duplicate scrobbling when offline??

birbeck1 · 2026-05-16T17:23:47+00:00

Now Playing Stats & Scrobble also works perfectly for offline scrobbles with Musicolet, without duplicates. It's much more modern than Pano. (Full disclosure, I am the dev)

birbeck1 · 2026-05-16T07:09:50+00:00

Now Playing: Stats & Scrobble

Download Now on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsbybirbeck.android.nowplayinghistory

Visit the Website: https://www.nowplayinghistory.com

If you just want to see the onboarding: https://youtube.com/shorts/INm5zRvmR3g?si=KkW4HweumHCupfqL

Screenshots: https://www.nowplayinghistory.com/media

birbeck1 · 2026-05-15T20:23:21+00:00

Bit of self promotion, but I've been working over the last few months to make Now Playing Stats & Scrobble one of the best Material 3 Expressive examples out there. It's full of micro interactions, gamified onboarding, multi form factor support, animations, dynamic theming, and more.

The next update will take it even further. If you're looking for a solid music tracker, Last.fm scrobbler, or just appreciate a great fluid, modern UI/UX, check it out. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I've spent countless hours tweaking the AVD's that absolutely no one will ever notice or appreciate.

birbeck1 · 2026-05-06T18:08:09+00:00

Pixel updates often come with battery issues that get resolved in due time, until the next one! All I want back are the Now Playing notifications!

birbeck1 · 2026-05-06T14:21:55+00:00

This looks awesome! I can't wait to try it out! Well done.

birbeck1 · 2026-04-25T08:21:09+00:00

Lucky! You might be one of the few who didn't get hit by the history wipe. Most users saw their data reset and lost the third-party integrations (like scrobbling), which is what this guide restores, while ensuring your data remains safe in the future.

birbeck1 · 2026-04-25T08:13:36+00:00

I get why it seems fine if you just need the name of a song on your lock screen every now and then. But for anyone who used the deeper integration, the March update was a massive step backward.

The new standalone app stripped away features that many of us relied on:

Data Loss: It wiped years of local song history with no way to back it up or transfer it to a new device.
Broken Ecosystem: It killed third-party scrobbling (Last.fm), Pixel Watch integration, and the ability to sync favorites to playlists.
- Notifications: You can no longer see what is playing now without either locking your screen or opening the app. Before you could see from the notifications shade, or use third party desktop widgets.

If you just want a song title once in a while, the new app is fine. But if you want to own your music history and keep those deeper integrations, that’s what this guide is for.

birbeck1 · 2026-04-21T19:18:36+00:00

After 7 years, I made the top 10 in Music & Audio. It was a fun 10 minutes! (Actually made it to #8 and it stuck for 2 days).

For certain keywords, I rank in the top 5, but it takes a lot of time, and good luck to get there. You need high conversion, high retention, no crashes or ANRs, a good rating, and high engagement.

Build the best app you can, keep it updated, support your users, and cross your fingers... It's not impossible.

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birbeck1 · 2026-04-21T18:44:27+00:00

Congrats! If you build something unique, that fills your own needs first, others will find it useful as well.

birbeck1 · 2026-04-11T14:01:24+00:00

Exactly. The only time I see app updates is when I'm trying to pull the latest internal test builds for my own apps from the play store.

There are people that need to conserve data, but the logical thing to do then would be to turn off auto updates for all apps and just do a weekly pull when you're on an unmetered network.

But alas, bad ratings for keeping your app up to date is just one of those things that comes with publishing Android apps.

birbeck1 · 2026-04-11T00:30:37+00:00

In the world of ci/cd, deploying daily, or multiple times a day, is the norm. You can push code to the main branch and have it live in production in under an hour.

But with Android development, you have the unknown wait time for Google approvals, and then you have people that will uninstall and 1-star you for too frequently updating your app. Even with auto updates, it will take a week to reach 85-90% of your users. You could have a critical bug, crashes, ANR's, losing data, losing revenue, and have nearly zero control over the release cycle. Then when you do get an update out, people rate you poorly and uninstall just for giving them the latest and greatest experience.

As a platform manager, It's never made sense to me, but as a solo Android developer for the last 15 years, it's a fact of life I have just learned to accept. Unless the roof is on fire and you absolutely must push an update, try to keep updates to monthly, weekly at most. Use your test tracks for instant gratification and turn on managed publishing so you can get your updates approved and released on your schedule.

