If you’re looking for an easy way to “scrobble” music on Linux, no matter which music player you use, check out a new app called Turntable — and even if you don’t scrobble you should!

Before I go any further I should bring those unfamiliar with what a “scrobble” is, up to speed.

“Scrobbling” is—no, not one of those old fashioned British words I’m fond of using—the term given to logging the music you listen to, as you listen to it, on services like Last.fm and Libre.fm.

When you play a track in a media player connected to a compatible service, track data (song title, artist, album and date and time played) is “scrobbled” to your profile once you’ve listened to at least 50% of the track (continuously; pausing doesn’t count).

Over time, you build up a personal record of your listening habits1 which the service(s) parse to present you with various charts, graphs and insights showing your most-played tracks, albums and artists, along with suggestions of similar music that matches your tastes.

Scrobbling: stat fans get it, others just don’t

I’ve been scrobbling on Last.fm since 2006, amassing decades worth of futile-if-fun-to-gawp-at stats on my own listening habits. And let me tell you, my typos aren’t the only consistent thing about me: so is my taste in music.

That’s what scrobbling is, and why a lot of people like (or care not committed to) do it.

On to what Turntable brings to, er, the table… Poor segue, but segue we must!

Scrobble Music from Any App on Linux

Built in ‘scrobblers’

A swathe of the best Linux music players can scrobble to Last.fm – Rhythmbox, Clementine, Musikcube and Tauon included. These use the official APIs so all you have to do is link your account to the player and let the rest happen behind the scenes.

So, you may be asking, why use something “in the middle” like Turntable?

For the avoidance of doubt, this is is not a standalone music player. It simply relays what you play in other audio apps to a configured “scrobbler” service.

If your favourite audio app doesn’t support scrobbling or, you switch between different players regularly enough that you don’t (or can’t) sign in to your Last.fm/Libre.fm/ListenBrainz account in them all, Turntable proves its worth.

Because it is able to scrobble tracks from any app that use MPRIS on Linux, you’re not limited by player choice, or limited to scrobbling to one service. It’s a universal scrobbler that meets you where you are — all thanks to MPRIS.

MPRIS (or Media Player Remote Interfacing Specification to get fancy about it) is the D-Bus interface most Linux apps use to make ‘now playing’ information available to other apps, desktop environment sound menus, extension, applets, Conky scripts, and so on.

Anything piped through MPRIS can (in theory) be scrobbled using Turntable.

Works with almost every MPRIS app/tool – browsers included!

If you listen to music on, say, YouTube and you want to log those plays, you can (in theory) do just that2 without having to do anything special. Open Turntable, set the browser as the source, and focus on listening – no need to rely on data-harvesting web-browser add-ons.

Turntable features:

  • Scrobble to Last.fm, ListenBrainz, Libre.fm and Maloja – at the same time!
  • Select an open player and enable/disable scrobbling – hover over album art!
  • Enable MusicBrainz parsing to correct track titles/artists – great for YouTube!
  • Tracks scrobble when 50% or 4 mins has been listened to – just like Last.fm!
  • Slick desktop “now playing” controller – make it look how you want!
  • Don’t want a GUI? There’s a CLI option – run it in the background3!

Its developer, Evangelos “GeopJr” Paterakis (creator of Linux Fediverse client Tuba) pitches Turntable as ‘your favourite music app’s, favourite music app’. For scrobble-heads it’s certainly that, and thus well worth taking for a spin!

But as I said at the start: if you don’t scrobble you may still want to install this app.

Here’s why.

It’s also a slick ‘Now Playing’ controller

Track progress is displays ingeniously (it can be disabled)

In addition to being a universal Scrobbler, Turntable is also a slick ‘now playing’ utility for the desktop. Even if you have no interest in services like Last.fm, you can still use it to display and control the music you’re listening to.

Think CoverGloobus (if you were using Linux that far back), Spotify’s mini-mode, or macOS apps like Silicio and Sleeve. Eye candy; desktop decoration; prettification for screenshots, etc.

The visual style of Turntable is highly customisable too:

  • Show/hide components – progress bar, player icon, tonearm + more
  • Change size of album art and metadata – small, regular or large
  • Music player icon – symbolic or full-colour
  • Orientation – use it in portrait or landscape modes
  • Now playing text – left-aligned or centred
  • Art style – carded, shadow or turntable (rotates, tonearm tracks progress)
  • Window style – window, OSD or transparent
  • Light & dark mode styles – matches your system preference

Want to create a really slick controller like this one:

OSD + Shadow style, with Blur My Shell app blur enabled

If you use GNOME Shell with the Blur My Shell extension installed, enable Turntable’s OSD mode and enable application blur in Blur My Shell’s preferences. Then, add its window to the extension’s allowlist and et voila: gorgeous frosted blur effect.

Minor issues, major potential

There are some edge gaps, sure to be fixed

At the time I write about this app there are a couple of “snags” to be ware of.

Firstly, Turntable may not show album art from tracks played in DEB, Snap or non-Flathub Flatpak audio sources, even if that art shows without issue in other MPRIS areas (like the media controller in GNOME Shell).

It’s in every screenshot…
‘Something Real ‘by KIDPUNK

This is sandboxing permission issue.

I was able to get album art to show for affected apps using Flatseal, manually adding permissions to paths for the album art cache for each affected player.

It’s a hassle; hopefully more app config paths can can be bundled in since, for many users, that kind of “extra curricular activity” is off-putting.

Secondly, but less importantly, music player icons wouldn’t, in my hands-on, pick up icons from DEB and Snap players. Not a massive issue; hiding the player icon creates a cleaner look anyway.

Finally, I found if fractional scaling is enabled the animated turntable (spinning record player) style would not correctly position album art. If that is an issue for you too, see if disabling fractional scaling solves it – and if it does, let me know and I’ll file a bug.

Beyond that, more customisation options would be great: centre-aligned text would suit vertical orientations; alternative track progress displays (like a traditional bar), free resizing of the controller (albeit locked to an aspect ratio).

Get Turntable for Linux

You can see where the app gets it name (note: sped up to demo tonearm)

For those who want to track their listening habits easily, even when bouncing between different music players, Turntable is essential – if only because it cuts down on the hassle of setup/login in each app.

The fact it doubles up as a blingy desktop music controller?

Seals the deal for me.

Get Turntable on Flathub

  1. Sure, streaming music sites sort of do the same thing, but it’s with the aim of learning as much about your habits so they can force music—often monetarily beneficial for the company to promote—through algorithmic recommendations. Scrobbling is a different beast – it’s stats, on your terms, for your benefit (you can export your data and take it with you). ↩︎
  2. I found nothing played on YouTube in Firefox scrobbled, despite MPRIS and Turntable working/seeing the track. Enabling Musicbrainz didn’t help. Maybe I’m missing Something Real obvious… ↩︎
  3. Want to use Turntable CLI mode? Run flatpak run dev.geopjr.Turntable --help to find out how. ↩︎