GETTING_STARTED.md

Getting started

Pre-requisites

You need Python 3.7+. To download songs as MP3, you will need ffmpeg.

• Linux users can get them by installing libav-tools by using apt-get sudo apt-get install -y libav-tools) or a package manager which comes with your distro
• Windows users can download FFMPEG pre-built binaries from here. Extract the file using 7-zip to a foldrer and add the folder to your PATH environment variable

1. Install using pip

   pip3 install spotify_dl
   

2. Login to Spotify developer console and click on "Create an App". Fill in details for name and description

3. Make a note of Client ID and Client Secret. These values need to be then set SPOTIPY_CLIENT_ID, SPOTIPY_CLIENT_SECRET environment variables respectively.

   You can set environment variables as mentioned below:

   Linux:

       export SPOTIPY_CLIENT_ID=your-spotify-client-id
       export SPOTIPY_CLIENT_SECRET=your-spotify-client-secret
   

   Windows Powershell:

       $env:SPOTIPY_CLIENT_ID=your-spotify-client-id
       $env:SPOTIPY_CLIENT_SECRET=your-spotify-client-secret
   

   Windows CMD:

       set SPOTIPY_CLIENT_ID=your-spotify-client-id
       set SPOTIPY_CLIENT_SECRET=your-spotify-client-secret
   

   See this question for more info,

4. Run the script using spotify_dl. spotify_dl accepts different parameters, for more details run spotify_dl -h.

   For most users spotify_dl -l spotify_playlist_link -o download_directory should do where

   • spotify_playlist_link is a link to Spotify's playlist. You can get it from the 3-dot menu.

   

   spotify_dl also supports downloading multiple playlist, you can pass them like below:

   spotify_dl -l spotify_playlist1 spotify_playlist2 -o download_directory

   • download_directory is the location where the songs must be downloaded to. If you give a . then it will download to the current directory.

5. To retrieve download songs as MP3, you will need to install ffmpeg. If you prefer to skip MP3 conversion, pass -m or --skip_mp3 as a parameter when running the script

   • Linux users can get them by installing libav-tools by using apt-get (sudo apt-get install -y libav-tools) if you're using a Debian/Ubuntu or a package manager which comes with your distro
   • Windows users can download FFMPEG pre-built binaries from here. Extract the file using 7-zip to a foldrer and add the folder to your PATH environment variable

6. If you prefer to skip MP3 conversion, pass -m or --skip_mp3 as a parameter when running the script

7. If you wish to download via proxy, pass -p flag with the URL of the proxy

   For HTTP:

    spotify_dl -p "http://username:password@hostname:port" or "http://hostname:port"
   

   For SOCKS5

    spotify_dl -p "socks5://username:password@hostname:port" or "socks5://hostname:port"
   

8. Spotify-dl can make use of SponsorBlock and skip non-music sections when downloading from YouTube. This is disabled by default and can be enabled using:

   spotify_dl -l spotify_playlist_link -s y
   

Use Docker

Build the Docker image from the Dockerfile, run the following command in the spotify_dl root directory: docker build -t spotify_dl .

Run the Docker image with your client ID and secret:

docker run -d --rm \
		   -e SPOTIPY_CLIENT_ID=client_id \
		   -e SPOTIPY_CLIENT_SECRET=client_secret \
		   -v "download_directory":/download \
		   spotify_dl \
		   spotify_dl -l "spotify_playlist_link" -o /download

Replace download_directory with the path to the directory you want songs in. Set "download_directory" to "$(pwd)" to download to the current directory on Linux.

You can also run the bulk downloading script, make sure to configure it first: bash bulk_docker_download.sh

How do I set defaults?

You can set defaults per user by creating a file at ~/.spotify_dl_settings. Create a key with value for every argument you want a default for. Example:

{
  "output": "/home/foo/spotify-dl-output",
  "verbose": "true",
  "skip_mp3": "t"
}