abers / lastsounds

Simple way to scrobble tracks from a BBC Sounds programme to Last.fm

Lastsounds

Scrobble tracks from a BBC Sounds episode to Last.fm via the command line. The application takes a URL for a BBC Sounds episode as an argument and scrobbles the tracks assuming the user finished listening at runtime.

Basic usage -

python sounds_scrobble.py [OPTIONS] [URL]

Note: If Python 3 is not the default on your system you'll need to run python3 ... instead.

By default, lastsounds scrobbles all tracks from the episode. To scrobble only a range of tracks, pass the option --partial or -p when running the command -

python sounds_scrobble.py --partial [URL]

Dependencies

Lastsounds depends on BeautifulSoup, Click, Requests, Colorama, and pylast.

All dependencies can be installed using pipenv by running pipenv install in the git repository.

Setup

Lastsounds requires an API key & a shared secret that are specific to your account. These can be created here. Only the "Application name" field needs to be filled and the rest can be left blank.

After creating the key and secret, create a copy of details and rename it to .details. Then edit it to add values for your API key, shared secret, and username.

lastsounds's Issues

Scrobble forwards & specify listening times

By default, sounds_scrobble now assumes user is scrobbling after listening to all tracks or a range of tracks - so scrobbles final track for current time and works backwards. Scrobbling forwards will require additional functions - such as a function to calculate total time of all tracks / range and another to specify time started or finished listening. Also, if the user wants to scrobble at the same time as listening to the programme then will need to add waits equal to track-length - with options for pausing or stopping.

Create setup.py

Use pylast's SessionKeyGenerator

Currently, the script does not use pylast as intended and should be rewritten to use SessionKeyGenerator. See SessionKeyGenerator class definition for further details.

Add option and interface for correcting track details

Sometimes BBC Sounds contains incorrect track information, especially the formatting for tracks involving multiple artists. Therefore, need to add an option '--check-tracks' (disabled by default) that will print the full tracklist without scrobbling. The user will then be prompted whether to go ahead with scrobbling or edit the artist and track fields.

Command line arguments

Add command line arguments so users can specify:

• Programme URL
• Track start/end/all
• Calculate length forward/backward

Then rewrite main to only prompt the user if relevant arguments not provided.

BBC Sounds website change

Scrobbling has stopped working as BBC Sounds have changed the way track information is displayed. Will update the class string searches, or replace with alternative way to scrape the track info when I have time.

Error and exception handling

Refactor the code to handle obvious errors and exceptions. For example, if the URL is not valid re-prompt the user for it. Also, exit out of application if users enters blank for any prompt - with "received blank input - exiting" message.