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Last.fm for Rhythmbox – New Style

Just like a lot of other users I like to scrobble my played tracks to last.fm. Unfortunately Rhythmbox provides no way to love a track. The last.fm plug-ins for Windows and OS X have been modified to scrobble through the last.fm client some time ago but the Rhythmbox plug-in still submits directly. That is until now…

Rhythmbox and lastfm

I have written a new last.fm plug-in for Rhythmbox today. Instead of scrobbling directly like the old one, it submits tracks via the lastfm client application. The client displays additional information about the currently playing song and you can love and tag the song with it.

The source code is available as a patch against Rhythmbox 2.90.1 (git snapshot 20120108): scrobbler-v3t.patch
You can apply this patch with:

patch -NEp1 < ~/scrobbler-v3t.patch

Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot users can get precompiled packages from my APT repositories by running these commands in a terminal:

$ sudo add-apt-repository \
    '/static/debian/rhythmbox/ main'
$ wget /static/gpg.asc -O - | \
    sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install rhythmbox rhythmbox-plugins lastfm

To enable the new plug-in go to Edit » Plugins. Disable the “Last.fm” plug-in and enable the “New Style Last.fm Scrobbler”.
If you enable this scrobbler plug-in, you have to disable the old Last.fm plug-in! Otherwise you will have two plug-ins which will both submit to last.fm at the same time. Only use one at a time!

Note that this first version of the plug-in does not start the lastfm client automatically! It will scrobble only if you start the client manually. I will fix this in the next version.

Feedback, postive as well as negative, is very welcome. If you want to report a bug, please include the output of “rhythmbox -D rb-scrobbler-plugin” and the tags of the song you wanted to scrobble.
If you want to report a crash, providing a gdb backtrace would be nice.

You might also want to take a look at this thread on the last.fm development forum.

May 20th, 2007: v2 of the plug-in is available now. lastfm gets launched automatically now.
May 22nd, 2007: v3 is available. The patch and the Ubuntu package have been updated: Changes since v2
May 25th, 2007: v3a: Updated patch and deb for the new Ubuntu Gutsy version of Rhythmbox.
May 29th, 2007: v3b: Updated patch and deb for the new Rhythmbox release.
May 31st, 2007: Updated patch Ubuntu package.
June 1st, 2007: Added APT repositories for Ubuntu Feisty and Gutsy.
June 28th, 2007: v3c: Updated patch and debs for the new Rhythmbox release.
August 16th, 2007: v3d: Updated patch and debs for Rhythmbox 0.11.2.
November 14th, 2007: v3e: Updated patch and debs for Rhythmbox 0.11.3. Add Hardy repository.
November 30th, 2007:Updated gusty and hardy builds. Include fixed Croatian po file from Franko Burolo.
February 7th, 2008: v3f: Updated patch and debs for Rhythmbox 0.11.4. (Thanks to Iain Buchanan for notifying me of the missing patch!)
May 31st, 2008: v3g: Updated patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.11.5. (The debs for hardy have been at 0.11.5 for quite a while).
October 15st, 2008: v3h: Updated patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.11.6. Ubuntu packages are available for i386, amd64, and lpia now.
October 20st, 2008: v3i: Updated patch to apply cleanly to the real Rhythmbox 0.11.6 release. v3h was for a later version from SVN.
April 24th, 2009: v3j: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.0. Provide debs for Ubuntu Jaunty.
November 4th, 2009: v3k: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.5 and provide debs for Ubuntu Karmic.
November 29th, 2009: v3l: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.6 and provide debs for Ubuntu Lucid too.
April 25th, 2010: v3m: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.8. Provide debs for Ubuntu Lucid.
Jun 3rd, 2010: v3n: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.8git20100602. Provide debs for Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10.
Jun 13th, 2010: v3o: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.12.8git20100611. Updated debs for Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10.
October 10th, 2010: v3p: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.13.1. Provide updated debs for Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10.
April 4th, 2011: v3p: Update patch to apply cleanly to Rhythmbox 0.13.3. Provide debs for Ubuntu Natty Narwhal 11.04.
October 16th, 2011: v3r: Updated patch for new plug-in infrastructure in Rhythmbox 2.90.1. Provide debs for Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot 11.10.
December 23rd, 2011: v3s: Updated patch. Provide debs for Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04.
January 14th, 2012: v3t: Update patch and debs for Ubuntu Precise.

This article Jürgen Kreileder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

189 Comments

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Forlong said

Your packages are getting replaced in Maverick one again by ubuntu-updates

Great stuff though, just discovered it.

