From Listenbrainz website:
ListenBrainz keeps track of music you listen to and provides you with insights into your listening habits. We’re completely open-source and publish our data as open data.
If you use Last.FM, you can import the data into your listenbrainz account. Listenbrainz also has Spotify integration.
How does it compare to Last.FM? This is currently my main method of new music, with a number 2 being word of mouth.
i have both and i parallel scrobble to both using pano scrobbler (phone) and strawberry player (desktop). you can sync your scrobble history from last.fm into listenbrainz, either one-time or on a continuing basis (though the latter seems to run the risk of duplicates). i chose to do it once and then feed them in parallel going forward.
as a discovery tool, listenbrainz is a bit anemic, except for once a year, and last.fm has declined for me over time.
first the good
listenbrainz does a year-in-music that shows your listening patterns and also top things you might have missed - my 2022 year in music is here. i scooped up a lot of stuff from that list.
now the bad
listenbrainz’s recommendation engine is only so-so, not terrible, not brilliant.
many commercial streamers and scrobblers only understand last.fm, so if you stream a lot you may not be able to keep listenbrainz updated except through manual syncing.
last.fm’s recommendation engine has declined over time for me and its community is stagnant, so i don’t see a lot of neighbour activity. it remains better than listenbrainz week by week, but only marginally.
oss stats
i remix and embed stats from the listenbrainz api on my own websites (profile link). doing this from last.fm requires an existing api key (which it seems they’re no longer issuing), and of course they can rug-pull that api at any time, not like we’ve seen that lately. but listenbrainz stats recalculate only daily.
caveat
my experience of these is different to most people’s, as data geeks don’t tend to listen to the candyfloss music that i do.
