iPod scrobbling support!

so i can ́t scrobble my ipod with songbird?
or perhaps there could be some plug-in or add-on for isproggler connecting with songbird?

I drive all day at work, and also try to keep as close of track of what I'm listening to as possible. The lack of this feature is a big set back for me.

If you plug in your ipod and open itunes so it detects the ipod but won't sync it, does it not scrobble your tracks then?

I don't know if that's possible, but my goal is to replace itunes entirely with sunbird.
Now that I see that this is a problem for more people than just me, I would really like to see that feature.
Otherwise I'll have to stay with itunes.

my problem is...itunes doesn ́t function anymore (i don ́t know why...tried everything...) so i wanted to replace it with songbird...which is a really good solution. but the only thing i miss badly is ipod scrobbling... so please please please find something^^

This is exactly the feature that I miss most since switching to Songbird. The ability to keep track of stuff I listen to whilst on the road is a High Priority for me. The link to Last.fm works fine, but only scrobbles what I listen to on the rare occasions that I'm home. Any chance of reprioritising this important feature ? ...please

The only setback for me as well. We really need this.

I too would love to see this come to Songbird, even though I believe Last.fm should add support for Songbird with their official client. As there are scrobbling rules set by Last.fm so scrobbles aren't abused...

But what the official Last.fm client does (keep in mind I'm not one of the developers, just a QA dude) is compare the playcounts before syncing to the library, with the updated playcounts after synced. Also it takes into account the tracks played in the library (computer) while the iPod was not connected (listened to) so extra scrobbles and/or 'negative' Scrobbles aren't picked up...

I'm gonna go ahead and say Bug #14326 is the official bug for it since it is assigned to stevel already.. So go ahead and comment there to put in your thoughts and comments..

P.S. I changed the topic to an idea, and changed the title to reflect it, hope you don't mind...

please make this possible :)

I don't wanna still using itunes

(sorry poor english)

I use Songbird as a media player now, and iTunes has become my "iPod manager" out of necessity. I want to see the iPod and last.fm addons get more attention because right now they just aren't functional enough to use.

It's whats keeping me using iTunes too, I use MediaMonkey as my audio player and iTunes as my iPod manager.

But I wish I could just use Songbird for everything.

This is the only thing tying my to iTunes as well. It's a must have for me. Enough that I installed iTunes in a Virtual Machine on Ubuntu.

Any progress?

@JackMC: Have you taken a look at yamipod? It isn't songbird, of course, but it runs on linux, and if you're just looking to sync your playcounts from ipod, it's a much less bloated solution!

This really is a must have feature for heavy ipod/last.fm users.

For "inspiration", please take a look at the source code of Amarok and Rythmbox, both of which do this well on linux.

Rythmbox even correctly timestamps listening activity from the ipod when uploading to last.fm (e.g. if you listened to the song last night, the time stamp on last.fm reflects this!)...

I agree.

It's the one thing putting me off of Songbird, everything else is great.

I use my ipod loads in the day and it's nice to get it scrobble onto last.fm at the end of it.

Please find a way Songbridians!

Hi,

i think this is a big feature that songbird is missing.

I like what else is on offer but this is a big turn off :(

please find a way of enabling scrobbling support for ipods and last.fm...!

I agree with everyone else here.

I love Songbird, except this. It's really important to me that I can scrobble songs off my iPod to Last.fm.
I really hope this topic will get the developers' attention, it sucks that it's a low priority now. :( (However, understandable.)

As soon as Songbird gets this feature, I'm switching from iTunes (which is getting a bit slow and hangy while the size of my library keeps growing..).

What's the work around for windows?

Is it possible to scrobble plays from your ipod onto last fm using song bird? Itunes is very compatible with the lastfm client and can easily scrobble ipod plays, but has recently been experiencing issues and im wondering if there will be an add on that would improve upon the system. Now it seems as though first plays of an album on an ipod don't scrobble, but this has only happened to recent albums

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
****Ipod Scrobbling?****.

Aus told me that songbird will sync playcounts (I hope properly) on ipod sync, since the newer ipods keep track of play count. I remember there was a last.fm tool for scrobbling tracks when synced in iTunes. We need this for songbird too. Shouldn't be difficult at all either.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Scrobble ipod plays on sync.