New packages uploaded just now!

Marcos Rava said

all installed, but “New Style Last.fm Scrobbler” not appear in edit>plugins (Rhythmbox 0.13.1)

What can I do?

You’re using Ubuntu Maverick?
What does ‘dpkg -l rhythmbox rhythmbox-plugins’ say?

I’m on vacation currently, so there won’t be packages for Ubuntu Natty till Sunday.
Sorry for the delay!

custard_py said

Any plans for natty?

The packages are ready. I’ll put them online later today.

custard_py said

Thanks a lot, man. Can’t wait!

You’re welcome! Natty debs are available now.

Joey said

Thanks a lot.
I love how you’ve been updating this since 2007. I thought this was abandoned at first, but then I scrolled down to see Updates. Year 2011 was promising.
Thank you. :)

Joey said

You should make something like this for Banshee.
I terribly hate the Banshee scrobbler. But I prefer Banshee over Rhythmbox.

Alexandre Provencio said

Very nice app. Maybe you could think about developing a plugin to sync last.fm loved tracks with rhythmboxdb. I use the VandelayIndustries plugin for Songbird in order to do this, and I still have not found any solution that actually works for RB.

See ya

Robin G said

Thank you very much for this plugin, it’s one of the reasons I stick with Rhythmbox. I just wish it was in Rhythmbox by default. I haven’t read the full comment thread in case it’s already been asked, but why isn’t this the case? Excellent work, thanks again!

Juri said

hi. thanx for the work you’ve done. i’n new to linux. decided to try rhythmbox – your plugin was helpfull)

Hannes said

Could you also provide this for Oneiric Ocelot? I’m using your tool since Maverick – thanks a lot.

Will be available sometime this weekend!

Available now.

Thanks for this usefull stuff :-)I was missing an Ocelot update !

Alexandre Provencio said

Why this is not packaged with rhythmbox-plugins yet?

Is there a way I can make it work with the RB version below?
http://www.webupd8.org/2012/01/rhythmbox-finally-ported-to-gtk3.html

Thanks

I probably should make a stand-alone plugin package for this…
The current patch (v3t) applies to Rhythmbox 2.95 with a little fuzz. So yes, it should work with that version.

(Actually, I do have a Ubuntu precise repository. I just have to update it for the latest Ubuntu builds of Rhythmbox 2.95).

chris said

hey there,

first of all, thank you so much for your work and the great plugin! :)

today, i’ve installed Ubuntu 12.04 final version (which war released today),
it comes with rhythmbox 2.96, so your apt-repo does not work for me and now :(

have you planned to port your plugin to this newer version? would have been very nice!

Cheers,
Chris

Manuel said

hallo jürgen,
gibt es schon eine version deines programmes für ubuntu 12.04? auf der vorherigen version funktionierte es einwandfrei, jetzt ist es wieder weg…

Adan Muguiro said

Hey man, great job with this plugin.

I had it working fine, but I upgraded to 12.04 (precise pangolin) now with rhythmbox 2.96 and the plugin stopped working. I repeated the steps above and nothing. I suppose the main problem is that “New Style Last.fm Scrobbler” doesn’t appear in the rhythmbox’s components list.

Please let me know if theres is something I should do. Thanks in advance.

jack said

Still not working in Ubuntu precise / Rhythmbox 2.96 (and the standard scrobbler skips tracks :/ )

OSman said

I used “Last.fm for Rhythmbox – New Style” in Lucid without any problem and I love it. I think it’s an important deficiency for Rhytmbox 2.96 and Precise. Please fix this problem as soon as possible.

Best Regards

Garhuy said

It does not work on Ubuntu 12.04…

XenGi said

The plugin can’t be loaded with rhythmbox v3.0.1. Rhythmbox gives the folloing output when I try to activate the plugin.

$ rhythmbox

(rhythmbox:6398): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme parsing error: gtk.css:72:18: Not using units is deprecated. Assuming ‘px’.

(rhythmbox:6398): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme parsing error: gtk.css:72:20: Not using units is deprecated. Assuming ‘px’.

(rhythmbox:6398): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to register client: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.gnome.SessionManager was not provided by any .service files

(rhythmbox:6398): Rhythmbox-WARNING **: Unable to grab media player keys: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.gnome.SettingsDaemon was not provided by any .service files

(rhythmbox:6398): libpeas-WARNING **: Could not find loader ‘python’ for plugin ‘lastfm_extension’