You’ve seen people sharing cool collages of their recent listening data. These collages look great with album art and listen counts. But you have no idea where to start creating your own? Or maybe you do know where to start. Yet, all of the articles are for Windows or Spotify and you’re an Apple Music on Mac user? Fear not, we’ve got you covered with our last.fm and Apple Music on macOS article!
First things first, it’s important to understand some terms.
- last.fm: Last.fm is a music website. It helps you keep track of the songs, artists, and albums you listen to.
- “Scrobbling“: Scrobbling is a feature that tracks the music you listen to and logs it on your Last.fm profile. When you play a song on services like Spotify or Apple Music, the song’s details are sent automatically to Last.fm. These details include the title, artist, and album. This creates a record of your listening habits, allowing Last.fm to show personalised charts, recommend new music, and provide insights into your music preferences over time. It’s like keeping a diary of all the music you enjoy.
Step 1. Getting a last.fm account.
The first thing we’re going to need is a last.fm account, handily this is pretty simple. Click the link below and follow the steps to sign up.
Step 2. Getting the last.fm Desktop App for Mac
Once you have your last.fm account, the next thing we’re going to need is the last.fm scrobbler. Click the link below, if you’re on a Mac it should detect that and give you the right link. Download the app and then drag it from your Downloads folder to your Applications folder.
Step 3. Setting the last.fm Mac Desktop App up
The next step is to launch the last.fm scrobbler, either find it in your Applications folder or press CMD + SPACE and type Last.fm
If you’re using an Apple Silicon Mac and have not yet installed Rosetta you will be asked to install it before the scrobbler will launch since it’s not yet an Apple Silicon native application. Follow the instructions on screen.
allowing last.fm desktop app in mac security
Next you’re likely to see a prompt saying that last.fm wasn’t opened because Apple could not verify that the app is free from malware. This is because the application is not signed and so Gatekeeper cannot verify it. To get it to run we need to tell macOS that we’re happy with it.
To do this click Done on the dialog and then do the following steps:
- Open System Settings > Privacy & Security
- Scroll right to the bottom, in the Security section you should see “Last.fm” was blocked to protect your Mac with an option to ‘Open Anyway‘
- Click ‘Open Anyway‘ and then click ‘Open Anyway‘ in the dialog that appears
- You’ll need to enter your keychain password and click ok
- Then last.fm scrobbler will then launch
Note: This is clearly not ideal and there are two things you should do. Firstly, read this page and make sure you’re happy. You’re essentially telling macOS that you have verified that you trust the developer of this application. Secondly, drop a message on the last.fm support forums asking them to create a signed apple silicon native version.
connecting last.fm mac desktop app to your last.fm account
So, if all has gone well by this point, you should see the Last.fm Desktop App asking you to either sign up or connect your account.
- Click on Connect Your Account and you’ll be taken to the last.fm website
- click ‘Yes, Allow Access‘ when prompted
- Once signed in, return to the Desktop App and click Continue
- The Desktop app will show you that your account is connected, click Continue until it shows Finish
- You will be prompted to accept a permission for Last.fm to control “Music”, this is how the scrobbler can see what you’re listening to, so click Allow.
- This is optional, but I like to have the scrobbler auto run when I sign in. To do this, right click on the Last.FM icon in the dock > Options > Open At Login
You should now see the last.FM scrobbler on your desktop ready to scrobble. To test it out, you should launch Apple Music and play something. While you’re listening, it’s worth knowing that Last.fm doesn’t consider listening to a track for a few seconds as a listen. By default, the scrobbler will only register a listen when you listen to 4 minutes or 50% of a track. You can control this in the settings > scrobbling section of the Last.fm Desktop App.
It’s also worth noting that any music that you play via the Apple Music App will get scrobbled. This includes local content as well as music that is streamed.
What now?
The world is your oyster! Now you are tracking your listening habits, you get access to a world of data and recommendations, both from last.fm directly and via the community who work with the APIs to generate cool content.
Last.fm Site
A really cool place to start is your last.fm home, which will give you a variety of recommendations based on your listening history. This is a great place to find new music.
Also in the last.fm site, click on your name in the top right hand corner. Then view your profile. You’ll be able to see what you’ve been listening to in the overview. The really cool stuff is in the reports. You can see what you’ve been listening to over the last week. Viewing some reports requires a pro subscription.
My favourite free reports are the Top Music
…and Charts
Community Projects
Ok, that’s cool and everything, but what if you don’t want to pay for a pro subscription? Well, you are in luck. There are a ton of free community tools available. They will analyse your scrobbling history. These tools will create reports and charts for you.
Here are a few of my favourites:
Our very own last.fm collage generator, available at lastfm.monstershoprock.com. This is the tool we use for our social media posts. You need to give your lastfm username. Then, it lets you create a collage in either our unique collage format or a grid format.
Another community favourite is https://topsters.org, which is a great resource for creating lists. One of its super cool capabilities is to sync your data from last.fm. If you click Import / Export and enter your last.fm username and click import, it will generate you a super cool grid of your music listening
But that’s not all, the community is constantly creating new cool tools to show your data. This is a great resource:
And while we’re on the subject of reddit, the r/lastfm community is super cool. It’s worth spending time with if you’re interested in all of this music data nonsense.
Wrap up and a few other things
Scrobbling can be addictive. I’m sure like most you don’t just listen to Music on your Mac so here are a few links to other articles for other platforms
I hope this has been useful and helped at least one person. When I started, I was baffled by the many old articles. They claimed that this didn’t work with newer versions of macOS and Apple Music.
About the Author
Cool! I love how this article makes it simple to link Apple Music with last.fm on macOS. The step-by-step scrobbling setup is super clear, and learning I can make those cool listening data collages is awesome. The visualization resources at the end are a nice bonus!
Cool! I would recommend Muxie, a Last.fm client for macOS. https://muxie.duhnnie.com