maloja/README.md

Maloja

Simple self-hosted music scrobble database to create personal listening statistics. No recommendations, no social network, no nonsense.

You can check my own Maloja page to see what it looks like (it's down fairly often because I use it as staging environment, that doesn't reflect the stability of the Maloja software!).

Important

: With the update 2.0, Maloja has been refactored into a Python package and the old update script no longer works. If you're still on version 1, see below.

Important

: With the update 2.7, the backend has been reworked to use a password. With a normal installation, you are asked to provide a password on setup. If you use docker or skip the setup for other reasons, you need to provide the environment variable MALOJA_FORCE_PASSWORD on first startup.

Important

: With the update 2.9, the API endpoints have changed. I tried to make it backwards compatible, but if your scrobbler breaks, try to update the URL first.

Table of Contents

• Why not Last.fm / Libre.fm / GNU FM?
• How to install
  • Environment
  • New Installation
  • Update
  • Docker
• How to use
  • Basic control
  • Data
  • Customization
• How to scrobble
  • Native API
  • Standard-compliant API
  • Manual
• How to extend

Why not Last.fm / Libre.fm / GNU FM?

Maloja is self-hosted. You will always be able to access your data in an easily-parseable format. Your library is not synced with any public or official music database, so you can follow your own tagging schema or even group associated artists together in your charts.

Maloja also gets rid of all the extra stuff: social networking, radios, recommendations, etc. It only keeps track of your listening history and lets you analyze it.

Maloja's database has one big advantage: It supports multiple artists per track. This means artists who are often just "featuring" in the track title get a place in your charts, and collaborations between several artists finally get credited to all participants. This allows you to get an actual idea of your artist preferences over time.

Also neat: You can use your custom artist or track images.

How to install

Environment

I can support you with issues best if you use Alpine Linux. In my experience, 2 GB RAM should do nicely, but higher amounts allow more caching and reduce page load times for complicated statistics. My personal recommendation is using a dedicated LXC container (e.g. on Proxmox), but of course Maloja will also run on a VM, in Docker or on bare metal.

New Installation

1. Make sure you have Python 3.5 or higher installed. You also need some basic packages that should be present on most systems, but I've provided simple shell scripts for Alpine and Ubuntu to get everything you need.

2. If you'd like to display images, you will need API keys for Last.fm and Spotify. These are free of charge!

3. Download Maloja with the command pip install malojaserver. Make sure to use the correct python version (Use pip3 if necessary).

4. (Recommended) Put your server behind a reverse proxy for SSL encryption. Make sure that you're proxying to the IPv6 address unless you changed your settings to use IPv4. If you're running Maloja in a container, make sure to expose port 32400 (or whichever port you have chosen in your settings).

5. (Recommended) Until I have a proper service implemented, I would recommend setting two cronjobs for maloja:

@reboot sleep 15 && maloja start
42 0 * * 2 maloja restart

Update

• If you use a version before 2.0 (1.x), install the package as described above, then manually copy all your user data to your ~/.local/share/maloja folder.
• Otherwise, simply run the command maloja update or use pips update mechanic.

Docker

There is a Dockerfile in the repo that should work by itself. You can also use the unofficial Dockerhub repository kindly provided by FoxxMD.

You might want to set the environment variables MALOJA_DEFAULT_PASSWORD, MALOJA_SKIP_SETUP and MALOJA_DATA_DIRECTORY.

How to use

Basic control

Start and stop the server with

maloja start
maloja stop
maloja restart

If something is not working, you can try

maloja debug

to run the server in the foreground.

Data

• If you would like to import all your previous last.fm scrobbles, use benfoxall's website (GitHub page). Use the command maloja import *filename* to import the downloaded file into Maloja.

• To backup your data, run maloja backup or, to only backup essential data (no artwork etc), maloja backup -l minimal.

• To fix your database (e.g. after you've added new rules), use maloja fix.

Customization

• Have a look at the default.ini file in the ~/.local/share/maloja/settings folder to see what settings are available. Specify your own choices in settings.ini. You can also set each of these settings as an environment variable with the prefix MALOJA_ (e.g. MALOJA_SKIP_SETUP).

• If you have activated admin mode in your web interface, you can upload custom images for artists or tracks by simply dragging them onto the existing image on the artist or track page. You can also manage custom images directly in the file system - consult images.info in the ~/.local/share/maloja/images folder.

• To specify custom rules, consult the rules.info file in ~/.local/share/maloja/rules. You can also apply some predefined rules on the /setup page of your server.

How to scrobble

You can set up any amount of API keys in the file authenticated_machines.tsv in the ~/.local/share/maloja/clients folder.

Native API

If you use Plex Web, Spotify, Bandcamp, Soundcloud or Youtube Music on Chromium, you can use the included extension (also available on the Chrome Web Store). Make sure to enter the random key Maloja generates on first startup in the extension settings.

If you want to implement your own method of scrobbling, it's very simple: You only need one POST request to /api/newscrobble with the keys artist, title and key - either as form-data or json.

Standard-compliant API

You can use any third-party scrobbler that supports the audioscrobbler (GNUFM) or the ListenBrainz protocol. This is still very experimental, but give it a try with these settings:

GNU FM
Gnukebox URL	Your Maloja URL followed by /apis/audioscrobbler
Username	Any name, doesn't matter (don't leave empty)
Password	Any of your API keys

ListenBrainz
API URL	Your Maloja URL followed by /apis/listenbrainz
Username	Any name, doesn't matter (don't leave empty)
Auth Token	Any of your API keys

My recommendations are to use Pano Scrobbler for Android and Web Scrobbler for desktop browsers. Note that Web Scrobbler requires you to supply the full endpoint (yoururl.tld/apis/listenbrainz/1/submit-listens).

I'm thankful for any feedback whether other scrobblers work!

It is recommended to define a different API key for every scrobbler you use in clients/authenticated_machines.tsv in your Maloja folder.

Manual

If you can't automatically scrobble your music, you can always do it manually on the /admin_manual page of your Maloja server.

How to extend

If you'd like to implement anything on top of Maloja, visit /api_explorer.