With the open sourcing of the iPod add-on (Bug 16668), this will be much easier for an outside source to hack into libgpod/ipod add-on to enable scrobbling ;)

er...what does that mean Michael?
Tracking what I have listened to whilst on the road is important to me, and not being able to do that on Lastfm with Songbird, the way I can with i-tu*es (spits) is the only thing that is stopping me from using Songbird.

Sorry for the lack of info :-P What I mean is that once the iPod Device Support add-on's source is open to the public (it is a closed source plugin right now, meaning developers can't look at how it works), someone might be able to implement an add-on to achieve ipod scrobbling much more easily.

thankyou Michael...er YES, you've made it much clearer. I did not realise that the code for scrobbling was not available. Probably because Songbird scrobbles to Lastfm whilst the pod is plugged into the USB thingy without a problem, but now I can understand that it needs different code to access the list of played songs.
So, ...er...any word on when Ap*le might release that bit of information?
... do other players suffer from the same closed source thingy or is it just the pod?

@hemlholtz: Michael is not referring to the lack of open source on Apple's end (although they do have a problem with that), he's referring to the fact that people can not currently look at and modify the source for the Songbird plugin for iPod Device Support. Once the Songbird devs open that code up hopefully an external developer can add-on iPod scrobbling support easier.

There are open source projects who have accessed the iPod to Scrobble it's tracks (iSproggler being the one I can think of at the moment) so scrobbling iPods is not an uncharted territory.

Are there any news on this topic?

I have installed the plugin, but it doesn't seem as if it does anything, especially as it still tries to get my iPod library for about half an hour.

Hi,

with the hope of putting that idea higher on the current to-do list. Scrobbling iPod plays is really crucial for everyone owning an iPod and using last.fm. It would be a "killer-feature" to completely get rid of iTunes.
The only other feature in iTunes I'd still love to see in Songbird is Compilation support as shown in iTunes. But this should be easy to implement.

Please, add those two features and all I'll use will be Songbird. Promise.

For the last week songbird has been my default player i've used it on and off but really sticking with it this time. this feature would put it over the top for me and better search controls but i can live with out those if i had this.

please please please sort out the ipod scrobbling. this is a HIGH priority for any ipod user. i listen to 90% of my music when im traveling to & from & during work & im losing vast amounts of playcounts on my Lastfm profile =[

its a shame that Lastfm's own client don't support songbird because then i could use that, even isproggler doesnt recognise songbird.

I have totally given up on itunes since its caused me nothing but grief recently but i am desperately missing ipod scrobbling.

please make the new add-on already
i mean people complain about that for a year and you're only going to get more complains
songbird could be perfect with this feature, that's the only missing thing - scrobble ipod listens
also i've only registered to write this

First, I should say that I'm not hired by POTI, and are part of the community (not even a developer, I just talk a lot).

The problem with iPod scrobbling, I'd imagine is that:
1) There will be no legal way to support it in the future (thank you DMCA). Yes, at the moment a lot of people are still using old iPods, but the new ones apparently have been modified in a way that cannot be reverse engineered legally.
2) POTI could never support the iPod's as well as iTunes. Features like application's require ITMS access, something Songbird could not provide.
3) Apple often upgrades some iPod's, breaking backwards compatibility. With the iPhone and iPod touches, expect it to happen more often. This means that support could break at any time.
4) Finally, Apple play's cat and mouse (palm pre for example). Apple's only choice is to either lock down the iPod protocol more in the future (making support near impossible, or extremely expensive), or open up the iPod's completely, so that they can be supported by any player (to allow them to be competitive, but would be unlikely). Either way, working on full-on iPod support now I believe would be a waste of money. That brings me to 5.
5) Development isn't free, and since Apple is consistently protecting the iPod's, even assuming the DMCA didn't exist, it would suck development resources every new release. Why support one brand of players when companies are out there such as Google, Phillips, Nokia, Sansa and others are all making it easy to support them? Instead of spending the time constantly reverse engineering Apple's protocols and supporting only half of their functionality, POTI could instead support MANY other brands instead (reliably support their feature set and protocol). In fact, Songbird could quite easily become the preferred player for many brands of portable media players/Smart Phones.

So that's why, in my opinion, I'd like to see this, but as a community addon primarily. I wouldn't like to see the Pioneers of the Inevitable take away resources from features such as Video functionality that would allow portable video players from being supported reliably, for a brand of media player which is mostly unsupportable. .