Winamp 5.5 Scrobbling Problem

For me, switching to the classic skin solves the problem of casual scrobbeling tracks!

same title (Turkish)
http://www.lastfm.com.tr/group/T%C3%BCrk%C3%A7e+Last.fm/forum/50978/_/337071

amrhassan said:
so, is somebody on it trying to figure out the problem now?it shows who's not reading the existing posts...

-daz

it's very interesting for me, when the problem will be solved =\

My piece of cake:

OS: WinXP Pro SP2 (English) fresh install with all critical updates
WA: 5.5 final (update from one of the 5.5 betas which was a fresh install), Bento skin selected
Last.fm: 1.3.2.13, WA plugin: ml_* 2.0.45.0, also fresh install

I only noticed this issue today for the first time. The problem both occured with files inside my (winamp) library, and with files not entered into the library. I'm mainly listening to MP3 files.

Tested so far:

• Letting WA play for a while (both with shuffle enabled and disabled). Some tracks are correctly scrobbled by Last.fm (I can see this by looking at the client), some tracks are not scrobbled at all and Last.fm keeps displaying the info from the last song. Exiting Last.fm and restarting it results in the client not seeing anything play at all.
  
• When a song is playing that is not seen by Last.fm, pressing "play" again in WA usually does not help, but sometimes it does.
  
• Pressing "stop" and then "play" again usually helps, but sometimes it doesn't.
  
• Restarting both WA and Last.fm results in Last.fm seeing the current song. Well, most of the time, the current song (with correct ID3v1 and ID3v2 info) isn't recognized at all, not even after stopping the song and playing it from start again. Subsequent songs however still result in the same issue.
  
• Haven't tried switching skins yet, I want to use Bento anyway. But I could do this on request by one of them Last.fm developers of course :)
  
• Disabling scrobbling and re-enabling it does not help.
  
• Having Last.fm login again (by clicking the user name under the Account menu) does not help.
  

Possible causes for the issues I can think of without breaking my head:

• The Bento skin prevents some or all of the relevant WA messages to reach the Last.fm plugin, which results in Last.fm not being aware of the right track playing information. But: some users experience the same problem with Modern and Classic skins.
  
• Internally, the WA messages might have changed their id with the latest builds of Winamp. Hard to tell when no proper source code is available, from the WA forums I've read that a new version of the SDK (5.5) is planned but not released yet. This would most likely result in failing all the time however, which clearly is not the case.
  
• Winamp contains a bug, possibly in some optional installed component (not necessarily Bento).
  
• The version history of WA 5.5 states "Improved: [in_mp3] Faster metadata gathering". Maybe WA is now too fast and the Last.fm plugin cannot process the resulting message in time and drops or skips it, resulting in old information in the cache. This could explain why Last.fm thinks the previous song is still playing, but not why restarting Last.fm results in "nothing playing" so to speak. Maybe the cache data is corrupted?
  
• The Last.fm WA plugin can't communicate properly with Last.fm with recent versions of WA. This seems pretty unlikely though, I don't think WA acts as a firewall of some kind, right?
  

It seems some Last.fm developer is trying the Winamp forums for a solution, let's hope it helps!

Cheers,
Bart

well the issue all seems to be coming down to a 3rd message (a internally used one so that fact it ever remained in use is just luck) to the playlist editor just not appearing (at least with the vorbis failure case) and i'm going to guess that the same thing is causing the randomness for others as well (i hope)

the real issues lies (if my assumptions about the official client plugin code is right) in that it's most likely still using the old standalone plugin as a basis for most of it and that's just not good at all to be doing. i know the code used to detect playback on the older plugin is fine basically on pre 5.x installs of winamp but it should have been using the IPC_PLAYING_FILE(W) api notification near enough from the start (thankfully the code is pretty easy in some respects to modify to work with that api).


http://nunzioweb.com/daz/AudioScrobbler/5_5/gen_audioscrobbler.dll

This is based on the modified 1.1.11 from the version bundled with ml_ipod based on the mod i did ages back. It is a standalone version so anyone using the client will need to disable the existing plugin and all that before trying this one. I've tried it as both the gen and ml version (though there was never any reason for the ml version to be more reliable or whatever the reason was other than where it was in the plugin load order).

If it just works better for some then i'll be happy but there's nothing i can see in any of the winamp code that would otherwise cause issues other than the fact the last.fm plugin is basising it's playback detection on an old and unofficial method (this is based on stripping out all of the common message processing code in place to make things work better with SUI based skins and also from removing all other plugins down to just being winamp.exe, in_mp3, in_vorbis, out_ds and related .w5s files in the %winampdir%\system folder

obviously this is a test build so you're using this at your own risk incase of any random stuff that happens from using it and all that.

-daz

Thx DoctorO, I first tried it in vmware and now I have reinstalled winamp 5.5 to test it here and first impressions are good (I realy hope it stays this way). Anyway good job and thank you very much!

btw
I'm testing it with a classic skin, but i've tested it in vmware with the bento skin and so far so good, so it looks fixed to me.

Fixed for me! Thanks DrO!

Using:
Winamp 5.5
Modern Skin (WindowShade Mode)
WinXP SP2

Thanks DoctorO, I just installed the .dll and all seems to be working fine. I wanted to take this opportunity to say that I really appreciate the work you have put into getting this issue resolved <Kudos> I hope you continue to monitor the .dll and post back if you find that there is any bugs.

Thanks once again!

Doctor O, I installed the new plugin and when I launched winamp, the box came up where I put in my last.fm username and password, then clicked save. I listened to three songs in winamp, and it didn't say in the system tray the name of the artists and song, yet when I logged in just now, I see that they were scrobbled. Any thoughts on this?

It was installed to Winamp/Plugins
Windows XP Home Version SP2
last fm client (latest version)
Winamp 5.5 (final version, didn't try the betas. It was installed over 5.35)

I had shut my client down first before I installed the new plugin and I got the results as I mentioned above.

Edit: A few minutes after this post I tried scrobbling again and it acted the same way. The information did not appear in the last.fm client but it did appear under recently played.

BFARadio said:
I had shut my client down first before I installed the new plugin and I got the results as I mentioned above.

Edit: A few minutes after this post I tried scrobbling again and it acted the same way. The information did not appear in the last.fm client but it did appear under recently played.

That's because DoctorO's plugin is stand-alone, it doesn't use the Last.fm client but connects directly to the Last.fm servers (that's why you had to enter your credentials as well).