/mpris-scrobbler

A minimalistic user daemon to submit the songs you're playing to audioscrobbler services like listenbrainz.org, libre.fm and last.fm.

Primary LanguageCMIT LicenseMIT

mpris-scrobbler

Is a minimalistic user daemon which submits the currently playing song to libre.fm and compatible services. To retrieve song information it uses the MPRIS DBus interface, so it works with any media player that exposes this interface.

MIT Licensed Build status Coverity Scan status Latest build AUR package

In order to compile the application you must have a valid development environment containing pkg-config, a compiler - known to work are clang>=5.0 or gcc>=7.0 - and the build system meson plus ninja.

The compile time dependencies are: libevent, dbus-1.0>=1.9, libcurl, json-c and their development equivalent packages.

Getting the source

You can clone the git repository or download the latest release from here.

$ git clone git@github.com:mariusor/mpris-scrobbler.git
$ cd mpris-scrobbler

Installing

CentOS, RHEL

mpris-scrobbler is available for CentOS and RHEL 7 or later via the EPEL repository. Run the following commands to install it:

$ sudo yum install epel-release
$ sudo yum install mpris-scrobbler

Fedora

mpris-scrobbler is available since Fedora 28. Run the following command to install it:

$ sudo dnf install mpris-scrobbler

Mageia, openSUSE

mpris-scrobbler is available for Mageia, openSUSE, and other RPM distributions via the COPR repository. First, install the correct repository for your operating system from COPR. Then, install the mpris-scrobbler package with your package manager of choice.

Ubuntu

Install the dependencies:

Ubuntu 18.04

sudo apt install libevent-2.1-6 libevent-dev libdbus-1-dev dbus dbus-user-session \
libcurl4 libcurl4-openssl-dev libjson-c-dev libjson-c3 meson

Ubuntu 20.04

sudo apt install libevent-2.1-7 libevent-dev libdbus-1-dev dbus dbus-user-session \
libcurl4 libcurl4-openssl-dev libjson-c-dev libjson-c-dev meson m4 scdoc

D-bus will need to be restarted:

systemctl --user restart dbus.service

Compile from source

To compile the scrobbler manually, you need to already have installed the dependencies mentioned above. By default the prefix for the installation is /usr.

$ meson build/

$ ninja -C build/

$ sudo ninja -C build/ install

Usage

The scrobbler is comprised of two binaries: the daemon and the signon helper.

The daemon is meant run as a user systemd service which listens for any signals coming from your MPRIS enabled media player. To have it start when you login, please execute the following command:

$ systemctl --user enable --now mpris-scrobbler.service

If the command above didn't start the service, you can do it manually:

$ systemctl --user start mpris-scrobbler.service

It can submit the tracks being played to the last.fm and libre.fm services, and to listenbrainz.org.

At first nothing will get submitted as you need to enable one or more of the available services and also generate a valid API session for your account.

The valid services that mpris-scrobbler knows are: librefm, lastfm and listenbrainz.

Enabling a service

Enabling a service is done automatically once you obtain a valid token/session for it. See the authentication section.

You can however disable submitting tracks to a service by invoking:

$ mpris-scrobbler-signon disable <service>

If you want to re-enable a service which you previously disabled you can call, without the need to re-authenticate:

$ mpris-scrobbler-signon enable <service>

Authenticate to the service

ListenBrainz

Because ListenBrainz doesn't have yet support for OAuth authentication, the credentials must be added manually using the signon binary. First you need to get the user token from your ListenBrainz profile page. Then you call the following command and type or paste the token, then press Enter:

$ mpris-scrobbler-signon token listenbrainz
Token for listenbrainz.org:
Audioscrobbler compatible

Libre.fm and Last.fm are using the same API for authentication and currently this is the mechanism:

Use the signon binary in the following sequence:

$ mpris-scrobbler-signon token <service>

$ mpris-scrobbler-signon session <service>

The valid service labels are: librefm and lastfm.

The first step opens a browser window -- for this to work your system requires xdg-open binary -- which asks you to login to last.fm or libre.fm and then approve access for the mpris-scrobbler application.

After granting permission to the application from the browser, you execute the second command to create a valid API session and complete the process.

The daemon loads the new generated credentials automatically and you don't need to do it manually.

The authentication for the libre.fm and listenbrainz.org services supports custom URLs that can be passed to the signon binary using the --url argument.

$ mpris-scrobbler-signon --url http://127.0.0.1:8080 token [listenbrainz|librefm]

For the moment we don't support multiple entries for the same API. Ex, have a local instance for the ListenBrainz API and use the official one at the same time.

Troubleshooting

If mpris-scrobbler does not seem to be working after following all usage instructions, confirm that ~/.local/share/mpris-scrobbler/credentials contains:

[yourservice]             ;; where yourservice is lastfm, librefm or listenbrainz
enabled = true            ;; set via $ mpris-scrobbler-signon enable <service>
username = {USERNAME}     ;; set via $ mpris-scrobbler-signon session <service> - only available for lastfm/librefm
token = {TOKEN}           ;; set via $ mpris-scrobbler-signon token <service>
session = {SESSION}       ;; set via $ mpris-scrobbler-signon session <service> - only available for lastfm/librefm

Resources

For discussions related to the project without requiring a Github account please see our mailing list: https://lists.sr.ht/~mariusor/mpris-tools.

The documentation in the README file will be soon moved to a dedicated wiki

Check out the following articles and resources about mpris-scrobbler: