Mastodawn

Tomás Martins Sep 19, 2023

Are you a heavy Last.fm user that wants to scrobble from… anywhere? Whether that sentence made any sense to you or you have no idea what a scrobble is, check out why @johnvoorhees thinks you should give AirScrobble a try to step your music discovery game!

https://www.macstories.net/reviews/airscrobble-greatly-expands-its-utility-with-headphone-compatibility-live-activity-support-and-app-shortcuts/

AirScrobble Greatly Expands Its Utility with Headphone Compatibility, Live Activity Support, and App Shortcuts

It’s time to take a brief break from widgets to bring you scrobbles. Scrobbling is Last.fm’s name for matching and logging the music to which you listen. The payoff of scrobbling is the in-depth statistics that Last.fm delivers monthly and annually to users. It’s also a great way to relive musical moments in your life

@tfm I have a question regarding the app. Can it automatically scribble whatever I am listening on the iPad? I just tried out the app, and it seems I needed to press the ‘match’ button for every single track I was listening to. I kinda wanted it to be “set it and forget it” types. I know it might not be active forever, but maybe at least throughout an entire listening session?

Just wondering. Not even sure if iOS will allow something like that.

Tomás Martins Sep 20, 2023

@shayonpal hi Sharon! You can press and hold the record button to activate Auto Match, which will do exactly what you described. Don’t worry, it works even while the app is in the background or the device itself is locked!

This is a premium feature, so it requires either a subscription or a lifetime purchase inside the app. There’s also a free trial available!

@tfm Thanks. I’d subscribed to Premium especially for this feature. I just couldn’t figure out how to enable it 🤷🏻‍♂️

@tfm umm… I am a little confused. It looks like my tracks are not getting automatically matched and scrobbled.

Tomás Martins Sep 20, 2023

@shayonpal do you mean it stop recognizing songs? Did any other app started using the microphone since you started your latest auto match session?

@tfm I have no idea, unfortunately. Maybe Siri, but I don’t remember using any specific app that might need to use the microphone 😛

Tomás Martins Sep 20, 2023

@shayonpal I see. If you restart the session (just tap the stop button and press and hold record again), does the app start matchings songs normally again?

@tfm It does. I still haven’t tested the auto match part again. Will do so and report.

@tfm Okay, so, I realized that very randomly some or the other app might end up using the mic, and for that reason the app will stop automatically scrobbling. This is challenging, since I can’t even figure out when it stops auto matching. Damn, I was so excited to start scrobbling to Last.fm again, after so many years. Back to square one again, it seems 😞

Tomás Martins Sep 21, 2023

@shayonpal Hi Shayon! Hope everything is well.

I've just released a new update (version 1.8.2) to AirScrobble which should fix the issue you were having with Auto Match not working in the background. I hope you may consider giving AirScrobble another try and checking if everything is going smoothly now

@tfm Thanks. I’ll update and check it out. Thanks for following up, though. Appreciate it.

@tfm So, I have some update to report. I have been running the app on the iPad Pro 12.9 (m1) with the latest stable version of iOS 17. On Stage Manager, I have 1 stage that has 3 windows on it - AirScrobble, Music and Ivory.

My workflow is:
- Set AirScrobble to auto match.
- Play music on the Music.
- Move to other apps to do whatever I need to do at that time. Music continues to play in the background.

@tfm As long as I am on the same stage as that of AirScrobble, it successfully matches and scribbles all songs being played. The moment I switch over to other stages, it stops matching the songs.

While I was on other stages, I also decided to keep an eye on the control center, to ensure if some other app ends up taking control of the mic, in the mean time. It didn’t. For a duration of 20 minutes, let’s say, the mic was used only by AirScrobble.

@tfm In that duration, I played about 5 songs, but only 1 got matches and scrobbled. Once I switched back to the stage that had AirScrobble, the app again started matching songs on its own, no problem.

I haven’t yet tested this on the iPhone, because I hardly ever get to listen to music on the phone.

I hope this info helps. If there is anything else I can provide, in terms of troubleshooting, do reach out.

@tfm Oh, not sure if it’s important, but I have been listening to music by Airplaying it from the iPad to my stereo homepods sitting on the same desk.

Tomás Martins Sep 23, 2023

@shayonpal thanks for the additional info, I’ll test it out on my end and see if I spot anything weird.

Meanwhile, since youre playing music through your HomePods, I may suggest you use your iPhone app with Auto Match to ID and scrobble your songs. Your subscription will sync over to all your devices and as long as you don’t place it too far from your speakers, it should pick up the tracks just fine. Let me know if this setup works for you

Tomás Martins Sep 25, 2023

@shayonpal hey, a new update is out. Could you check if it works this time around?