Popular fanmix and fan soundtrack website 8tracks recently announced that it will be shutting down on December 31, 2019. While the site might be available after this date, there’s no guarantee it will stay up - so if you’re a fanmix or fan soundtrack creator (or have created any type of playlist on 8tracks), now is a very good time to save the data from your playlists or make them available on another site.
What can I do to save my playlists?
If you’ve used 8tracks at any point, the site will be sending you an email with the playlist name, art, description and track list from your playlist(s), to help you recreate it/them on another site. It’s a good idea to make sure that you can still access the email address you used to sign up to 8tracks. Be sure to also check your spam folder for the email if you can’t find it in your inbox.
You can also use the Download Tracklist button in the notes of any playlist to copy all of the information from that playlist, and the “Save playlist to Spotify” button on top of the mix art to save a playlist to Spotify. Note that some of the tracks may be unavailable or not matched to Spotify’s catalog, particularly if they are older songs. Please also be aware that if you are saving someone else’s playlist, the playlist will not be attributed to the correct author when saving to Spotify - it will be saved under your name.
Other sites that can be used to create and share playlists of songs include Playmoss (a popular alternative to 8tracks) and YouTube.
Archiving links to fanmixes and fan soundtracks
Another very important thing to do is to use the Wayback Machine to archive the links to your favourite fanmixes and fan soundtracks. This can be done even if you don’t want to or aren’t able to republish the mix on another site. To do this, enter the URL of the mix in the box next to “Browse History” and select the button to see if it’s already archived. If not, you can select “Save this url in the Wayback Machine” to add it to the archive.
Be aware that saving playlists in the Wayback Machine will preserve the creator’s name, the description and the cover art, but not the track list - this can only be saved by downloading the text file.
Link your playlists on Fanlore!
Have you made a fanmix or fan soundtrack that you’re really proud of? Do you want other fans to be able to enjoy the links to your favourite mixes and soundtracks? Please add the links to Fanlore!
You can do this by finding the page for the fandom, ship, character, trope, fic, etc. that you made the mix for and adding it as an example fanwork. Anyone who has an account on Fanlore can edit the wiki - and it’s completely free! Follow this link to sign up to Fanlore, and check out our New Visitor Portal to find out how to get started with editing.
Some examples of Fanlore pages that feature playlists and mixes:
Thanks to vidderkidder , we now have an Excel spreadsheet that will archive the playlist info (note: the playlist text file will be in a json format, but using the spreadsheet is a super fast way to getting the metadata and the covers). **********************
Use the first sheet tab to paste your URLs and click the button to run.
What it will do:
*Extract relevant meta data from the playlist page and put it in your Excel Spreadsheet
*Download the JSON file with the playlist details to a folder on your desktop (8tracks)
*Download the cover photo for each playlist to a folder on your desktop (8tracks) What you should do:
*Paste urls on the first column of the first sheet tab
Create a folder on your desktop called 8tracks Click the button.
When you are done and you want to run a new batch copy the info to the second tab
Clear out the old urls and relevant info on the first tab and paste in the new urls and run again.
If you have any questions let me know. My email is [email protected]. I have assisted on projects to backup tumblr, Yahoo Groups and now 8tracks. I am the admin of vidders.net the largest streaming vidding network online. You can share this sheet with anyone who would like to do the same thing you are about to do Again if there are any questions just email.
