metafodder

A python script to rip MetaFilter playlists to the local disk.

Invoke

I give you this list because really, everyone needs more Jingle Rock Bell in their lives. And by more I mean like four days solid. Ringle jock bell, y'all.

py metafodder.py https://music.metafilter.com/playlist/1273

Please set up your own account and discover artists into which to create your own playlists.

Background

I love the artists available on MetaFilter but I worry sometimes about the permanent availability of the media and certainly would like to listen to it offline consume it in a variety of other ways.

MetaFilter makes available a RSS feed which is great for users of podcast software but not so much for dirty scrapers such as ourselves to do the same thing. Podcast software tends to want to label everything as a "podcast" which is most often then apart from the rest of one's music stash.

If you have a great piece of podcast ripping software with which one can normalize and do this other mess, please HMU: I do this mostly out of impatience.

Ethics

Metafilter is a private entity which the developer is in no way afiliated with. They're getting by on an always-challenging advertising income paired with member contributions.

If you find the content useful consider contributing:

https://login.metafilter.com/funding.mefi

Source issues

One of the bummers in the current RSS is that it's the most information-rich source for content links but at the same time uses difficult content representation; there are a few things that could have been done to make it more data rich I think but meh, we're lucky to have what we have.

There's also a problem from a curation standpoint that the filenames MeFi retains are as-uploaded by the artist and exhibit an expected disharmony in styles. The MP3 tag data runs the same way.

Applying feed data

Part of me thinks that this variance is interesting and at times important. While I want to associate these files data-wise the most with their username and use the album for playlisting the original information is maybe of use in tracking down more from the artist so is worth stashing and trying to do so in a recoverable fashion.

filenames

{artist} - {title}

MP3 Tags

• title: {title}
• artist: {artist}
• album: {playlist title}
• comments: Added json structure of original tags
• year: {year entry.published}
• url: {entry.link}