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clickwheel reads play counts off the iPod and submits them to Last.fm. It’s opt-in, nothing leaves your Mac until you add credentials, and it needs no extra package.

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Setup

1

Get API credentials

Create an API account at last.fm/api/account/create. Any application name works (“clickwheel” is conventional). You’ll get an API key and a shared secret.
2

Configure

~/.clickwheel/config.yaml
Keep the secret in ~/.clickwheel/.env (mode 600), out of YAML:
~/.clickwheel/.env
3

Authorize once

A browser opens to Last.fm. Click Allow. clickwheel writes a session key into your config; future runs use it without prompting.

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Submit listens

clickwheel pulls recent plays from the iPod and submits them, caching what’s already been sent so you never double-scrobble. The iPod must be plugged in for clickwheel to read its play cache.
Scrobble before a big re-sync, so play history isn’t lost when tracks change on the device.
The same lastfm_api_key also powers genre lookups in clickwheel fix (read-only, no session key needed). If you only want genre tagging and never plan to scrobble, stop after the API key is in place and skip --auth.

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From Claude

You can also drive this from Claude. Set up the MCP server, then the scrobble tools are yours.