If you're deep into vinyl and also a Last.fm obsessive, you've probably run into the same problem: no easy way to log the records you spin. Streaming services scrobble automatically, but put on a record and it disappears into the void like you never listened. GroovePal is a web app we built for my senior capstone project to fix exactly that.
Discogs and Last.fm are two of the most popular tools in any serious music collector's toolkit. Discogs is a user-maintained database and marketplace where collectors catalog their physical releases. It's the go-to for vinyl because of its massive catalog and detailed release data. Last.fm is a music tracking service that logs everything you listen to and builds up a rich history of your taste over time.
The problem is that scrobbling relies on software running in the background of whatever you're listening on. That works great for Spotify or Apple Music, but there's no software that knows when you drop the needle on a record. So for all that vinyl listening, Last.fm sees nothing.
What GroovePal Does
GroovePal bridges that gap by integrating with both the Discogs and Last.fm APIs. It pulls your vinyl collection straight from Discogs, lets you select the album you're playing, and scrobbles each track to Last.fm in real time. Setting up GroovePal is as easy as connecting both of your accounts, and your entire collection will automatically be imported and will show up in the collection view:
Simply search your collection, tap the album, hit scrobble when you start the record. As each song finishes, GroovePal marks it as logged. When a side ends, it pauses and waits for you to flip before continuing. It handles multi-side and multi-disc releases properly too. When the last side is done, it lets you know the album is complete.
Listening History Just For Your Records
Because GroovePal keeps track of everything it scrobbles, it can show you stats specific to your vinyl listening, separated from other sources like streaming. On the homepage, you get a feed of recently played tracks, your top albums, and your top artists, all filtered to just what you've played through GroovePal. In the future, we’d like to expand this out further with detailed listening stats, personalized recommendations and social features.
Future Plans
GroovePal started as my senior capstone project in college, and we shipped the MVP in ~6 weeks. The project been shelved since, but I have many ideas for it moving forward, and I plan to eventually do a full launch with lots more fun, useful features. Stay tuned!