Libre.fm & Songbird & Last.fm & WMP

I signed up with libre.fm yesterday. I did struggle to get WMP going with it. I did find a modified last.fm plugin for WMP which was fixed to scrobble to libre.fm. It and the real last.fm plugin could run at the same time in WMP. But I wasn’t able to get the libre.fm one to actually successfully scrobble to my libre profile.

I was struggling around the ‘net, and I can say I know I did modify my “hosts” file as described on one page about getting it going (my mind is overloaded, I’m not sure which page that was now but it was simply about putting the audioscrobbler ip into windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file) and I did notice that WMP tracks had scrobbled to libre.fm at some point. Either before that or after. But the point being it still works, and I un-modified the ‘hosts’ file and it’s still working. Thus far. FWIW. I realize now that the first place I found about “how to scrobble to libre.fm” was that Turtle page. It was beyond me what to do about it, I did also see the Client Support page and was still in WMP mode, so I was looking for a way to stick with WMP (since I have Vista and use Media Center some, but I’m not stuck with having to.)

During all that I started to consider Songbird (I have a slight recollection of downloading it in an earlier version before, like a very early version, and totally ditching it) as a media player since they seemingly are on the way up, as was Thunderbird & Firefox when I switched to them (so long ago, it seems.) I downloaded it last night and couldn’t make it do what I hoped it would. The Last.fm plugin alone wouldn’t even work.

I found more info today after searching more and more. I changed something in the Songbird config file to not challenge things it thought weren’t compatible, and had it successfully install an older last.fm plugin that was modified to scrobble to libre.fm.

Then I looked at the Client Support page and understood it fully, though I had looked at it before, just wasn’t learned enough about it yet. I had Songbird, took out all the last.fm/libre.fm anything that I’d installed in it, then loaded in the order from the Client Support page about Multiscrobbling with Songbird: the libre.fm modified one, then the other one linked that will send scrobbles directly to the official Last.fm Client (i.e. the one WMP sends scrobbles to.) I have “always” had the Official Last FM client installed, which is an essential part of Multiscrobbling with Songbird.

I now have two online profiles, and am scrobbling to both.

I ponder over how I can get my last.fm data and import it to libre.fm now, but it’s python scripty so I haven’t sat down to tackle it yet. I don’t know what to do about it, and also I do want something that will send my scrobbles from Rockbox to both services, and if I had to pick one it isn’t a choice, since last.fm is the only thing I have to submit to (I currently use qtscrobbler) so both these things have me not sure about where to go from here, for now.

I have thought of finding another something but hadn’t found what I wanted, happy enough on my end with Last.fm, how I use it, but definitley if I can have a more independent online profile, I’m all for it, but I do not want to leave the last 4+ years of accumulated listening data lost, nor do I want to move all that and then listen only to via libre.fm scrobbling, but then where do my Rockbox scobbles go … I really do like Last.fm, listener pages, being a top listener, or recent one, or something, but some artist pages are so bogged down bieng so popular, I’m lucky to show up on any of them ever, nearly always show up on something more independent, but what’s it matter. Thing is, in May 2005 Audioscrobbler was one thing, then they were Last.fm, then they were … are now but are not but … I’m looking for a way to make it work out for the best.

Thing is, I got two of my children into Rockbox & Last.fm recently, so this is something I’d like to see happen, switching happily, for good, soon.