Saving 8track's fandom playlists info

[wedonnotcare]

Hello! Given the fact that 8tracks recently announced that they will be closing down on December 31st, fans have been trying to save all the fandom playlists they can so they don't get lost when the website shuts down. Good news! There is a way to easily extract the information of all the playlists in a 8tracks tag. Here's a post explaining how to do it.
This post is meant to be a place where people who are extracting URLs from tags (of any fandom!) on 8tracks before the closing of the site can post their progress in a comment to avoid extracting the same tags multiple times. Not everyone extracting URLs will know about this post so it will be incomplete, this is just one attempt to avoid unnecessary duplicates. Anonymous commenting is enabled, so you don’t need an account to let us know your progress!

UPDATE:
Thanks to VidderKidder, we now have an excel spreadsheet that will archive the playlist info (note: the playlist text file will be in a json format, but using the spreadsheet is a super fast way to getting the metadata and the covers).

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Download: http://bit.ly/8trackback
(you will need to have Macros enabled to run the spreadsheet)
https://powerspreadsheets.com/how-to-enable-macros-excel/

Use the first sheet tab to paste your URLs and click the button to run.

What it will do:
*Extract relevant meta data from the playlist page and put it in your Excel Spreadsheet
*Download the JSON file with the playlist details to a folder on your desktop (8tracks)
*Download the cover photo for each playlist to a folder on your desktop (8tracks)

What you should do:
*Paste urls on the first column of the first sheet tab

*Create a folder on your desktop called 8tracks

*Click the button.

*When you are done and you want to run a new batch copy the info to the second tab

*Clear out the old urls and relevant info on the first tab and paste in the new urls and run again.

Here's a video showing how it works: https://youtu.be/4WlI4yGW-8M

 If you have any questions you can contact morgandawn at admin@vidders.net

Comments

[tehhumi]

I'm going to post a series of comments as I do batches, but for now I've got:
- agent carter
- peggy carter
- rogue one
- feanorians

[tehhumi]

- celebrimbor
- silmarillion
- the silmarillion
- elrond
- winterhawk
- stevebucky (chosen over 'stucky' because it squeaks under the limit with 996 songs)
- girl genius
- robin mckinley
- patricia briggs
- discworld
- gunnerkrigg court
- tolkienreadalong

I'll grab major lord of the rings characters tomorrow, I don't know whose tags will be too big.

[tehhumi]

- lord of the rings
- lotr
- tolkien
"the hobbit" is too large at 1600 playlists, I'll do the first 1000 and then by character.

[tehhumi]

- inception
- labyrinth
- the first 1000 songs for 'the hobbit'
- thranduil
- tauriel
- legolas
- thorin
- bilbo
- smaug
- bard the bowman
- bard
- fili and kili
- the rest of the dwarves individually: fili, kili, bofur, bombur, bifur, dori, nori, ori, balin, dwalin, oin, gloin (some of these tags had a lot of chaff, but I grabbed everything)
- dwarves of erebor
- mirkwood

[tehhumi]

- ghibli
- studio ghibli
- hayao miyazaki
- disney princess
- princess diaries

[tehhumi]

doing a batch of pacific rim keywords (along with the first 1000 of the main tag)
- jaeger pilots
- chuck hansen
- stacker pentecost
- herman gottlieb
- newt geiszler, newton geiszler
- mako mori
- raleigh becket
- pacific rim fanmix

[tehhumi]

I think I'll have time for one last batch before midnight (depending on when the current batch ever stops)
I'll run the macro for
- welcome to nightvale (first 1000)
- wtnv
- night vale
- twilight (it's important history, regardless of personal opinion)
- pirates of the Caribbean
- potc
and some "fallout" associated tags for an anon on page 2

[morgandawn]

If you have a list of the urls, email them to me morgandawn@gmail.com and I can have them run through the wayback machine

[tehhumi]

I've been running the macro and it's been working pretty well. Do you still want the list of urls?

[(Anonymous)]

Not sure if Morgan still wants them, but weighing in to say that since the data the macro collects includes the tracklists, and the Wayback Machine collects more visual data from the playlist pages but not the tracklists themselves (unless something has changed since yesterday), IMO running the macro is probably the priority to get actual track info, with the Wayback Machine as an optional 'extra' for anyone who has time.
- Meg starfleetdoesntfirefirst

Vid show Playlists

[morgandawn]

Correct - priority will be to download first.

I have 2 people helping me right now - one is running the URls through the WBM (they cannot get the macro to work so they cannot download). The other is pulling URLs from the website based on fandom and pairing suggestions. So if anyone has URLs that need to go through the wayback machine, email them to me at morgandawn@gmail.com

We will also be collecting whatever anyone has downloaded with the plan to upload it ourselves to the Internet Archive

Vid show Playlists

[morgandawn]

yes please

[haemophilus]

When I get home I'll email you what I gathered yesterday right away. I pulled a LOT

Will there be a database of this information?

Vid show Playlists

[morgandawn]

If someone puts it together...yes there can be. I will be asking people for whatever they have so we can submit it to the internet archive. But if people are not keeping track of the URLs it may only be a folder with general fandom name (Buffy ) with random file names

[haemophilus]

Do I have to do anything with the macro other than create a folder called 8tracks to get the stuff to move into it? When i watched the how to video it made zero sense about how to get the stuff in there.

[(Anonymous)]

Yep, all you need to do is create the folder! When you run the macro it literally saves the stuff into it itself.

(Macros can do a LOT; the existence of macro viruses is the major reason they're default-disabled in most Excel programs...)

- Meg starfleetdoesntfirefirst

[haemophilus]

That explains why it wasn't working for me. Whoops!

[haemophilus]

Ok I'm grabbing stuff no problem now!

Got all of transgender now I'm working on IASIP