Skip to content

Last.fm

Last.fm is a music service that tracks listening habits and provides a large community-sourced database of artist biographies and metadata.

What Last.fm Provides

  • Artist biographies
  • Artist website URL
  • Album cover art

Requirements

A free API key from Last.fm is required. Registration is free with no rate limits imposed for typical usage.

Setup

Note: Last.fm settings are under Artist Data in the Settings menu.

Getting an API Key

  1. Sign in or register at https://www.last.fm/join
  2. Visit https://www.last.fm/api/account/create to create an API account
  3. Fill in the application name and description (any values work for personal use)
  4. Copy the API key shown on the confirmation page
  5. Paste it into the Last.fm API Key field in What's Now Playing

Content Options

Once enabled and an API key is entered, select what to download:

  • Biography — full artist biography text
  • Album Cover Art — album artwork fetched by artist and album name. Skipped when cover art is already embedded in the track file. Requires the track's album tag to be set.
  • Websites — the artist's Last.fm profile URL

Enable only what your templates actually use.

Biography Language

When Biography is enabled, you can set a preferred Language ISO Code (e.g. en, de, fr, ja, zh). Last.fm has broad multilingual coverage — many popular artists have biographies in a dozen or more languages.

Enable Fallback to EN to use the English biography when your preferred language is not available for a given artist.

How Matching Works

Last.fm first attempts to look up the artist by MusicBrainz Artist ID when one is present in the track tags. This is the most accurate method and avoids collisions between artists who share a name. If no MBID is available, it falls back to a name-based search with autocorrection enabled.

Troubleshooting

No biography returned

  • Verify the API key is correct
  • Check that the artist exists on Last.fm by searching manually
  • Last.fm's autocorrection may redirect the name — check what name is returned in the logs

Wrong biography returned

  • This typically happens with the name-based fallback when multiple artists share a name
  • Add MusicBrainz Artist IDs to your tracks via audio recognition (Recognition settings) to use the more accurate MBID lookup path

Biography in wrong language

  • Verify the Language ISO Code is a valid two-letter ISO 639-1 code (e.g. de not DE)
  • Enable Fallback to EN if the artist may not have a biography in your preferred language