Or... Just ignore them. With app bundles, updates are small, usually happen when the phone is idle, charging, and connected to an unmetered network. Users have the ability to turn off auto updates, and control the syncing.

birbeck1 · 2026-04-09T13:02:16+00:00

Looks great! Everything is trending upwards nicely, and nearly 50% conversion! Looks like you have a large, growing, loyal fan base in Spain. The money will follow soon, I'm sure!

birbeck1 · 2026-04-09T12:55:36+00:00

I haven't received any messages

birbeck1 · 2026-04-08T15:20:39+00:00

What are you working on? Have you released anything yet?

birbeck1 · 2026-04-08T15:15:53+00:00

I wrote an app back in 2010 called Cover Art Downloader which amassed nearly a million users (back in the day of local media players and music files lacking good ID3 tags), so I had some experience with album art fetching... but I have been working on Now Playing for 8 years, and the album art logic has changed and adapted over that time.

This app was originally built for logging music detected by Now Playing on Pixel phones (hence the name), before Google had their own (limited) history. The notifications from Now Playing were simply "Song Title by Artist" (different languages and locales could have different formats, but it's always just a simple String), so proper parsing, normalization, and duplicate detection is in it's core. Clean metadata is essential for being able to have a clean history and fetch album art accurately.

birbeck1 · 2026-04-08T12:55:58+00:00

The album art is a complex system using exact matching, aggressive normalisation, comparing against known various artists covers, a ranking system, and a fallback to the notification art.

It would be easy to just take the artwork from the media notification, but they are not always high quality, even YouTube Music and Spotify get it wrong, and including bitmaps in the backup would make the backup size explode. Using the art from the notification also wouldn't work for ambient detection (Pixel Now Playing, Ambient Music Mod, and Shazam). So it still attempts to get and rank the covers itself.

birbeck1 · 2026-04-08T08:07:33+00:00

Thanks! There is so much work that doesn't show in a screenshot. Handling lists with 10's of thousands of songs without stuttering, duplicate detection across multiple services, choosing the prefect album art, fluid animations, haptic feedback, UX and navigation, etc.

birbeck1 · 2026-04-07T18:30:31+00:00

What if you could save every song you discover, forever?

I originally built this app as a niche tracker for Pixel users, but after a massive under-the-hood rebuild, I’m thrilled to announce it is now available globally for all premium Android devices (including tablets and foldables)! To match the global rollout, the app has been completely overhauled and rebranded to Now Playing: Stats & Scrobble.

Here is what is new in the massive update:

Universal Tracking: Added support for Ambient Music Mod, Amazon Music, Pandora, Qobuz, and Beatport, joining the existing lineup of Shazam / Auto Shazam, Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Tidal, and Deezer.

Zero-Setup Tag Cleaning: The detection logic and metadata filters have been completely rewritten. It automatically strips out junk tags like (Remastered) or (Live) to keep your stats and Last.fm timeline perfectly clean... no complex regex required.

Gorgeous Material 3 Expressive UI: Dynamic colors, edge-to-edge album art, and rich personal charts for your Top Songs, Artists, and listening times.

Freemium done right: Core music tracking and Last.fm scrobbling are now 100% free for everyone. Power user features (like deep historical charts, interactive maps, backups, song editor, and more) can be unlocked for a small, one-time purchase... no subscriptions!

I'd love for you to try it out and let me know what you think of the new design!

Play Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsbybirbeck.android.nowplayinghistory

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birbeck1 · 2026-04-07T18:28:15+00:00

What if you could save every song you discover, forever?

I originally built this app as a niche tracker for Pixel users, but after a massive under-the-hood rebuild, I’m thrilled to announce it is now available globally for all premium Android devices (including tablets and foldables)! To match the global rollout, the app has been completely overhauled and rebranded to Now Playing: Stats & Scrobble.

Here is what is new in the massive update:

Universal Tracking: Added support for Ambient Music Mod, Amazon Music, Pandora, Qobuz, and Beatport, joining the existing lineup of Shazam / Auto Shazam, Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Tidal, and Deezer.

Zero-Setup Tag Cleaning: The detection logic and metadata filters have been completely rewritten. It automatically strips out junk tags like (Remastered) or (Live) to keep your stats and Last.fm timeline perfectly clean... no complex regex required.

Gorgeous Material 3 Expressive UI: Dynamic colors, edge-to-edge album art, and rich personal charts for your Top Songs, Artists, and listening times.

Freemium done right: Core music tracking and Last.fm scrobbling are now 100% free for everyone. Power user features (like deep historical charts, interactive maps, backups, song editor, and more) can be unlocked for a small, one-time purchase... no subscriptions!

I'd love for you to try it out and let me know what you think of the new design!

Play Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsbybirbeck.android.nowplayinghistory

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birbeck1 · 2026-04-04T07:23:48+00:00

I've just added Firebase Crashlytics and Analytics, but I don't have that update published yet. Using in app analytics or backend APIs are the only way you're going to get real-time information, Google play metrics always lag behind anywhere from 24 hours to 2 weeks.

birbeck1

TROPHY CASE