"Sync Play Count from last.fm" fails to sync songs with specific tags

[toomanynights]

Hello,
I've started this discussion in another thread, but after gathering enough evidence of a bug, I thought it should be posted in a more compact fashion here - hope it's all right.

Now, I'm not sure if it's a MusicBee bug or last.fm, and if it even can be fixed, but here it is.
I have 4.5k+ songs in my library, and almost all of them receive correct play count from last.fm when I launch Tools -> Tagging tools -> Sync Play Count from last.fm. There are several, however, that fail to do so, and they all follow the same pattern: one of their tags doesn't have any letters in it, only numbers and a special symbol ":". Here are a few examples, formatted as "Artist - Title - Album name":
- 2:54 - Scarlet - 2:54
- Danger - 22:41 - 太鼓
- Makeup and Vanity Set - A Glowing Light, a Promise - 88:88

Interesting side note: I think it's the colon in particular that does it. I tried another song, that also doesn't have any letters, but with a hash instead of colon, and it works as expected:
- Weaves - #53 - Wide Open
Also tried one with only numbers and no special symbols - worked as well:
- Caamp - 26 - Boys (Side A)

I have updated MusicBee and checked - the issue remains on the most current version.

[frankz]

Have you updated relevant (display artist, title, album) tags for any of these tracks recently (or ever between the first scrobble and now)?

Although the cache file is binary and not editable, it is decipherable as far as the data that is being sent to MB. Have you tried opening the file in Notepad++ or something and running a search for these tracks to see how many times they appear there and what data for the relevant tags are being sent?

I have numerous tracks from albums/artists/titles that match this criteria (including from the Kasabian 48:13 album you mention in the other thread) and they receive their play counts just fine.

[toomanynights]

Hi @frankz!

Reading through your other thread, I notice you say that these songs register a play count of "1" after one play on MB despite having multiple plays on last.fm.
If last.fm were truly not sending plays back to MB for these tracks, or MB was truly not reading the data when it did, this would be reset to "0" every time you opened MB or synched your play count manually.

Not sure about that one. As far as my limited research goes so far, the current version of MusicBee, if it doesn't "see" the song with all matching tags in data received from last.fm, it simply skips this song - not resetting play count to 0, but leaving it as it was. Since the songs I've mentioned were listened to through MusicBee once, it makes sense that after sync with last.fm they remain at 1 play: MusicBee seems to not match this song with anything from last.fm, therefore, there's no reason to alter play count.

Have you updated relevant (display artist, title, album) tags for any of these tracks recently?

I have not. Furthermore, I double checked every tag with last.fm letter by letter; they match, but in Last.fm there are several plays (including that one from MusicBee), and in MusicBee it's still one.

Although the cache file is binary and not editable, it is decipherable as far as the data that is being sent to MB. Have you tried opening the file in Notepad++ or something and running a search for these tracks to see how many times they appear there and what tags are being sent?

I didn't, no. Trying it now, not sure what to make of it, honestly.

Makeup and Vanity SetA Glowing Light, a Promise88:88

Plus some unreadable symbols. I guess it proves that the songs do indeed get grabbed from last.fm. At least some of them: this one I didn't find in that file:
- Danger - 22:41 - 太鼓
Despite it being present on Last.fm and having my scrobbles on it.

I did, however, find its sibling in the file:
- Danger - 00:59 - 太鼓
It's got the same problem as I just checked. Scrobbles just fine (outcoming), but doesn't update play count or last played from last.fm (incoming).

[frankz]

I deleted the part of my post about resetting to "0" because now that I think about it more deeply I'm not sure of that actually being the case.

However, the fact that I have tracks that match these exact criteria that receive their play counts from last.fm just fine points to the diagnosis of the cause being inaccurate.  Not that there isn't a bug, but that it's not simply to do with the #:# construction.

You don't happen to have some Additional Tagging Tools preset to reset play counts that you've unknowingly checked-off to be automatically run, do you?

Are you running MB on actual Windows or some kind of windows emulation?

