wheresrhys

I like Last.fm. I really do, though I don’t use it as much as I used to, for trivial reasons (where I work at the moment my PC’s box is a tower on the floor, rather than on the desktop, so my headphones don’t reach). But despite not using the website to listen to music, I do still want it to record what I listen to, partly because when I do start listening again I want it to have up to date information on my music tastes, and partly because I’m a bit of a geek and like to check every now and then if Elliott Smithis still my top artist in figures as well as in esteem.

But Last.fm does have one major annoyance. The Last.fm software for scrobbling information about the music you play to the website is far more bulky than needs be. It contains a player (not really necessary now they’ve introduced the ability to play straight from the website), and also reminds you incessantly to download plug-ins for every mainstream media player you have, even if you only use one, and as you can’t uninstall Windows Media Player, this means a lot of updates of no benefit to you. It also requires updating very frequently and will remind you every time you start iTunes, thus disrupting the mood that put you in mind to listen to some music in the first place.

I needed something better. And I found it.

iSproggler is a little application developed by some Last.fm user(s) which is a bare bones sproggler for iTunes. If you set it to run when windows opens it will send all your listening data to Last.fm and nowt else. It’s reliable, discreet, uses a fairly small amount of resources, and most importantly never nags you to be updated; exactly what the Last.fm software should be like. Also it’s name, as I’ve just discovered, is rather humorous, be it deliberate or not.

It does however have one minor setback – every time you close iTunes it asks you to click OK, but even though this happens every time (as opposed to the Last.fm software reminding you to upgrade only until you upgrade it) it bothers me a lot less as it doesn’t delay my listening to the music I’ve decided would suit the moment.

To download it you need to join the iSproggler group, but it’s a small price to pay.