How to scrobble Apple Music to Last.fm

Apple Music doesn't scrobble on its own, and Last.fm can't read it either. Something on your device has to sit between the two: either the Last.fm app, which you open and tell to scan, or an app that watches what you play and sends it for you. Here is what each one does, what iOS lets it do, and why some scrobbles land wrong.

By Dereje, who writes Rhiannon, a Last.fm scrobbler for Apple Music. Last updated: 8 September 2026.

What scrobbling is

Scrobbling is sending what you play, track by track, to Last.fm, which keeps the record, counts the plays and builds your charts from them. Spotify and Tidal do it themselves. Apple Music does not, which is what this page is about.

Why doesn't Apple Music scrobble to Last.fm?

Spotify scrobbles because Spotify chose to: you link Last.fm to your Spotify account, and their servers send every play. Apple offers nothing of the kind. Last.fm has no way to ask Apple what you listened to, and Apple sends nothing on your behalf. The gap has to be filled on the device where the music plays.

The three ways to scrobble Apple Music

The Last.fm app, by hand

Last.fm's own app can scan your device and submit what it finds. It is free and it works, but you have to remember to do it, and what it submits is what your library counted, not when you listened. Fine if you scrobble once a week and don't mind the timestamps being approximate.

A dedicated scrobbler

A small app whose only job is to watch your listening and send it. Left on screen it can measure a play properly; left in your pocket it catches up later, with the limits below. This is the category most people end up in, and the one where the apps differ most from each other.

A player that replaces the Music app

Some third-party players read your Apple Music library, play it themselves, and scrobble what they play. Since they run the playback, they know exactly what happened. The cost is that you have to give up Apple's own player, and these are usually paid.

Can a scrobbler run in the background on iOS?

This is the part that decides everything, and the part most guides skip. iOS suspends apps in the background. No scrobbler runs continuously behind your music, whatever its App Store description implies. An app only ever catches up, when the system next wakes it, and it has three sources to catch up from.

• The app on screen. The only case where a play can be measured: the app sees the track start, sees it stop, and knows how long you listened.
• Your library's play counts. Apple keeps a play count on each song you own or added. Comparing counts tells an app that a track was played, and how many times. It says nothing about when, and it only covers what is in your library.
• Apple Music's recently played list. A short list, around thirty entries, with no dates on it. It is the only source that covers music outside your library, and it is the least reliable of the three.

Why do some scrobbles land wrong?

A title enters that recently played list the moment playback starts. Skip it after four seconds and it is in there all the same, indistinguishable from a track you sat through. The list carries no timestamps either, so anything built from it is dated by guesswork. Any scrobbler reading it is making an assumption, whether or not it tells you so.

And a scrobble cannot be taken back. Last.fm publishes no delete API, to any app. Once a listen has been sent, removing it means going to the Last.fm website and deleting it by hand, one at a time. This is why what your scrobbler chooses to send matters more than how fast it sends it.

What to look for in a Last.fm scrobbler

Four questions worth asking of any app before you let it write to your account:

• Does it measure how long you listened, or does it trust a title in a list?
• Does it tell you which scrobbles are certain and which are guesses?
• Does it ask you before sending something it isn't sure of?
• Does signing in go through Last.fm's own page, or does the app want your password?

How to scrobble Apple Music with Rhiannon

Rhiannon is the app this site is about, so read this part knowing that. It uses all three sources above and labels each one: certain when it measured the play or read a play count, a guess when it came from the recently played list. Guesses don't go out. They wait in a review queue until you tick them, which is the part no other scrobbler does, and the reason the queue exists at all: since nothing can be deleted afterwards, the decision has to happen before.

Signing in goes through Last.fm's own page and your password never passes through the app. It is free, with no subscription and no ads, on iPhone, iPad and Mac. It is not out yet.

Coming soon

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