scrobble.life · mobile
Scrobble your phone
Set it up once, then forget it's there.
Everything you listen to on your Android phone — Spotify, YouTube Music, SoundCloud, podcasts, even video — logged to your scrobble.life profile automatically, in the background.
Android gives a website no way to see what your other apps are playing — so one small, free, open-source app does the listening and forwards each track here. You set it up once; after that it just runs.
Before you start
- An Android phone or tablet. (iPhone is different — see below.)
- A scrobble.life account you're signed in to.
- About five minutes. You only do this once.
Set it up
- 1
Install a scrobbler app
You need one small, free app that watches what your other apps play and forwards each track. Either of these works — pick one:
The walkthrough below uses Simple Scrobbler's wording; Pano's screens are almost identical.
There is also RustedWax, a community-built app that works a different way — see below.
- 2
Turn it on and authorize
Open Settings → Scrobbling and switch mobile scrobbling on. Tap Authorize scrobble.life and approve the Keychain prompt — a one-time step that lets scrobble.life post your scrobbles under your own name. It is posting-only (it cannot touch your keys or your funds), your own account covers the tiny cost, and you can revoke it at any time from the same page.
Then copy the two values it shows you:
- Server
https://scrobble.life/apis/listenbrainz- Token
- a long code unique to your account — treat it like a password
The token is how scrobble.life knows the plays are yours. You can regenerate it at any time if it ever leaks.
- 3
Point the app at scrobble.life
Open the scrobbler and choose to add a scrobbling service. Pick ListenBrainz, then fill in:
- URL
https://scrobble.life/apis/listenbrainz- Token
- paste the token from step 2
Tap save. scrobble.life is now one of its scrobble targets. (scrobble.life speaks the ListenBrainz protocol, which is why you add it under ListenBrainz rather than Last.fm.)
- 4
Give it permission to see what's playing
The app will ask for Notification access — that is how it reads the "now playing" information your music apps put in the notification shade. Grant it in Android's Notification access screen when prompted. Nothing is scrobbled without it.
- 5
Choose which apps to track(optional)
By default it listens to everything. In the app's player list you can switch individual players on or off — handy if you would rather not have, say, a video app counted.
- 6
Play something
Start a track in any music app. Once you have heard half the song, or four minutes — whichever comes first, it scrobbles. Open your profile and it will be there.
What gets scrobbled
Anything that shows a playback notification on your phone — which is almost everything:
A track counts once you have genuinely listened — half its length, or four minutes, whichever comes sooner. Skipping through songs will not spam your history. The current track also shows as "now playing" while it is on.
RustedWax — a community alternative
RustedWax is an open-source Android app built by @skiptvads from the Hive community. It watches YouTube, YouTube Music and browser playback, and it is not connected to the setup above — it writes to Hive directly, in the same format scrobble.life already reads, so its scrobbles turn up on your profile on their own.
The apps above never touch your keys: they send plays to scrobble.life, and @scrobblerelay posts them for you under an authority you can revoke. RustedWax instead keeps a posting key on your phone and signs each scrobble on the device. Neither is wrong — one asks you to trust a delegation you control, the other asks you to keep a key on your handset. Pick whichever you are comfortable with; they can also run side by side.
Nothing on this page applies to it — there is no server URL or token to paste. Install it, give it your Hive posting key, and it scrobbles.
Its own README notes that it leans on YouTube web interfaces that can change without warning, so it may occasionally miss or mis-title a track. It is a separate project, so bugs and feature requests belong on its GitHub rather than with us.
On an iPhone?
Apple does not let an app watch what Spotify or Apple Music play in the background. That is an iOS restriction every scrobbler runs into, not a scrobble.life one. For now on iPhone: play music through the scrobble.life web player, which scrobbles on its own, or log listens by hand. A proper iOS story is something we are actively looking into.
If nothing shows up
- Notification access is off. This is the usual culprit — re-check Android's Settings → Notification access and make sure the scrobbler is enabled.
- The token or URL has a typo. Re-paste both from Settings → Scrobbling.
- The player app is switched off in the scrobbler's player list (step 5).
- Battery optimisation killed it. Give the scrobbler an "unrestricted" battery setting so Android does not sleep it mid-song.
- You have not listened long enough yet — remember the half-or-four-minutes threshold.
Questions
Is my token a password?
Close enough — treat it like one. Anyone holding it could scrobble to your account, but it cannot touch your Hive keys, post on your behalf, or spend anything. If it leaks, regenerate it from Settings → Scrobbling and the old one stops working.
Will it drain my battery?
Barely. It only reacts to notifications your music apps already post — it is not constantly polling. Just make sure Android's battery optimiser does not put it to sleep (see above).
Does it work offline?
Yes. The app holds plays it could not send and forwards them once you are back online.
Can I use a different app?
Yes. Any scrobbler that supports a custom ListenBrainz server works the same way. Point it at the same URL and token.
What about scrobbles I already have from the browser extension?
They live together on one profile. The desktop extension and the phone app are just two ways in; your history is the same either way.
Your server URL and personal token are waiting in Settings → Scrobbling.
Open Scrobbling settings