How can I export track.scrobble data from last.fm?

Question

What's the best way to export a complete history of my last.fm scrobbles? The data seems to be there on the website so in theory it could be screen scraped if all else fails but is there an easier way?

Answer 1

As Backing up Last.FM scrobbles explains you should be able to use the script lastexport.py in LastToLibre. To use it:

1. Download lastexport.py.

2. Run it with the following terminal command:

   python lastexport.py -u last.fm_user_name
   

   Note that this requires you to have Python installed and that you replace last.fm_user_name with your last.fm user name. Also note that if you got real time stats hidden (under privacy settings) you have to enable it for this to work.

3. You can now find the exported tracks in the same directory as the script. By default it will be named exported_tracks.txt

The script also allows for exporting loved and banned tracks. By default it exports scrobbles but you can change the behavior by setting the flags -t to either loved or banned.

---

If you want to backup loved songs you can use sync_songs. It requires Ruby which can be installed via

sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1.

on Debian-based systems. The simplest way to install sync_songs is via RubyGems (which can be installed via sudo apt-get install rubygems1.9.1 on Debian-based systems):

sudo gem install sync_songs

For details and other ways to install see the readme.

To use it with Last.fm you need an API account as described in services.org. It is free and quite easy to get such an account. Once you have an account you can backuo Last.fm loved tracks to a CSV file by first a creating an empty file and then issuing the following

sync_songs sync --color -vs smith:lastfm:loved file_path:csv:library

You need to replace smith with your Last.fm user name and file_path with the path to the empty file.

Answer 2

Maybe there is something at Build Last.fm you could use?

Rather than screen scraping, they do have an api that you could use to pull your library among other functions.