8tracks

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8tracks
8tracks logo
8tracks - 12-28-19.png
URL https://8tracks.com/
Status Closing
Archiving status Upcoming...
Archiving type Unknown
IRC channel #8ball (on hackint)

8tracks.com was an internet radio and social networking website revolving around the concept of streaming user-curated playlists consisting of at least 8 tracks.[1]

It launched on 2008-08-08 and will be shutting down on 2019-12-31. According to the shutdown announcement, it has 19.6 million users, 750k DJs, 3.5 million mixes, and 500k tags as of late December 2019.

Shutdown announcement

On 2019-12-26, David Porter announced in a long blog post that the site was shutting down just five days later, on 2019-12-31:

To everything there is a season

8tracks has had a long run and its day in the sun. We’re sad to announce, however, that the company and its streaming service will wind down with the end of the decade, on December 31st, 2019.

<snip>

Site structure

  • There are mix sets, mixes, sets, tracks, songs, and possibly other things. The exact meaning of each hasn't been determined yet.
  • The explore JSON endpoint is horribly broken, returning a totally different number of results as you paginate through, no results on later pages, and other issues. It is beyond useless for discovery. Total result counts are limited to 1000, regardless of how many items you request per page.
  • Mixes have numeric IDs and can be discovered using https://8tracks.com/mixes/MIXID, which redirects to the mix page (using the username and mix slug).
  • Adding a parameter format=jsonh returns JSON for many URLs (including the /mixes/MIXID one).
  • Cover art and user avatar images are hosted on https://images.8tracks.com
Field Parameter Name ID Number Range URL Example Redirects to JSON URL Note
Mix sets mix_sets https://8tracks.com/mix_sets/all?page=100&per_page=10include=pagination%2Cmixes[likes_count%2Cuser%2Clength]%2Cdetails&format=jsonh Groups of mixes. Seems to be related to the explore URLs /mix_sets/all:safe and /mix_sets/all go to /explore/all/hot Cannot get more than 1000 total results here, regardless of how many items you request per page.
Mixes mix_id 1 to ~8.97m The highest mix ID is somewhere around 8962616 as of 2019-12-30. https://8tracks.com/mixes/MIXID JSON mix:web_path URL https://8tracks.com/mixes/MIXID?format=jsonh Mixes can be public, unlisted, or private. Attempting to access private mixes results in error "Oops! It looks like the mix you are trying to listen to is not currently available. In the meantime, check out these playlists." JSON contains URLs to both cover art and user avatar art. See JSON mix:cover_urls:original_imgix_url and mix:user:avatar_urls:original_imgix_url for high resolution image URL.
Mix Tracklists same as mixes https://8tracks.com/mixes/MIXID/tracks_for_international.jsonh Contains the tracks in the mix. Sometimes the track count here does not match the track count shown in the web UI for the mix.
Users user_id 1 to ~19.7m https://8tracks.com/users/USERID JSON user:web_path URL https://8tracks.com/users/USERID?format=jsonh See JSON user:avatar_urls:original_imgix_url for high resolution image URL.
Tracks track_id 1 to ~346m
Songs http://8tracks.com/songs/####?format=jsonh Unclear how this relates to tracks.

References

  1. [8tracks.com - Wikipedia 8tracks.com - Wikipedia][- Wikipedia IA- Wikipedia Wcite- Wikipedia .today- Wikipedia MemWeb]