May 27, 2011

How to Scrobble Your Google Music Plays to Last.fm

Google Music is very much a beta product, but one that is going to get a lot of attention as it becomes more widely available, competing in the online music world with Apple's forthcoming cloud music player, Amazon's cloud player, and Spotify, which thus far has focused on desktop or mobile applications to play on-demand tunes.

After taking a few days to upload my music to the cloud, I'm enjoying getting access to my tunes on any computer I want, from practically anywhere. But the service doesn't do a few things that are practically a must for me - first, update Last.fm with my listening history, and second, play to my Sonos S5 setup at home, leaving me to listen through my laptop or phone's speakers.

Last.fm integrated into my Google Music Player

After politely venting about these product holes on Twitter this morning, the first of these two holes was solved. Daniel Slaughter, a Web Developer at Grand Valley State University in Michigan alerted me to a project of his that brings Last.fm scrobbling to Google Music, letting the OCD side of me enjoy the music again, while keeping my statistics up to date.

Google Music Player updating Last.fm

His project, simply titled Google Music With Last.fm, is a script that runs on FireFox 3 or 4 with Greasemonkey installed, or of course, Google Chrome. To get it running, I downloaded and ran the script, and a new Last.fm section showed up in my Google Music. Once I had authenticated the application to update my personal Last.fm account, the song plays and history started to rack up.

If you're one of the early folks to gain access to Google Music Beta, and you miss the Last.fm integration that practically every other music player (including Spotify and iTunes) offers, you'll want to get this script going. Very easy to add and very clear to see the benefit. Nice work, Daniel.