How to Download Any SoundCloud Playlist
After looking around and not finding any reasonable mechanism for downloading my SoundCloud playlists to local folders and keeping those folders in sync with the online playlist contents, I decided to build one. Here are the features:
- Multi-threaded downloading of all songs within any playlist or favorites list
- Detection and downloading of high-quality song downloads when present
- Synchronization of a local directory with a playlist, favorites list, or artist upload list based on a manifest file (i.e. only downloads the songs that have not yet been downloaded and optionally deletes songs that have been downloaded but removed from the playlist)
- Meta-data tagging of downloaded files with author, track name, album artwork, etc as specified by SoundCloud's API
- Some degree of automatic retries for downloads that fail due to connection timeouts or other reasons
I will continue to add features and improvements to this tool, like making it a service that automatically runs on login and silently keeps directories in sync with playlists or a reverse playlist id lookup, but a fully functional version is included in this post.
Download links are included at the end of this post.
First, download the zip file, extract it, and run the setup.exe file (if you have any older versions of this tool installed, uninstall them first). If you don't have Microsoft's .NET framework installed, the installation wizard will guide you through installing it as it is required by the download tool in order to operate.
Once the installation has completed, you will be greeted with a window like the following:
If you want to download the songs in a playlist, copy the playlist url from your browser and paste it into the url box. The playlist url should look something like this:
If you want to download the songs that a user liked or favorited instead of a playlist, enter the url to the user's profile and then click the radio box indicating you want to download favorited songs instead of a playlist. It should look something like this:
If you want to download the songs that a user liked or favorited instead of a playlist, enter the url to the user's profile and then click the radio box indicating you want to download favorited songs instead of a playlist. It should look something like this:
You can also download all songs an artist has uploaded using options as shown below:
Next, you need to specify the directory you want the application to download your songs into. The songs will automatically be organized by artist like you see below:
Note that on rare occasions certain songs have neither a download link nor a streaming link and can therefore not be downloaded; the tool will silently skip these songs but will download them the next time it runs if the uploader has chosen to make streaming or downloading available.
As a side note, remember to not delete the manifest file the application creates. It is used to determine what songs need to be downloaded or removed in order to keep the directory in sync with the playlist.
Lastly, indicate whether you want songs that have already been downloaded but removed from the playlist to be deleted or left alone in your local folder and click the Synchronize button.
Depending on the size of the playlist, the application may run for a little while. You can always cancel the download and resume from where you left off (assuming you don't force kill the application). The first time it synchronizes, it will of course download all songs. The next times it runs, it will only download the songs it has not yet downloaded.
If you receive any download error messages, just run it again. It will retry the songs that failed to download and usually succeed. At times files will fail to download due to connection issues, SoundCloud API throttling, or other reasons out of the control of the tool, but rerunning the sync will succeed. If a few retries do not fix the problem, wait a bit and try again.
Post any feedback, issues, or other comments here. If you find the tool useful, please consider donating. Any amount is appreciated.
At risk of stating the obvious, this is my own creation and is not affiliated with SoundCloud in any way. Also, the files that are downloaded are the ones that are originally streamed by SoundCloud (usually low quality versions) except when the uploader has included a high quality download link. Observe the copyright/etc laws of your country.
Download link
Donate by bitcoin: 14NLAd9xZeFkz2An6japAjynwg5wuwGu93
Donate by paypal:
Donate by bitcoin: 14NLAd9xZeFkz2An6japAjynwg5wuwGu93
Note: if you have a previous version of the downloader installed on your computer, you will need to uninstall it before installing the latest version.
Project Status Update
I've run out of time to continue maintaining this software. The opensource version has been forked and development and releases are continuing by other contributers at GitHub. The latest release can be found here.
