Winamp 5.5 Update Breaks Last.fm / AudioScrobbler Updating

Audioscrobbler, aka Last.fm is a website that keeps track of your music listening habits. It does this by installing a little pidgeon in your mp3 playing software that flys to the Last.fm server each time you play a song.

The results from this is aggregate data on your music listening habits. It is really a fun way to keep track of what you listened to and share that information with your friends. At one point I had my most recent tracks showing on this blog, but pulled it out because it wasn’t updating correctly.

You can see what I’ve been listening to here.

Winamp 5.5 Breaks Track Reporting

My mp3 playing software of choice is Justin Frankel’s Winamp. It is preferable to iTunes for many reasons. Anyhow, Winamp pushed out its upgrade to version 5.5 a few weeks ago and changed the way that track play detection is performed. This caused in the audioscrobbler / Last.fm winamp plugin to malfunction, only reporting one out of a string of songs to the server. The result is that it looked like I was only listening to one track every several hours or so.

I finally got around to looking into it and found a patch in the Last.fm forums created by very astute user named DoctorO. I installed it and blam it is fixed now. I looked further in the thread and found a Last.fm staff member had updated their winamp installer to now detect the Winamp version number and then detect tracks correctly. I had some troubs with the new official one, however so I’m recommending the user submitted update.

Happy ending?

Not really. First, Last.fm barely acknowledges Winamp as a viable client for users to scrobble tracks from. They push their Last.fm client instead, which is ludicrous. Why would I want to switch to some website’s proprietary media player? They hide plugins three clicks away from the “download” tab.

Second, Last.fm should be able to track what client I’m using to report tracks to it. Based on this and the discovery that reporting was broken by the SW update it would have been nice to have been alerted via email that I should look at updating my plugin–especially if Last.fm is offering new official installers. This is just bad customer service.

Download Patch

Anyhow, here is the updated plugin file you need to fix Winamp 5.5’s track reporting:

Download Audioscrobbler / Last.fm Winamp 5.5 Update

To install:

  1. Shut down Winamp
  2. Copy .dll into “c:/programs files/winamp/plugins/” directory (or whatever path you chose during install)
  3. Start Winamp back up
  4. Optional: You can check and see that your tracks are being updated by:
    1. right-clicking the player, choosing Options -> Preferences -> Plugins -> General Purpose
    2. Select the winamp plugin and click the Configure Selected Plugin button at the bottom.
    3. Your login details should still be in and if you’re playing a song it should be processing it like normal.

46 comments

  1. I found your post while searching the internet for a reason why my audioscrobbler wasn’t working, and I’m so glad I did. This post was very informative and (so far!) has helped me solve the problem. Thanks. 🙂

    By the way, Regina Spektor, Thelonious Monk, The Shins, and Radiohead (among others) tell me that you’ve got some stellar taste in music.

    Reply

  3. thanks for the links…..I decided to switch to winamp today from windows media player. hopefully it uses less system resources. My work PC is a piece of junk.

    Reply

  5. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!
    I was wondering why, when I finally checked my Last.fm page and plugin, that it was saying I hadn’t played anything in like 8 weeks.

    You’re a life saver and I thank you so much for this.

    Reply

  7. Thanks so much for this, I refuse to start using the last.fm client so this is a GREAT help. Cheers.

    Reply

  9. I did all you said and i’m wondering, is it supposed to show up on last.fm as well?

    The reason I ask is because I did the stuff you asked, but did not find the plug-in that says “Winamp”

    A few said Nullsoft, but I wasn’t sure which one to use.

    Forgive me, I’m still trying to get the hang of the scrobbling.

    Reply

  12. Thanks a lot. The official last.fm client is not accessible, and because they use qt, there’s nothing they can do about it. This isn’t a bad thing on it’s own, but since they are being as deceptive as they are, they are alienating the blind. Thanks for posting this. You’ve just got my scrobbling working reliably again.

    Reply

  14. Dammit, I just spent 10 mins souring both the winamp and last.fm site for the plugin… they’re both as bad as each other.

    Reply

  17. Ohh the old audiscrobbler and it works!

    I only found activewinampscrobbler or whatnot on last.fm after my reinstall and it sucked!

    Reply

  23. Thanks for the link.
    Winamp seems to be scrobbling fine but my last.fm page just won’t update. 🙁

    Reply

  24. Thanks so much for this article. I couldn’t find the winamp plugin anywhere on their site. I installed the last.fm player thinking it was a plugin installer but it ended up disabling it in winamp. Also, the last.fm player was pretty intrusive as it kept restarting its self after I quit out of it. I was tempted to erase my last.fm profile, so thank you for this.

    Reply

  25. Thank you for this!

    I did exactly as you said, and it worked… But when I restarted, the .dll file was no longer showing up in the list of plugins… and therefore not working.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks,

    Mandi

    Reply

  29. Thanks for the link to the dll.

    Finding a viable scrobbler plugin for winamp prooved to be a pain in the ass, glad i happened to get your site on google..

    Thanks again, hope last.fm and nullsoft starts cooperating soon, i refuse to change player just to be able to scrobble my music..

    Reply

  30. you Sir, are a legend… you helped me out a bucket load with fixing my Last.FM / Winamp / Audioscrobbler issue… computer illiterate folks like myself are forever grateful to people like yourself, thanks

    Reply

  33. Thanks a million. I’ve been wondering why my charts were ‘off’. Never thought only a couple of songs in my list were being submitted onto Last.fm.

    Hope this patch solves it!

    Reply

  34. Thank you truly, I hate this goddamn shit with these fucking computers. I did what you told after my useless un-installations and installations and everything else, now it shows my played tracks at/in Last FM (hope they don’t disappear), so thanks again cause it’s nice to have “hackers” like ya to fix these problems…

    Reply

  36. please, somebody help me!!!
    few days ago i got a virus and i have to format my pc … i always use last fm and long time ago, thanks for this blog entry, i resolve my problems with the scrobbling.
    But now, when I try to do what I do before with the right audioscrobbler, anything happen and nothing is working. What I have to do?!
    thanks …

    Reply

  46. Still works like a champion!! My employer had stopped all exe installations for users, this plugin is a nice work around!!

    Thanks to everyone involved!

    Reply

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