tldr watch https://github.com/scottopell/quadeight
I will not be updating this to be compatible with api version 3. See dev notes for more information regarding the switch. What this means is that at some point in the future, everything will break.
I will be maintaining quadeight, which is a ruby gem that aims to cover as much of the official 8tracks api as possible. The downloading functionality will either be built-in or will be easily reproducible with a small amount of custom code.
tldr watch https://github.com/scottopell/quadeight
Downloads a given playlist from 8tracks to your computer
Inspired and partially based on the php 8tracks downloader created by navinpai and mundofr https://github.com/mundofr/8Tracks-Downloader
usage is pretty basic, script is run from command line arguments
usage: downloader.py [-h] -u PLAYLIST_URL -a API_KEY [-d SAVE_DIRECTORY] [-mp3 MP3]
`C:\Users\scott\Google Drive\projects\8tracks-downloader-python>downloader.py -u http://8tracks.com/dj-cass/new-year-party -a 7ad5c(censored)4eb83987e -d "c:\8tracks_downloads" -mp3`
for id3 tagging, download this package and put ID3.py in the same directory you're running the script from, or set it up through python
-h ==> displays help file (above)
-u --playlist_url ==> any standard 8tracks url, ex http://8tracks.com/dj-cass/make-some-noise
-a --API_key ==> api key, can be obtained here http://8tracks.com/developers/new usually takes a few days, hexadecimal, 40 chars long
-d --save_directory ==> OPTIONAL where the playlists will be saved to, if this is c:/music and the playlist above is the given
argument, then file structure will be c:/music/make some noise/(songs).m4a defaults
to the same directory
-mp3 ==> usage -mp3 forces conversion of everything to mp3 even if its not already in mp3 format, requires faad and lame, see below for further instruction
http://www.rarewares.org/mp3-lame-bundle.php and http://www.rarewares.org/aac-decoders.php are both required, make sure the exe files end up in the Windows PATH or in the same directory as downloader.py
LAME and FAAD should both be able to be installed from your distros package management, ie sudo apt-get install faad lame
If they're not, just find some binaries compatible with your system and ensure that they end up in your PATH
download and set up id3-py, which can be found at its home here http://id3-py.sourceforge.net/ its basic and a little old, but it works for our purposes If you're feeling especially lazy you don't even have to install it, you can just copy id3.py into the same directory as downloader.py and go to town
Even though its inconvenient it really is neccessary to get your own api key.
Previously 8tracks stored all songs as m4a files, now it seems the majority are stored in mp3 format, maybe all of them, can't tell for sure -mp3 option may not be needed, I have included it just in case.
UPDATE: m4a's do exist and this has been tested with them.
The methods used by this utility are subject to easily breaking. Specifically the method for getting the mix_id. Especially without tests, I'll have no way of knowing until somebody says it doesn't work.
API version 3 is out, but its not the default currently. Eventually api version 3 will become the default and version 2 will no longer be available. When this happens there will need to be significant rewrites to maintain the current functionality.
Convert to mp3 on the fly because nobody likes m4a
Create m3u playlist files of each
Add in Song Metadata