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).

**********************
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

Tags whose URLs I've extracted as of 5:45 PM UTC

[(Anonymous)]

"Uhura" "Nyota Uhura"

[morgandawn]

Just a quick reminder that with the infinite scroll that 8-track's website, if your tag has more than 1000 results, it will only grab a thousand.

I asked archive team about this: "when we were working with the infinite scroll pages, we ran into a 1000 limit. It didn't matter whether we specified 1 per page or 10 or 20. Still was limited to 1000 results in total divided by however many pages"

As a result they dropped trying to archive by tags , instead they're running 3.5 million random numbers in the hopes of grabbing what they can . On the back end of 8tracks, the playlist data is not stored by URL, or by tag, but by unique numeric identifier.

Because of the volume that they have to run, the archive team will not be archiving the "look and feel (user profile icons). only basic metadata and the raw cover art

https://8tracks.com/mixes/6439105/tracks_for_international.jsonh

Supernatural pairings and fandom tags

[morgandawn]

Trying to do various combinations of supernatural or "spn". Biggest problem is that there are 13,000 supernatural playlists, and even when we add additional tags to narrow that down, we're still above the 1000 limit.

Supernatural pairings
destiel
deancas
wincest
sam/dean
dean/sam
the winchesters
winchesters
sabriel

Fandom
Supernatural
spn

[wedonnotcare]

- jean-luc picard
- christopher pike
- pavel chekov
- worf
- star trek discovery
- daforge
- jaylah
- leonard mccoy

[morgandawn]

Can you add this info to your post?

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).

**********************
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.

If you have any questions let me know.

Just reply to this email. My email is admin@vidders.net.

I have assisted on projects to backup tumblr, Yahoo Groups and now 8tracks.

I am the admin of vidders.net the largest streaming vidding network online.

You can share this sheet with anyone who would like to do the same thing you are about to do

Again if there are any questions just email.

[arcadianmaggie]

-Merlin
-Arthur Pendragon
-Merthur
-BBC_Merlin
-inception
-arthur/eames
-one direction
-larry stylinson
-The Social Network

[(Anonymous)]

- A Series of Unfortunate Events / asoue
- Doki Doki Literature Club / ddlc
- Ava's Demon / avas demon
- Undertale (as much as possible considering there's >3000)

[haemophilus]

A lot of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia tags - whatever I have time for.

Arrested Development

Transgender

I don't think I'll have time for anything else.

[(Anonymous)]

Is anyone doing smaller SPN characters and ships?

So far I've collected links for variations of

Dean/Benny
Dean/Lisa
Sam/Castiel
Bobby/Crowley
Sam/Jessica
+some tiny ships

Plus whatever characters I can think of

Also got about 2,300 out of 3,600 for Dean Winchester

+ Almost Human (fandom)

Vid show Playlists

[morgandawn]

we were able to pull 3000 out the 5000 existing playlists tagged fanfic and fanfiction

Another Tip: Collections

[morgandawn]

We're testing this but the 1000 limit does not seem to be as strictly enforced when scrolling through collections.

Ex:
https://8tracks.com/super_redhead/collections/a-big-star-wars-collection

https://8tracks.com/vaguelydownward/collections/star-trek

Collections are hard to find so if you come across any mention them here

Anime

[morgandawn]

a few thousand tagged with anime/. if people have specific anime fandoms, leave them here

[paperairplanesopenwindows]

I've grabbed Clintasha links, but I haven't gotten the Macro to work (my excel is old though)

[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

[(Anonymous)]

I've grabbed "macdennis" and "wicdiv"

[(Anonymous)]

ok so for Undertale I grabbed:
- undertale
- chara / chara (undertale)
- sans
- frisk
- mettaton / mettaton ex
- genocide route
- pacifist route
- papyrus
- asriel dreemurr
- flowey
- undertale spoilers
(basically all the top tags)

so I think that covers most of it

[razyrs]

i'm currently planning to get links and download info for
-night in the woods
-we know the devil
-wktd
-fallen london
-echo bazaar
-echobazaar
-sunless sea
(i'm thinking of getting more, but the computer i'm using for this is really slow so we'll see.)
-rick and morty

[(Anonymous)]

Got up to 6463 links in Supernatural (excluding variations of destiel, wincest, "spn/supernatural") out of 9k+ (or 13k?)

