Turntable is a Universal Scrobbler App for Linux

Those looking for an easy way to “scrobble” music on Linux, no matter which music player they use, should check out a new app called Turntable.

But before I go any further I should bring those unfamiliar with what a “scrobble” is, up to speed.

“Scrobbling” is—no, not one of those old fashioned British words I’m fond of using—the term given to logging the music you listen to, as you listen to it, on services like Last.fm and Libre.fm.

When you play a track in a media player that integrates with a compatible service, the track data (song title, artist, album and date and time played) gets “scrobbled” to your profile.

Over time, you build up a personal record of your listening habits¹ which the service can parse to present you with various data-backed rankings of your most-played tracks, albums and artists, along with suggestions of new music that might suit your tastes.

I’ve been scrobbling on Last.fm since 2006, amassing decades worth of futile-yet-fun-to-gawp-at stats about my own listening habits. And let me tell you, my typos aren’t the only consistent thing about me: so is my taste in music.

So that’s what scrobbling is, and why some people like to do it – now on to what Turntable brings to, er, the table (I could’ve come up with something better than that, sorry).

Scrobble from Any App on Linux

A swathe of the best-known Linux music players support Last.fm scrobbling – Rhythmbox, Clementine, Musikcube and Tauon included. These use the official APIs. You link your account to the player, then the rest happens automatically, as you listen.

So, you may ask, why use Turntable?

If your favourite audio app lacks scrobbling support entirely or, you switch between different players regularly and don’t (or can’t sign) in to your Last.fm/Libre.fm/etc account in all of them, Turntable proves its worth.

It is able to scrobble tracks from any app that use MPRIS on Linux, meaning you’re not limited to one player, or even limited to scrobbling to one service. It’s something of a universal middleman.

Anything piped through MPRIS can (in theory) be scrobbled to your preferred service.

So if you listen to music on, say, YouTube and you want to log those plays you can (in theory) do just that² without needing to do anything special. Open Turntable, set the source, and the rest happens for you – no more need to rely on icky data-harvesting web-browser add-ons.

Turntable features:

• Scrobble to Last.fm, ListenBrainz, Libre.fm and Maloja�– even at the same time!
• Select an open player and enable/disable scrobbling�– hover over album art!
• Enable MusicBrainz parsing to correct track titles/artists – great for YouTube!
• Tracks scrobble when 50% or 4 mins has been listened to�– just like Last.fm!
• Slick desktop “now playing” controller –�and make it look how you want!
• Don’t want a GUI? There’s a CLI option too�– run it in the background³!

Its developer, Evangelos “GeopJr” Paterakis (creator of Linux Fediverse client Tuba) pitches Turntable as ‘your favourite music app’s, favourite music app’. For scrobble fans it’s certainly that — and well worth taking for a spin!

But it gets better.

Turntable is actually two apps in one…

Turntable is also a slick ‘Now Playing’ controller

As well as being a universal scrobbling tool that picks up any MPRIS audio data, Turntable is also a slick ‘now playing’ utility for the desktop. Even if you don’t scrobble, you can still use this app to display and control the music you’re listening to.

Think CoverGloobus (if you were using Linux that far back), Spotify’s mini-mode, or macOS apps like Silicio and Sleeve.

The visual style of Turntable is highly customisable:

• Show/hide components�– progress bar, player icon, tonearm + more
• Change size of album art and metadata – small, regular or large
• Music player icon�– symbolic or full-colour
• Orientation – use it in portrait or landscape modes
• Art style – carded, shadow or turntable (rotates, tonearm tracks progress)
• Window style – window, OSD or transparent
• Light & dark mode styles – matches your system preference

Here’s a tip on how to create a really�effective looking style:

If you use GNOME Shell with the Blur My Shell�extension installed, enable Turntable’s OSD mode and enable application blur in Blur My Shell’s preferences. Then, add its window to the extension’s allowlist and et voila: gorgeous frosted blur effect.

Minor issues, major potential

At the time I write about this app there are a couple of “snags” to be ware of.

Firstly, Turntable may not show album art from tracks played in DEB, Snap or non-Flathub Flatpak audio sources, even if that art shows without issue in other MPRIS areas (like the media controller in GNOME Shell).

This is sandboxing permission issue.

I was able to get album art to show for affected apps using Flatseal, manually adding permissions to paths for the album art cache for each affected player.

It’s a hassle; hopefully more app config paths can can be bundled in since, for many users, that kind of “extra curricular activity” is off-putting.

Secondly, but less importantly, music player icons wouldn’t, in my hands-on, pick up icons from DEB and Snap players. Not a massive issue; hiding the player icon creates a cleaner look anyway.

Finally, I found if fractional scaling is enabled the animated turntable (spinning record player) style would not correctly position album art. If that is an issue for you too, see if disabling fractional scaling solves it – and if it does, let me know and I’ll file a bug.

Beyond that, more customisation options would be great: centre-aligned text would suit vertical orientations; alternative track progress displays (like a traditional bar), and being able to resize the controller (albeit locked to an aspect ratio) handy.

Get Turntable for Linux

For those who want to track their listening habits easily, even when bouncing between different music players, Turntable is essential – if only because it cuts down on the hassle of setup/login in each app.

The fact it doubles up as a blingy desktop music controller?

Seals the deal for me.

Get Turntable on Flathub

1. Sure, streaming music sites sort of do the same thing, but it’s with the aim of learning as much about your habits so they can force music—often monetarily beneficial for the company to promote—through algorithmic recommendations. Scrobbling is a different beast – it’s stats, on your terms, for your benefit (you can export your data and take it with you). ↩︎
2. I found nothing played on YouTube in Firefox scrobbled, despite MPRIS and Turntable working/seeing the track. Enabling Musicbrainz didn’t help. Maybe I’m missing Something Real obvious… ↩︎
3. Want to use Turntable CLI mode? Run flatpak run dev.geopjr.Turntable --help to find out how. ↩︎