I recently decided I wanted to start scrobbling again. I had set up a Last.fm account years ago, but stopped using it (instead I was keeping track of everything I listened to using custom software – I’ll talk more about that some other time). I wanted to scrobble songs that I played on my iPod Touch using the default Music player (not some other app), as well as my desktop media player. My desktop media player of choice (foobar2000) has a scrobbling plugin, so that was easy. But scrobbling from my iPod Touch without a 3rd party app took some more digging.
Last.fm does have an iOS app that features streaming, but that is no longer going to be free. There’s also a software program that lets you scrobble songs played from your iDevice, but not in real-time (scrobbling only happens when you sync with iTunes – which is lame). So here’s what I wanted in my “perfect solution”:
- Scrobble songs played in real-time using the iDevice’s built-in Music app
- If the iDevice is not connected to the internet, queue songs and scrobble them the next time you are online
- Run in the background (just like the default Music app) to allow using other apps while still scrobbling in real-time
Not too much to ask for, considering all the new tools Apple has given developers in recent iOS releases. And the solution I found pretty much does all of those things – but you’ll need a jailbroken iDevice. I love jailbreaking, so that one requirement did not bother me at all. And the solution is a little app called “Scrobbl”. Open up Cydia and search for “Scrobbl”. Note that there is “Scrobbl” and “Scrobble”. As far as I can tell, one is supposed to work for newer iOS versions, although it wasn’t clear to me which one. However, I tried both on my iPod Touch 4th generation with iOS 4.2.1 and “Scrobbl” is the one that works for me. It is a free app from Cydia, and once you install it you just need to run it and enter your Last.fm username and password. So far it has worked perfectly for me!
Thank you for this article, it’s exactly what I searched for.