Also did:
- Lucifer (FOX)
- Good Omens
- Sense8

But I'll have to find someone to grab the info because I can't run the macro

[(Anonymous)]

My computer isn't the fastest, but I'm getting what I can.
Currently working on the Les Mis tag (it does have over 1000, so I'm missing some). Got everything in the Combeferre tag as a test run to make sure I was doing it right. I'll probably try to grab some Classics-related tags as well.

[morgandawn]

edited: if you are using vidderkidder's Excel VBA macro, he did a tutorial video
 https://youtu.be/4WlI4yGW-8M

[comely_wench]

hey! let me just say that you're all doing the lord's work. furthermore:
"black sails" is ran through with the macro! there are some small benefits to being a small fandom.
"enjoltaire" is ran through meanwhile

edited because of the noob questions, hah

[(Anonymous)]

Have run the following tags, and once the last lot have finished processing will probably not have a chance to do more:
- fe* (where * is 1-15) (also fire emblem awakening)
- ryu ga gotoku (also yakuza, kiryu kazuma, goro majima, yakuza 0)
- the world ends with you (also twewy)
- noragami
- mdzs (also mo dao zu shi)
- kingdom hearts [whatever number it is]/4 days, chain of memories (roxas, ienzo, zexion, vexen)
- eragon
- time riders
- run lola run
- watership down
- bravely default

+ some random stuff I had in collections. There's a bit of steven unvierse and a bit of dragon age, some tolkien-related things, and some random other splatterings. Possibly inception? I didn't check it fully, just pulled the links when I was playing around.

Have also run them through the wayback machine using the email, just in case.

Also, mostly with the noragmi ones but some others, I have noticed some of the files come out with a size of zero. Opening them as text reads them empty. The pictures still download and the spreadsheet list fills in, but the tracklists and all that are not in the files. I've tried rerunning them and no banana. The unifying link between them seems to be that they all contain non-european characters (odd fonts, love hearts, Cyrillic, japanese characters, etc).

Running the Excel VBA Macro

[vidderkidder]

Notes (Things I've discovered):

1) Won't work well with Mac versions of Excel.
2) Works better with the playlists links. What do I mean? There are different kind of playlist links. Version 2 got me results while version 1 returned "Not found"

Version 1 - https://8tracks.com/talathamanya/we-move-lightly#smart_id=tags:clintasha&play=1

Version 2 - https://8tracks.com/talathamanya/we-move-lightly

[morgandawn]

If anyone is done with their fandoms and has room/time to run more through the Excel spreadsheet, send me an email at morgandawn@gmail.com

Ones I need help with (warning most are large and will take hours to run on a good machine)
*Homestuck (small)
*LOTR (3ooo groups, ready to go)
*Marvel (11,000 groups ready to go)
*random set of 'Goofy" - 200 multiple fandoms (small)
*Star Wars 2500 ready to go
*Good Omens (pending)
*Sense8 (pending)
*Buffy (pending)
*Another set of random ones - we need more keywords and pairings for Firefly/Serenity because the search I used on this one pulled in a lot of non-fandom
*Roleplay (pending..don;t know the size but it will be large)

JSONs so far

[camilasc]

hello, I have been at this since yesterday...have gotten a couple errors but I'm just trying to grab as much as possible... (didn't even realize some files were at 0kbs till I read one comment here ughh). I think most have saved fine though?

I have done:

-xena warrior princess
-femslash
-supercorp
-supergirl
-eurovision

And I'm trying to get *everything* from the doctor who tag. I got everything that wasn't tagged with a distinct tag, and have done these <1000s: doctor x rose, romana, romana x doctor, academy era, mickey smith, vastra/jenny, sally sparrow .torchwood, trock, osgood, classic who, faction paradox, big finish, doctor who eu . koschei .trock .companions .the rani . cybermen . charley pollard . dw . the companions the ponds .rory williams . gallifrey . bad wolf . tardis . clara x danny .twissy .time hunter .tentoo x rose . blake’s seven .

still got a lot more to do but, keeping at it... I hope someone gets some Glee and Harry Potter ones. I sadly only have time to do 1 big fandom ):