A Last.fm scrobbler via MPRIS2 in Linux, implemented via pylast and mpris2

Modified based on dbus-scrobbler

• scrobble music to Last.fm if one of the conditions are met:

  • played for 4 mins
  • played for half the length

• update now playing status

• offline scrobble cache support

MPRIS (Media Player Remote Interfacing Specification) is a standard D-Bus (Desktop Bus) interface that allows applications to communicate with and control media players running on a Linux desktop environment.

Thus, this scrobbler is a general-purpose one under the Linux desktop environment, supporting scrobble music from media players without a built-in Last.fm scrobbling feature.

Check if your media player supports MPRIS2 via (make sure the player is running):

lastfm-mpris2-scrobbler --list-players

The uri names of players will be shown

There're two options available now:

• grab the stand-alone binary from release page

• or, via PyPI

  pip install lastfm-mpris2-scrobbler

The program expects a config.yaml file and can be placed wherever you like, for example ~/.config/lastfm-mpris2-scrobbler/

Example and detailed information can be found in config.yaml.example:

# username for that service
user_name: foo

# md5 hash of your password (obtained via `echo -n password | md5sum`)
password_hash: abc123492abccf4f1997f7ccaabc123b

# last.fm api, which can be created via https://www.last.fm/api/account/create
api_key: 11111111111111111111111111111111
api_secret: 11111111111111111111111111111111

# the app's uri you want to scrobble
# use `lastfm-mpris2-scrobbler --list-players` to check the uri name
application_whitelist: [ "org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.harmonoid" ]
# by default, scrobbler will upload if the track has been played for 4 * 60 seconds or half the total length
scrobble_time_threshold: 240

# app's log level
log_level: DEBUG

lastfm-mpris2-scrobbler -c PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG/config.yaml

For more options, see:

lastfm-mpris2-scrobbler --help

If you want to run it as a daemon service, here's a systemd service in user space for reference:

[Unit]
Description=Last.fm scrobbler via MPRIS2
Documentation=https://github.com/Ladbaby/lastfm-scrobbler

[Service]
ExecStart=PATH_TO_YOUR_BIN/lastfm-mpris2-scrobbler -c PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG/config.yaml

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

You'll have to place the service file under ~/.config/systemd/user/ and name it like scrobbler.service

To run the daemon:

systemctl --user start scrobbler.service

To run at user login:

systemctl --user enable scrobbler.service

If you'd like a scrobbler similar to this, there're some choices. I recommand taking a look at scrobblez. It additionally provides Spotify related improvement, but doesn't provide stand-alone binary build for installation.

Also, although rescrobbled may also work, in my case it raised "Dbus error: argument type mismatch".

• If the music title contains unwanted substring (like .mp3), then Last.fm won't accept the scrobble

  The program can now remove some of the unwanted substrings, including:

  • .mp3
  • .ogg
  • .wav
  • .acc
  • .flac