Bandcamp Music Scraper

Bandcamp Music Scraper is an Apify Actor that extracts comprehensive music data from any Bandcamp artist or label page. It scrapes album metadata, track listings, audio preview URLs, artist profiles, pricing information, and embedded videos. The scraper supports both standard Bandcamp subdomains (e.g., https://artist.bandcamp.com/) and custom domain Bandcamp sites. Built with Crawlee and Playwright for reliable browser-based extraction with automatic retries and error recovery.

Features

• Album metadata -- title, artist name, artwork URL, release date, genre tags, pricing, and download availability
• Track listings -- individual track title, duration in seconds, track number, and direct track page URL
• Audio preview URLs -- MP3 128kbps streaming preview URLs from Bandcamp's CDN for each track
• Artist/label profiles -- biography, geographic location, profile image, genre tags, and social media links (website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, YouTube)
• Embedded videos -- YouTube, Vimeo, and Bandcamp video URLs found on album pages
• Custom domain support -- works with Bandcamp sites using custom domains, not just *.bandcamp.com
• Configurable depth -- choose exactly which data to extract to optimize run time and cost
• Automatic retries -- built on Crawlee with 3 automatic retries per request for reliability
• Proxy support -- optional Apify Proxy integration for bypassing rate limits

What Data Can You Extract?

Album Data

Field	Type	Description
title	string	Album title
artist	string	Artist or label name
url	string	Album page URL on Bandcamp
imageUrl	string	Album artwork image URL
releaseDate	string	Release or publish date
price	object	Price with amount (number) and currency (string)
downloadAvailable	boolean	Whether the album offers free or name-your-price download
tags	array	Genre and style tags
tracks	array	Track listing (when Fetch Track Listings is enabled)
videos	array	Embedded video URLs (when Fetch Embedded Videos is enabled)

Track Data

Field	Type	Description
title	string	Track title
duration	number	Duration in seconds
trackNumber	number	Position in the album
url	string	Track page URL
previewUrl	string	MP3 128kbps stream URL (when Fetch Audio Previews is enabled)

Artist/Label Data

Field	Type	Description
name	string	Artist or label display name
bio	string	Biography text
location	string	Geographic location
imageUrl	string	Profile image URL
tags	array	Associated genre tags
socialLinks	object	Website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, YouTube URLs

How to Use

1. Open the Bandcamp Music Scraper on Apify Store
2. Enter the Bandcamp artist or label URL (e.g., https://wardruna.bandcamp.com/)
3. Select which data you want to extract using the checkboxes
4. Click Start to run the scraper
5. Download your results in JSON, CSV, Excel, or other formats from the Dataset tab

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
url	string	(required)	Bandcamp artist or label URL
fetchAlbums	boolean	true	Extract album metadata from the /music page
fetchTracks	boolean	false	Extract track listings from each album (requires fetchAlbums)
fetchAudioPreviews	boolean	false	Extract MP3 preview URLs for each track (requires fetchTracks)
fetchArtistInfo	boolean	false	Extract artist/label profile information
fetchVideos	boolean	false	Extract embedded videos from album pages
maxAlbums	integer	50	Maximum number of albums to process (0 = unlimited)
proxyConfiguration	object	none	Optional Apify Proxy configuration

Example Input

{
    "url": "https://wardruna.bandcamp.com/",
    "fetchAlbums": true,
    "fetchTracks": true,
    "fetchArtistInfo": true,
    "maxAlbums": 10
}

Output Example

Each album is saved as a separate dataset record for easy filtering and export. Here is an example of a single album record:

{
    "dataType": "album",
    "title": "Kvitravn",
    "artist": "Wardruna",
    "url": "https://wardruna.bandcamp.com/album/kvitravn",
    "imageUrl": "https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3832456789_10.jpg",
    "releaseDate": "22 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT",
    "price": {
        "amount": 10.0,
        "currency": "USD"
    },
    "downloadAvailable": false,
    "tags": ["nordic folk", "viking", "norse", "norway"],
    "tracks": [
        {
            "title": "Synkverving",
            "duration": 320.5,
            "trackNumber": 1,
            "url": "https://wardruna.bandcamp.com/track/synkverving",
            "previewUrl": "https://t4.bcbits.com/stream/abc123/mp3-128/1234567890"
        }
    ],
    "videos": []
}

