# Scrobble

A Spotify plugin for [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) to quickly log your thoughts on any song or album, inspired by [Last.fm](https://www.last.fm/) scrobbles.

> A **scrobble** in the music tracking service Last.fm is a record of a song you've listened to. In this plugin, scrobbling a song means writing your thoughts on a song in an automatically created note.

## Features

- Log your currently playing or recently played songs, or search from Spotify
- Automatically create and populate frontmatter of song or album notes
- Capture and timestamp your thoughts on any song
- Link related songs together with context logged on each

## Preview

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5edd56a3-eb8d-434d-a8fa-a17e1e9dcd25

## Installation

> [!WARNING]
> Due to [recent changes (Feb. 2026)](https://developer.spotify.com/blog/2026-02-06-update-on-developer-access-and-platform-security) to the Spotify Developer Platform, a Spotify Premium account is unfortunately required to access the API and use this plugin.
>
> Additionally, this plugin does not require, but highly encourages, the use of the [Front Matter Title](https://github.com/snezhig/obsidian-front-matter-title) plugin. New song notes are named with a unique ID generated by Spotify to avoid file conflicts from songs with the same name, songs containing special characters, etc. Without Front Matter Title, filenames will appear as raw IDs. In the Front Matter Title settings, an example **Common main template** entry is `{{artists}} - {{name}}`.

### Community plugins (Pending review)

1. In settings, in the **Community plugins** tab, click **Browse**
2. Search for **Scrobble**, then click **Install**
3. Ensure **Scrobble** is enabled under **Installed plugins**

### BRAT (Recommended)

1. Install [BRAT](https://github.com/TfTHacker/obsidian42-brat) from the community plugins in Obsidian
2. Copy the GitHub repository link: https://github.com/yipqp/obsidian-scrobble
3. Open the command palette and run **BRAT: Plugins: Add a beta plugin for testing**
4. Paste in the GitHub link and click **Add plugin**
5. In settings, ensure **Scrobble** is enabled under the **Community plugins** tab

### Manual

1. On the GitHub repository, under **Releases**, download the three files under the latest release: **main.js**, **manifest.json**, and **styles.css**
2. Locate the directory of your Obsidian vault, then make a new directory under **.obsidian/plugins** and name it **obsidian-scrobble**
3. Move the three files you just downloaded into **obsidian-scrobble**

## Usage

1. Go to the [Spotify for Developers dashboard](https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard) (you may need to log in first) and click **Create app** 
2. Enter a name for the new app (e.g. "Obsidian Scrobble"), enter a description, and paste `obsidian://scrobble-spotify-auth` under **Redirect URIs**
3. Under "Which API/SDKs are you planning to use?" select **Web API** and press **Save**
4. Copy the **Client ID** and go back to Obsidian, pasting it in the **Client ID** section of the Scrobble settings tab
5. In the Scrobble settings tab, click on **Connect** next to **Connect Spotify**
6. Log into Spotify and authorize access
7. Start using any commands in the command palette

## Settings

- **Client ID**: enter your Spotify for Developers client ID
- **Connect Spotify**: connect your Spotify account
- **Folder path**: path of folder to store newly created notes
- **Create new note for each track when scrobbling albums**: when scrobbling albums, create a new note for each track in that album's tracklist if it hasn't been scrobbled yet, then include wikilinks for these song notes in the album note's `tracks` frontmatter. When disabled (default behavior), only include wikilinks for song notes that already exist in the vault, and use plain text for the unlogged song notes.
- **Wikilinks: Show artists**: include artists in wikilink display text when linking related tracks or albums in the Scrobble modal, e.g. `[[trackId|SZA - Good Days]]` vs `[[trackId|Good Days]]`

### New note frontmatter preferences

These settings control what fields are auto-populated when a new note is created

- **Type**: type of media, either `Track` or `Album`
- **Duration**: length of the track or album
- **Album release date**: release date of album (only relevant in album notes)
- **Tags**: optional tags to add to new notes, e.g. `add-to-playlist`
- **Aliases: Show artists**: include artists in the `aliases` property, e.g. `SZA - Good Days` vs `Good Days`

## Limitations

- No support for podcasts, audiobooks, or Spotify's local files for albums

## Credits

- [Spotify Web API SDK - TypeScript](https://github.com/spotify/spotify-web-api-ts-sdk) for Spotify API types in `types.ts`