spotify-playlist-archive

Daily snapshots of public Spotify playlists

• Website: https://spotifyplaylistarchive.com/
• List of playlists: playlists/index.md
• Source code: mackorone/spotify-playlist-archive-src

Motivation

Spotify's playlists are great. I like that they're updated once in a while - change is good! I don't like, however, that it's impossible to see older versions. How am I supposed to remember the name of that song I really liked? Apparently, I'm not alone...

Click for examples

1. Find Songs of old versions of Spotify Playlists (Dec 15, 2014)
2. A playlist was modified. Can I get the old songs back? (Dec 21, 2014)
3. Today's top hits -- old songs (Dec 29, 2014)
4. Looking for last weeks "Fresh Finds" playlist (Mar 16, 2016)
5. Seeing an old version of a playlist (Apr 2, 2016)
6. Old "New Music Friday" playlists (May 20, 2016)
7. 88 Keys playlist changed - need to find old songs (May 31, 2016)
8. Old Brain Food Playlist Song (Sep 18, 2017)
9. The Replacement Peace Playlist (Oct 2, 2017)
10. Archive of Morning Commute playlist from February 2017? (Jan 17, 2018)
11. Spotify Changed Playlist Content and I would like the old songs (Jan 24, 2018)
12. View previous versions of playlists (Feb 28, 2018)
13. Spotify changes playlists? (Jun 15, 2018)
14. Archive Spotify managed Playlists (Aug 24, 2018)
15. Recover list of past Release Radar playlists (Nov 14, 2018)
16. Is there any way to recover previous versions of a playlist? (Apr 13, 2019)
17. Throwback Thursday Archive (May 23, 2019)
18. Former Perfect Concentration playlist songs? (Oct 20, 2019)
19. Recover old version of a Spotify-created playlist? (Feb 1, 2020)
20. How to get an old version of a playlist (Nov 24, 2020)
21. Recover previous version of Spotify playlist "Rainy Day" (Nov 30, 2020)
22. POLLEN - Viewing songs that have been taken off the playlist (Dec 3, 2020)
23. Recover Official Spotify Playlist (Dec 10, 2020)
24. Spotify archive playlists (May 25, 2021)
25. Release radar old songs (Jul 30, 2021)
26. Option to Enable Version History for Playlists (May 20, 2023)

Since Spotify won't take snapshots of our favorite playlists, let's do it ourselves!

How it works

This repository uses a Python script to scrape Spotify playlists and publish them back to the repo. The script is run daily via GitHub Actions. The script determines which playlists to scrape by looking at the file names in playlists/registry. Files get regenerated as follows: an up-to-date version of each playlist gets dumped in playlists/pretty, new tracks are added to the files in playlists/cumulative, and a plaintext version of each playlist is written to playlists/plain. The plain version is sorted alphabetically, rather than by track number, so that it only changes when tracks are added or removed, making Git History a nice way to visualize how the playlist evolves over time.

FAQ

How do I browse the archive?

There are two options for browsing the archive:

1. Use the website: https://spotifyplaylistarchive.com/
2. Browse the files on GitHub: playlists/index.md

How do I add a playlist to the archive?

See these instructions.

How do I recreate an old version of a playlist?

1. Use https://spotifyplaylistarchive.com/ to find the snapshot you want
2. Use the "Copy track URLs" button to copy the URLs to your clipboard
3. Paste them into a Spotify playlist via the Spotify web or desktop app

Why does the archive contain the wrong songs?

Many Spotify playlists are now personalized. The archive contains the content that a logged-out user would see.

Why does the archive contain the wrong playlist names?

Some playlist names have been manually overridden via their registry files. Additionally, when two or more playlists share the same name, the archive automatically appends a suffix like "(2)" to avoid duplicates.