In addition, 2.0 supports multiple track plays on the iPod for automatic mode only. See the iScrobbler Readme for further restrictions.

For manual mode iPods:
1. Open iTunes.
2. select your iPod in the left pane of the iTunes interface, and make sure it is still selected before you move on (very important).
3. see auto mode's steps 2-5 about creating the smart playlist, as the instructions are the same (the major difference, though, being the playlist has to be on the iPod)

That's it for set up, but for manual mode iPod users, after you plug in your iPod, iTunes will indicate that it's updating your iPod. Once that is finished go to the iScrobbler menu and select "Update iPod".

Edit - Damaged @ 2006/5/16: Added iScrobbler Readme notes regarding playing tracks before updating the iPod.

Edit - Damaged @ 2007/11/25: Removed Shuffle not supported warning. It's been supported since 1.5.

Edit - Damaged @ 2007/12/6: Added non-technical explanation and cleaned up the technical rules for how 1.5/20 currently work.

As you are using iTunes 7, you must use version 1.2.1test2 of iScrobbler.

Get it here.

i'm using itunes 7.0.2 (in manual mode) and iscrobbler 1.2.1 and i can only seem to get my ipod tracks to scrobbled intermittently. each time i follow the instructions above, i test it out (listen to one song on ipod, plug it in, click "update ipod") it works. but then i leave the house and come back and it doesn't work. it seems that any time my ipod goes to sleep, it won't remember what was played, even though it's all in my "recently played." anyone know what the deal is?

if I use the REcently Played option you describe above, then I can't fit all those songs onto my 2gb nano...seI have made it a 1 day playlist, is that going to prevent this from working?

Hello!
I am a mac user and I'm trying to submit entries on my last.fm usig the Update
iPod at last.fm menu, but it doesn't work.
After all, comes the message at my page:
"Some tracks you submitted have not been added to your profile for the following
reason:
The track is too short to be submitted."

So, what can I do?

Thankyou!

Hi.

I've been using iScrobbler for a while now, but like most others it stopped reading my iPod tracks after I went to iTunes 7.0. (I get that "too short" error.)

Mac: iBook G4
iPod: 30gb video
Mac OS: 10.3.9
iTunes: 7.0.2
iScrobbler: 1.2.1

I'm sorry to be beating a dead horse, but I've been wandering the forums for an hour and I still haven't figured out if there's a solution or not.

Reads all iTunes tracks fine, excludes all iPod tracks. In fact, if you compare my "recently played" on Last.fm to my "recently played" on iTunes, it just skips over everything played on my iPod.

I use my iPod more than my laptop to play music, and honestly, I'm not that computer savvy. Can anybody explain where I've gone wrong?

Thanks!
-Eric

Are you both absolutely sure you are using 1.2.1 final (and not a test version, or 1.2). The "too short" error only occurs with previous versions and as for removing the iPod option - that makes no sense since it's working fine for almost everyone.

PowerPC Mac Mini, 5G iPod 60GB. Auto update.

Definitely using 1.2.1 final - downloaded from your 'download here' link. I get intermittant problems with scrobbling iTunes plays. iPod scrobbling just doesn't work at all. Nada. Zip. The Recently played smart playlist is in iTunes - check. It updates nicely when the iPod updates - check. Nothing gets scrobbled.

99% of my listening is on iPod, so this is quite sucky for me.

Better luck with the next update!

I did a few updates and eventually it worked! Played iPod, plugged in and did update, unplugged and round again. Took 3 or 4 goes, and I think I quit and restarted iScrobbler a few times too. Seems stable now tho.

Just a shout out to international users, might be good to put a note up in the howto, too..

I'm using the swedishly localized version of itunes, so instead of "Recently Played" the playlist is called "Senast Spelade", and I had to tell iScrobbler to use that playlist instead of the default. Didn't take me long to figure out but it might be worth a mention in the pointers?

Also, scrobbled ipod tracks don't show up in my iScrobbler menu like locally scrobbled tracks do. Is this a bug or a feature? I didn't realise my tracks had been scrobbled until I checked my last.fm page so.. might be better if it's reflected in iScrobbler directly.

thx for a great app!

Thanks for the info. It does help and it confirms what I was seeing.

Regards,
Gary

i listen to a lot of podcasts on my iPod. do i have to manually update podcasts on my ipod in order for them to sync with iscrobbler?

in the past, i had my ipod set up to sync all unplayed episodes of podcasts with itunes. the ones i played wouldn't update with iscrobbler. apparently, the itunes/ipod sync was deleting the podcasts already played and replacing them with unplayed ones before the iscrobbler had an opportunity to update the podcasts to last.fm.

it's easier to manage my podcasts if i set an automatic sync. is there a specific sync setting that will work with iscrobbler?

does the menu bar icon give any indication that its submitted the iPod tracks while its working?

how do i know if/when my ipod tracks are finished?