Foo Scrobbler for Windows

Release: 1.1.2
License: MIT
Copyright: © 2025–2026 Konstantinos Kyriakopoulos

A native Lastfm scrobbler component (foo_scrobbler_win) for foobar2000 on Windows. It submits “Now Playing” and scrobbles using the official Last.fm Scrobbling 2.0 API, applies strict playback qualification rules, and keeps a local queue when you’re offline. Once authenticated, it runs quietly in the background.

OS support: Windows 10 (x86, x64) and Windows 11 (x64, arm64ec) for foobar2000 ≥ v2.24

This is the GitHub site of the Windows version.
For the macOS version of Foo Scrobbler see here.

Quick start

1. In foobar, go to Preferences → Components.
2. Install: foo_scrobbler_win.fb2k-component.
3. Authenticate once with your Lastfm account through the browse flow.
4. Play music. Scrobbling happens automatically.

Where the UI lives

• Main menu: Playback → Last.fm
• Settings: File → Preferences → Advanced → Tools → Foo Scrobbler

What it does

Submission behavior

• Sends Now Playing when appropriate (aligned with Last.fm Scrobbling 2.0 expectations).
• Scrobbles only after playback qualifies (e.g., 50% played or 240 seconds, whichever comes first).
• Uses validation to prevent malformed or duplicate submissions.

When the network is unreliable

• If Last.fm can’t be reached, scrobbles are queued locally.
• When connectivity returns, the queue is flushed automatically.

Design goals and features

• Native component: Runs inside foobar2000 on Windows, no wrappers.
• Predictable rules: Deterministic scrobble qualification.
• Offline caching: Stores failed scrobbles and submits them later.
• Now Playing: Handles Last.fm Now Playing updates correctly.
• One-time auth: Requires authentication only once.
• Low overhead: Lean implementation with no third-party dependencies.
• Playback validation: Rejects malformed, invalid, or duplicate scrobbles.
• Dynamic sources: Fully supports radio streams and dynamic playback metadata.
• Title Formatting: Uses foobar2000 Title Formatting for input metadata.
• Regex filtering: Filters unwanted scrobbles using regular expressions.
• Correct metadata handling: Preserves valid tag values before submission.
• Console logging: Fully reports impactful internal scrobbling actions.
• Open source: Released under the MIT License.

Documentation

• Technical description: https://github.com/zfoxer/foo_scrobbler_mac/wiki

Release notes

Show changelog

1.1.2    2026-05-21    Refresh edited playback metadata through the same filters before NP or queue updates for consistency.
                       Fix Last.fm error 9 re-auth console spam.

1.1.1    2026-05-11    Preserve order of TF input and TF exclusion filters.
                       Improve batch scrobbling error logs.
                       Use backed-off, not-due scrobbles, to fill batches for small queues.

1.1.0    2026-05-09    Update queue draining with API-supported batch scrobbling.
                       Fix rare worker races that could cause busy spins and stale queue retries.
                       Add exclusion filtering using foobar2000 Title Formatting.
                       Add regex filtering support for albums.
                       Ignore scrobbling and Now Playing according to the FOO_SCROBBLER tag flag.
                       Replace Windows BCrypt MD5 hashing with the SDK-native implementation.

1.0.9    2026-03-26    Avoid reparsing the persisted scrobble queue on every access.
                       Cache compiled titleformat scripts instead of rebuilding them during playback.
                       Replace unsafe static locals in stream dedup with per-instance tracker state.
                       Last.fm back-end error 8 treated as temp, not having limited retries before discarding.
                       Fix regression for URL opener (Windows-only).

1.0.7    2026-03-20    Handle Last.fm rate-limit error 29 with queue cooldown.
                       Added MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID in scrobbling and NP dispatch data.
                       Merged NP code into WebAPI.
                       Fix UI dynamic sources setting being disconnected (Windows-only).

1.0.6    2026-03-13    Added support for foobar Title Formatting for input tags. Removed previous tag mapping.
                       Added build for ARM64EC architecture for Windows 11.

1.0.5    2026-03-07    Added regular expressions (regex) support to filter out submissions (Advanced prefs).
                       Fixed: Unicode track titles are now handled correctly for Now Playing and scrobbling.
                       Switched to MIT License

1.0.2    2026-03-01    Initial Windows release. Sharing codebase with the macOS version.