Show HN: SoundCloud Downloader Tool

[rk0567]

http://scdownloader.net/?ref=hn

[merkury7]

Not a fan of this. SoundCloud is full of independent artists, and ripping their tracks instead of buying them sucks.

[Phogo]

Nice one. Works great. Wonder how long it will stay live though.

[rk0567 → Phogo]

>> Wonder how long it will stay live though.

Would you elaborate that ?

[vwelling → rk0567]

You're violating SoundCloud's terms of use:

  (i) You must not copy, rip or capture, or attempt to copy, rip or capture,
  any audio Content from the Platform or any part of the Platform,
  other than by means of download in circumstances where the relevant
  Uploader has elected to permit downloads of the relevant item of Content.

https://soundcloud.com/terms-of-use#acceptance-of-terms-of-u...

[rk0567 → vwelling]

I thought I'm just extracting the final_download_link, so it would be okay. (As, in the end, content is getting served from their CDN)

[mike_hearn → rk0567]

From their perspective you are fiddling with their software to bypass restrictions requested by the content creators/uploaders. They will just ban your IP and be done with it. If they can't for whatever reason, I guess they'll have to start obfuscating the protocol.

[jbrooksuk]

Cool, nice to see this one working.

I wrote a Node.js package (https://github.com/jbrooksuk/SoundRain) to do this same thing, but I used it within a custom CLI app.

[firegrind]

Soundcloud already provide an option for making tracks downloadable at the quality they were uploaded. I choose this for my tracks.

If the artist hasn't opted to make the Soundcloud content downloadable, what quality MP3 does this rip ?

Is it better to get a decent quality copy from Beatport, Bandcamp or wherever ?

[zdkl → firegrind]

This doesn't seem to be aimed at people for whom quality is important (hint hint), otherwise yes it's probably better to go buy the track.

The soundcloud files should be 128 mp3's if memory serves.

[firegrind → zdkl]

Fair point. Supporting musicians probably isn't in the world-view of folks who are satifsfied with a ripped MP3.

A good application for this would be snagging all of an artist's free downloads in one click rather than a single URL at a time.