Disable Android "Now Playing" Passive Listens

ListenBrainz
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I’m not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but it seems like the listenbrainz android app (v2.4.1 on Android 14) picks up the passive music detection, and logs to your listens. I believe Android calls this the Now Playing feature. It’s actually kind of cool that it can do this; but the downside is that when I’m next to someone watching a video or listening to music, any song they play gets logged to my ListenBrainz account. I thought I might be able to disable it, but it seems like that doesn’t show up in the “listening apps” section in settings.

Also, it would be nice if there were an option to make “listening apps” opt-in instead of opt-out. I believe this is how the Last.FM scrobbler behaves, and it’s useful so that I don’t inadvertently scrobble stuff that’s not worth tracking on ListenBrainz (I’ve mistakenly logged twitch, youtube, and other audio because I didn’t realize the apps were default enabled when detected).

I’ve attached three screenshots - one to show a track logged when I was next to someone watching a video on their phone, my Now Playing history that shows music I’ve passively heard, and the enabled “listening apps” in the listenbrainz app.

Screenshot_20231216-092745
Screenshot_20231216-0927451080×2400 366 KB

Screenshot_20231216-092724
Screenshot_20231216-0927241080×2400 174 KB

Screenshot_20231216-092802
Screenshot_20231216-0928021080×2400 180 KB

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That’s really interesting!! But not ideal haha. We should definitely enable excluding this @Jasjeet @akshaaatt.

What’s very cool is that this semi-accidentally allows a feature lots of people ask for, e.g. “can’t LB just listen to the record I’m playing and submit it”

And maybe we should have the listening apps panel pop up the first time you open the app.

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It’s definitely cool! It sadly doesn’t log correctly, probably due to the way Google presents the notification:

{
  "track_metadata": {
    "track_name": "Run Rudolph Run by Chuck Berry",
    "artist_name": "Tap to see your song history",
    "additional_info": {
      "media_player": "Android System Intelligence",
      "submission_client": "ListenBrainz Android",
      "submission_client_version": "2.4.1",
      "recording_msid": "c99220b9-0cc8-47c8-b64d-85d9f664c336"
    }
  },
  "listened_at": 1702766917,
  "recording_msid": "c99220b9-0cc8-47c8-b64d-85d9f664c336",
  "user_name": "mukti",
  "inserted_at": 1702767021
}
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We would add this in future thanks for reporting this @mukti. Currently we are heavily concentrated on improving the listen submission service and are 1 iteration away from marking it stable. Your feedback is valuable.

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I’ve added two related tickets:

They make more sense, when done in order, than their titles suggest :stuck_out_tongue:

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This appears to be a different bug, and the app may be picking up random notifications. Here is an example where it logged my password database as a listen…

{
  "track_metadata": {
    "track_name": "Database opened",
    "artist_name": "(V2 - KDBX3.1)",
    "additional_info": {
      "media_player": "KeePassDX",
      "submission_client": "ListenBrainz Android",
      "submission_client_version": "2.4.1",
      "recording_msid": "db8844f9-25dc-41a1-a3ba-3482d0089fc9"
    }
  },
  "listened_at": 1702834878,
  "recording_msid": "db8844f9-25dc-41a1-a3ba-3482d0089fc9",
  "user_name": "mukti",
  "inserted_at": 1702834968
}

I’m going to disable the app for now because of this - I would rather not have random notifications logged to my profile, in case it mistakenly leaks some more personal information.

This may be related to another issue reported by a user here: Exclude podcasts from listens? - #6 by Goose90053

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