Scrobbling
Soundsible can report each song you listen to, to ListenBrainz, Last.fm and Maloja. It is off until you connect a service, and each account connects its own.
Open Settings → Scrobbling in the player.
What is sent, and when
The server sends the scrobbles, not the device you listen on. Every Soundsible client already tells the server what it is playing, so one connection covers the web player, the Windows app and the Android app at once. The iOS app reports playback the same way, but it has never been run on a device. A song played in an OpenSubsonic app is passed on as well, when that app reports it.
| Now playing | Sent when a song starts and when it resumes. |
| A play | Sent once you have listened to half the song, or to four minutes of it, whichever comes first. Songs of thirty seconds or less never count. This is the rule ListenBrainz and Last.fm publish. |
| What it contains | Artist, title, album, album artist, track number, length, the time the song started and — when the file has them — its MusicBrainz recording ID and ISRC. |
| What is never sent | Podcasts. Songs with no artist or no title. Videos whose only credit is the channel that uploaded them, because that is not the performer. |
Time spent paused does not count, and neither does seeking. Handing a song to another device continues the same listen instead of starting a second one. A song on repeat counts each time round.
If a service cannot be reached, the play waits on the server and is sent later, in order, including after a restart. Settings shows how many are waiting and why. The server keeps up to 10,000 unsent plays per service; past that the oldest are dropped.
ListenBrainz
- Copy your user token from https://listenbrainz.org/settings/.
- Press Connect ListenBrainz and paste it.
An admin can also connect a ListenBrainz server they host themselves, with Connect another ListenBrainz server.
Last.fm
Last.fm identifies the application as well as the listener, and Soundsible does not ship an application key. The server needs one, once:
- An admin creates an API account at https://www.last.fm/api/account/create. It is free. The form’s callback URL can stay empty.
- In Settings → Scrobbling, the admin presses Add a Last.fm API key
and pastes the API key and the shared secret. Or set them where the engine
starts, as
SOUNDSIBLE_LASTFM_API_KEYandSOUNDSIBLE_LASTFM_API_SECRET.
Then each person connects their own Last.fm account:
- Press Connect Last.fm, then Open Last.fm.
- On Last.fm, press Yes, allow access.
- Come back to Soundsible. It finishes on its own when you return to the page; Finish connecting does the same by hand.
The link is valid for sixty minutes. Revoking access on Last.fm (Settings → Applications) is noticed on the next scrobble: Settings then asks you to connect again, and what was waiting is sent once you do.
Maloja
Maloja is always a server of your own, so only an admin can connect it:
- Create an API key in your Maloja admin panel.
- Press Connect Maloja, enter your server’s address (for example
http://192.168.1.10:42010) and paste the key.
Soundsible talks to Maloja through its ListenBrainz-compatible interface
(/apis/listenbrainz). Maloja has no “now playing”; it stores plays only.
Pausing and disconnecting
- Send what I play pauses one service without disconnecting it. Songs played while it is off are not recorded for that service.
- Disconnect removes the stored access and discards what was still waiting. What the service already received stays there.
Who can do what
| Any account | Admin | |
|---|---|---|
| Connect their own ListenBrainz or Last.fm | ✓ | ✓ |
| Add or remove the server’s Last.fm API key | ✓ | |
| Connect a server by its address (Maloja, self-hosted ListenBrainz) | ✓ |
An address is restricted to admins because the server sends requests to it from inside your network.
Where it is stored
| File | Holds |
|---|---|
users/<account>/scrobble.sqlite3 in the configuration directory | That account’s connections and unsent plays. Deleted with the account. |
scrobble.key in the configuration directory | The key the stored tokens are encrypted with. Without it they cannot be read, and Settings asks to connect again. |
lastfm_app.json in the configuration directory | The server’s Last.fm API key, with its secret encrypted. |
Tokens are never shown again after you paste them and never leave the server except to the service they belong to.