When artist info is enabled, a separate artist record is also included:

{
    "dataType": "artist",
    "name": "Wardruna",
    "bio": "Wardruna is a Norwegian musical group founded by Einar Selvik...",
    "location": "Bergen, Norway",
    "imageUrl": "https://f4.bcbits.com/img/0012345678_10.jpg",
    "tags": ["nordic folk", "ambient", "viking"],
    "socialLinks": {
        "website": "https://wardruna.com",
        "facebook": "https://facebook.com/wardruna",
        "instagram": "https://instagram.com/wardruna_official",
        "twitter": null,
        "youtube": "https://youtube.com/wardruna"
    }
}

Pricing

This Actor uses Pay Per Event pricing. You are charged only for the data you extract:

Event	Price
Album scraped	$0.01 per album
Artist profile scraped	$0.005 per profile

Example costs:

• Scraping 10 albums from one artist: ~$0.10
• Scraping 50 albums with artist info: ~$0.505
• Basic album list (no tracks) for 20 albums: ~$0.20

There are no monthly fees. You pay only for what you use, and platform compute costs are included in the per-event price.

Use Cases

• Music cataloging -- Build a database of an artist's full discography with metadata, pricing, and artwork
• Price monitoring -- Track album pricing changes over time for music marketplaces or comparison tools
• Music discovery -- Collect genre tags and related artist data for music recommendation engines
• Playlist generation -- Extract track listings and audio preview URLs to create sample playlists
• Data journalism -- Analyze pricing trends, release patterns, and genre distributions across Bandcamp artists
• Label analysis -- Scrape all releases from a record label to understand their catalog and pricing strategy
• Social media research -- Collect artist social links and bios for artist outreach or marketing campaigns

How It Works

1. Home page validation -- The Actor navigates to the provided URL and verifies it is a valid Bandcamp artist or label page
2. Artist info extraction -- If enabled, extracts profile data from the page sidebar (name, bio, location, social links, tags)
3. Album discovery -- Navigates to the /music page and discovers all album URLs from the music grid
4. Album processing -- For each album (up to the maxAlbums limit), visits the album page and extracts metadata from the embedded TralbumData JavaScript object, which contains reliable structured data directly from Bandcamp's backend
5. Track extraction -- Parses track information including title, duration, track number, and MP3 preview stream URLs
6. Video extraction -- Scans for embedded iframe elements from YouTube, Vimeo, and Bandcamp's own video player
7. Dataset output -- Each album and the artist profile are pushed as separate records to the Apify Dataset for easy export

Technical Details

• Built with Crawlee PlaywrightCrawler for managed browser automation with automatic retries
• Uses Playwright with Chromium in headless mode
• Extracts data from Bandcamp's embedded TralbumData JavaScript object for maximum reliability
• Falls back to DOM scraping when structured data is unavailable
• Sequential processing (maxConcurrency: 1) to respect Bandcamp's rate limits
• Configurable proxy support via Apify Proxy for geo-restricted content

FAQ

Q: Does this work with custom domain Bandcamp sites? A: Yes. The scraper accepts any valid URL that hosts a Bandcamp artist or label page, including custom domains.

Q: Why does enabling track listings increase run time? A: When track listings are enabled, the Actor must visit each individual album page to extract track data from the embedded JavaScript. Without tracks, it can extract basic album info directly from the music grid page in a single request.

Q: What happens if an album page fails to load? A: The Actor retries each request up to 3 times automatically. If all retries fail, it records an error entry in the dataset and continues processing the remaining albums.

Q: Can I scrape multiple artists in one run? A: Currently, each run processes one artist or label URL. To scrape multiple artists, run the Actor multiple times or use Apify's scheduling and orchestration features.

Q: What format are audio preview URLs? A: Preview URLs point to MP3 files encoded at 128kbps, served from Bandcamp's CDN (t4.bcbits.com). These are the same previews that play on the Bandcamp website.

Q: Is there a limit on the number of albums? A: You can set the maxAlbums parameter (default: 50, max: 500) to control how many albums are processed. Set it to 0 for unlimited.