Backing up Spotify • Hacker News Board

Re: Backing up Spotify

#391

Post by veeti » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 8:56 AM UTC

justatdotin wrote: post #250

willio58 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently got into the whole homelab *arr stack for things like movies and tv and while I know options exist for music I just don’t see the need yet price-wise. Spotify is still just cheap enough for me to not care enough. We’ll see how long this holds. That being said it’s no secret Spotify and other streaming services barely pay even popular artists. Artists make money from live shows and merch. The fact that thei…

for me its the arms trade. Daniel Ek pours spotify wealth into next gen miltech. sometimes I worry that I don't know what music means to other people but I am certain that to me it is antithetical to war culture.

Actually there are a whole lot of musicians who find pride in "punching nazis" so to speak, but you are entitled to your Russian sympathies.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#392

Post by verisimi » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 9:04 AM UTC

Yes, but do they have the one that goes like: to-to-to dotodoo? Hmmm? Do they?

Re: Backing up Spotify

#393

Post by Eckter2 » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 9:06 AM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #99

I just want to be able to backup my playlists. Maybe thats possible but last time I looked I could only find sites that wanted your login, not gonna happen.

There are a few tools that can export your spotify playlists into folders of audio files. That's what I used a few years ago for my initial spotify -> navidrome migration.

But they're not that good. They look for the songs on youtube, and the versions uploaded there are often modified (or just very low quality). And I've had some issues with metadata. I'd say about 5% of my songs had some issues, and 1% were completely off.

Once they release the actual torrents and not just the metadata, I'm assuming that new playlist export tools will soon show up, and they'll use these new torrents as source instead of youtube. They'll be a lot more reliable. I'd wait for that to happen. In fact I may end up re-exporting my old spotify playlist.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#394

Post by emaro » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 9:11 AM UTC

lurk2 wrote: post #208

toomuchtodo wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You go where the money is. Infra isn’t free. Churches pass the plate every Sunday. Perhaps one day we’ll exist in a more optimal socioeconomic system; until then, you do what you have to do to accomplish your goals (in this context, archivists and digital preservation).

> Infra isn’t free. There is a certain irony in people providing copyrighted works for free justifying profiting from these copyrights on the basis that providing the works to others isn’t free.

I admit the irony, but also funny reminder that Spotify started with a pirated catalogue back on the day.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#395

Post by croemer » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 9:13 AM UTC

virtualritz wrote: post #207

I just found out that https://annas-archive.li/ is masked by my German internet provider (SIM.de/Drillisch). I usually use a VPN but I had it switched off temp. to watch Fallout (Prime Video won't let you watch through a VPN). Only when I switched Mullvad back on could I open the site. I didn't know German providers do this.

I think it's a DNS level block. I've been using NextDNS (free plan) and one side effect (besides auto ad block) is that it doesn't have those blocks. Highly recommend - there are alternative services as well, just saw NextDNS recommended here.

Alternative: https://archive.ph/2025.12.21-050644/https://annas-archive.l...

Re: Backing up Spotify

#396

Post by ipsum2 » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 9:16 AM UTC

madduci wrote: post #377

crazygringo wrote: post #11

This is insane. I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. But this does seem like it will be a godsend for researche…

The first users of this dataset will be Big Tech corps. Meta, Alphabet, OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple will all be happy to use this dataset for training their LLMs. For them, 300TB is just cheap

They already have this data. See jukebox from OpenAI, released before chatgpt.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#397

Post by croemer » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 9:19 AM UTC

lukan wrote: post #85

mawax wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not down, but blocked by your ISP. Try a VPN. Same thing happens here.

Yes, blocked. This is what I see in germany without a VPN https://notice.cuii.info/ "Their buisness model is based on copyright infringement" Well, where to complain that Anna's Archive ain't a buisness?

Pretty sure it's DNS level block. So just using private DNS would be enough, no need for full blown VPN. It's just that VPNs also usually use their own DNS instead of the ISPs.

I recommend NextDNS or similar to bypass those DNS blocks and also block ads at a very deep level that works ok mobile and even inside apps.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#398

Post by gosub100 » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 9:22 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #338

noduerme wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the bits that are copyrighted, it's the performance and the creative work. Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish.

> Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish. That's another example of the shared delusion, since yes, we tell eachother it represents labor and resources, and the market engages in allocation somewhat efficiently, and so the money is a pretty accurate representation of the value of labor and the value of resou…

> Your savings account's number is totally detached from accurately representing value. It's mostly a representation of where you were born

This could also be true because the number of dollars in circulation is "just bits on a disk" that politicians can manipulate for various reasons.

Someone can work very hard and save their earnings, only to have the value diluted in the future. Isn't that also a delusion?

Re: Backing up Spotify

#399

Post by gorbachev » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 9:23 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #11

This is insane. I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. But this does seem like it will be a godsend for researche…

Flippant response: If it's ok for Meta for commercial use, why not for researchers for legitimate research work?

More serious response: research is explicitly included in fair use protections in US copyright law. News organizations regularly use leaked / stolen copyrighted material in investigative journalism.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#400

Post by kefabean » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 9:28 AM UTC

morsch wrote: post #368

eterm wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to imagine anything but physical egress for that kind of volume.

50 free accounts continually streaming music rack up 20 TB in a month. So that would take about 1.5 years. Our you use 750 accounts and do it in a month. I would say it's weird they don't rate limit accounts but probably having a device play music pretty much all the time isn't even that rare of a use case.

That’s if they pretend to stream the music. If they are using throwaway free accounts I imagine they can download the DRM-stripped files much more quickly.