what is scrobbling

music scrobbling essentially is like keeping a log of what you listen to and getting suggestions from it. scrobbling is a optional feature when you self host your music, but is essential when you want to track what you listen to.

what to use for scrobbling

you can do music scrobbling locally (idk how but i think u can), but its just a bunch of logs, so let someone else do this right? there are mainly 2 "big" players in this game.

1. last.fm - the propritery one, but best algorithm
2. listenbrainz - the opensource alternative but arguably worse

i choose last.fm for scrobbling because there are virtually infinite tools for it.

the tools i use for desktop are:

• mpd: to play music
• rmpc: beautlify tui for mpd
• yams - my own fork for yet another mpd scrobbler connects to last.fm and scrobbles

the tools i use for mobile are:

• music app: changes every week
• piano scrobbler: connects to last.fm and looks in notifications for songs

thats it for the scrobbling part.