Bandcamp Questions

[moecurlythanu]

You're a regular Bill Gates, aren't you? I have over 1200 albums in my collection, so I need something somewhat automated.

So, you need the Bandcamp Cataloging Tool. Why didn't you say so?

[JKL2000]

I remember seeing a mention of some open-source utility to download an entire Bandcamp collection.

THAT'S something else I'd like to be able to do! Bandcamp should add something, but I guess the bandwidth used would be out of bounds.

I'd probably just do something quick and dirty like getting my whole playlist listed on the web page, copy and paste the text into a text file

I also asked on the Bandcamp subreddit, and someone did this and posted a sample to show that the results aren't too bad to clean up. I may be giving this a try.

With a collection that large, if you view your collection on the web site, at the bottom does it give you a "View all 1200 items" option, or do you repeatedly have to keep hitting a button to view more items?

You have to keep hitting it.

So, you need the Bandcamp Cataloging Tool. Why didn't you say so?

It should be part of MS Office by now!

[Dave (in MA)]

I also asked on the Bandcamp subreddit, and someone did this and posted a sample to show that the results aren't too bad to clean up. I may be giving this a try.

The NP++ that was mentioned refers to the free notepad++ editor.

[wiz_d_kidd]

I would love to somehow, easily generate a list of all my Bandcamp purchases. I'd have to get it either from the Bandcamp app, website, or possibly from my Paypal account. Anyone have any good ideas?

There is a method that doesn't require programming, but does take a little bit of comfort with the computer...

1) Go to your Bandcamp collection page.
2) Load as much of your collection as possible onto the displayed webpage.
3) Using your browser menus (or right-click), save the displayed page to a file. (Use "Web page complete" if given the option).
4) Go to: https://mytexttools.com/extract-text...haracters.html
5) Load your file into their window.
6) Type in the HTML tags you want to extract. This is a bit tricky. PM me for details.
7) Run the extraction.
8) Save the results.

You have to do "titles" and "artists" separately, then paste the results together, using MS Excel or equiv.

I did it successfully on my collection of only 100 albums. I don't know if the extractor website will choke on 1000+ albums. If it does, you might have to do it a few hundred at a time.

If you're uncomfortable doing this yourself, PM me your Bandcamp profile name (or a link to your collection) and I can try it myself.

Extract Text.jpg

[Dave (in MA)]

I'm not a notepad++ user, but I downloaded it and tried it out. It's quite a bit more intuitive than emacs and it was quite easy for me to go to bandcamp's site and load my entire collection, select, copy and then paste the text into notepad++, then record a macro to do the following which was essentially the same series of steps I used in emacs except I didn't have to use that editor's weirdo control sequences:

Record a macro
Find the characters \nby using the Extended Search Mode
Close the Find dialog
Delete the \nby characters
Select the whole remaining line and Cut it
Go up one line, go to the end of the line, type in " - "
Paste in what we had just cut
Press Enter
Edit Begin Select
Find the next \nby and then press Up and End
Edit End Select
delete what's selected
Stop recording the macro


Now there's a macro that can be applied to the entire file. Once I did that, here's what my file (first 5 lines) looked like:

pt 1 - radio massacre international

It's Mostly Residual - Cuong Vu

Live at Radio Head awards 2020 - David Kollar, Tomas Mutina, Arve Henriksen

Sonic Pulses - David Kollar

Workpoints - Graham Collier

A minor adjustment could be made to not result in double-spacing, or to put the artist first for sorting, etc.

[JKL2000]

I'm not a notepad++ user, but I downloaded it and tried it out. It's quite a bit more intuitive than emacs and it was quite easy for me to go to bandcamp's site and load my entire collection, select, copy and then paste the text into notepad++, then record a macro to do the following which was essentially the same series of steps I used in emacs except I didn't have to use that editor's weirdo control sequences:

Record a macro
Find the characters \nby using the Extended Search Mode
Close the Find dialog
Delete the \nby characters
Select the whole remaining line and Cut it
Go up one line, go to the end of the line, type in " - "
Paste in what we had just cut
Press Enter
Edit Begin Select
Find the next \nby and then press Up and End
Edit End Select
delete what's selected
Stop recording the macro


Now there's a macro that can be applied to the entire file. Once I did that, here's what my file (first 5 lines) looked like:

pt 1 - radio massacre international

It's Mostly Residual - Cuong Vu

Live at Radio Head awards 2020 - David Kollar, Tomas Mutina, Arve Henriksen

Sonic Pulses - David Kollar

Workpoints - Graham Collier

A minor adjustment could be made to not result in double-spacing, or to put the artist first for sorting, etc.

Pretty cool, thanks!