This feature is pretty straight forward, and I'm fairly sure that if things like The Who's 5:15 from Quadrophenia weren't receiving their play counts properly, people would have noticed by now.

[toomanynights]

@frankz,

However, the fact that I have tracks that match these exact criteria that receive their play counts from last.fm just fine points to the diagnosis of the cause being inaccurate.  Not that there isn't a bug, but that it's not simply to do with the #:# construction.

Could you please provide one example of a song that follows this pattern, yet grabs counts from last.fm? OK, I see the example at the end of your post, I'll check, thanks.

You don't happen to have some Additional Tagging Tools preset to reset play counts that you've unknowingly checked-off to be automatically run, do you?

Oh no. When it comes to ATT, I mostly don't understand what's going on and try to avoid it, too complicated stuff for my taste.

Are you running MB on actual Windows or some kind of windows emulation?

Nope, just plain ol' Windows.

[toomanynights]

I confirm that The Who's 5:15 works as expected (therefore, unfortunately I don't know the pattern of the problem at this time).

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

I confirm that The Who's 5:15 works as expected (therefore, unfortunately I don't know the pattern of the problem at this time).

In ...MusicBee\AppData\InternalCache there is a file named LastFmPlayCountCache.dat
You could try removing that, verify the colon characters in your titles that aren't updated are the same as Last.fm (i.e, : and not ：) and then resync your Last.fm play count.

[toomanynights]

Already tried removing that file, but different colons? I did not see that coming. Will try, thanks! (I'm however not optimistic, because if they indeed were different, then scrobbling wouldn't work either, right?)

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Already tried removing that file, but different colons? I did not see that coming. Will try, thanks! (I'm however not optimistic, because if they indeed were different, then scrobbling wouldn't work either, right?)

Well now that you bring it up, they would scrobble, but you'd see the play count increase.
MusicBrainz used to force some non-"standard" punctuation, which would screw up my Last.fm scrobbles.
It's a longshot, but maybe another set of character codes is being used for the colons.

[toomanynights]

Just checked: indeed, colon is the same in MB and in last.fm. I copy&pasted the exact symbol from the latter to the former and resynced, nothing changed.

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Just checked: indeed, colon is the same in MB and in last.fm. I copy&pasted the exact symbol from the latter to the former and resynced, nothing changed.

That's unfortunate. What happens if you remove the colon from the tracks that don't scrobble correctly?
Out of curiosity, what happens if you try to scrobble the problematic tracks with this program?

[toomanynights]

That's unfortunate. What happens if you remove the colon from the tracks that don't scrobble correctly?

Please clarify your idea a bit. Are you saying I should remove the colon, send the file to another device, scrobble it from there, and then check if the scrobble will land in MB?

Out of curiosity, what happens if you try to scrobble the problematic tracks with this program?

Actually it's kinda funny, I've already tried this plugin, and it managed to grab play count (not "last played" date) for ONE of the three 2:54 songs I have, and didn't find anything for the remaining two.

[toomanynights]

Just found another example of this. However this time it does not introduce colons: "Wooden Nickles" by Eels.
https://i.imgur.com/f3tFJ3N.png
I have three scrobbles of this song. One I just manually added, copy & pasting field values directly from MusicBee.
And yet, after sync MB thinks it was only played one time:
https://i.imgur.com/Fy7jVBy.png

EDIT: I've found a solution for this particular one. And it's really interesting!
It's easy to overlook, but note the spelling on the previous two screenshots. The song is called "Wooden Nickels" on last.fm, and "Wooden Nickles" in my MusicBee. The interesting part? When I scrobble  "Wooden Nickles", it counts as "Wooden Nickels". Probable some typo replacement logic going on on last.fm's side. But it obviously doesn't work the other way around, so while the scrobbling works, grabbing play count doesn't.

[Babydoll32]

Had the same problem too and fixed the spelling problem so far.
You can read it here:
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=26244.msg149153#msg149153

But there are still issues. There are some Songs with currect and non-exciting spelling, that still won‘t sync.

[toomanynights]

Thanks, Babydoll32. It's good to know that there's actually a way to control Last.fm spell check.