IDEA - Create a text doc of an artists discography.

[fred dred]

This is something I've been trying to do, off-and-on for 12 months - but it's just beyond me.

A program that takes a supplied artist/band and returns a simple text doc (or copyable window) of their discography, ideally scraped from somewhere like allmusic.com (allmusic seems to just list the main entries, rather than somewhere like discogs that shows all variants, releases and pressings).

[Shades]

What you appear to wish for is a 'scraper' or 'site-scraper'.

While there are enough legitimate use-cases for such software, this kind of software is also used for nefarious purposes (hence no links in my post).

[fred dred]

Doesn't have to be a scraper - it's just the first thing that came to mind.

I can't think of an easier method to get a list of information back ..... maybe a direct query of a publicly accessible music database? I think the one used by MusicBrainz Picard might work.

I'm a carpenter, not a coder

[SleepingWolf]

There is a program by skwire called epCheck that downloads parts of the online database at https://thetvdb.com/, I can't really distinguish why that would be a suitable program, but this suggestion would not. Great idea, fred dred.

[fred dred]

Thanks

Maybe using the word 'scrape' was a bad idea?

All I want to do is see what albums I'm missing in my collection, and put that info into a text I can drop into the artists folder - without having to visit allmusic or discogs and laboriously copy and pasting the info line by line.

[4wd]

I'm not going to offer an all encompassing solution but here's something simple in PowerShell that uses Discogs - it might inspire someone

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. <#
2.   .\DiscoFile.ps1 <Uri>
3.  
4.   Given the URI from https://www.discogs.com for an artist it will retrieve the
5.   discography.
6.  
7.   eg.
8.  
9.   .\DiscoFile.ps1 https://www.discogs.com/artist/84752-ACDC
10.  
11.   Will result in a file called 'AC_DC - Discography.txt' in the same directory as
12.   DiscoFile.ps1
13.  
14. #>
15.  
16. param (
17.   [string]$Uri
18. )
19.  
20. $web = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Uri).RawContent
21.  
22. $temp = $web -replace '[\s\S]+artist_schema..([\s\S]+?)<\/script>[\s\S]*$', '$1'
23.  
24. $json = $temp | ConvertFrom-Json
25.  
26. $outFile = ($json.name + " - Discography.txt").Split([IO.Path]::GetInvalidFileNameChars()) -join '_'
27.  
28. for ($i = 0; $i -lt $json.album.Count; $i++) {
29.   "$($json.album[$i].datePublished) - $($json.album[$i].name)" | Out-File -FilePath $outFile -Append
30. }

Using the example above, output will be to 'AC_DC - Discography.txt' and look like:

Code: Text [Select]

1. 1975 - T.N.T.
2. 1975 - High Voltage
3. 1976 - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
4. 1976 - High Voltage
5. 1976 - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
6. 1977 - Let There Be Rock
7. 1978 - Powerage
8. 1978 - If You Want Blood You've Got It
9. 1979 - Highway To Hell
10. 1980 - In Concert-215
11. 1980 - Back In Black
12. 1981 - For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)
13. 1983 - Special Radio Interview Disc
14. 1983 - Flick Of The Switch
15. 1985 - Fly On The Wall
16. 1988 - Blow Up Your Video
17. 1990 - AC/DC Interview
18. 1990 - The Razors Edge
19. 1992 - Live

Why did I choose Discogs even though the album data is incomplete?

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. $json = $temp | ConvertFrom-Json

Album data is available in JSON format which makes retrieving it trivial.

Having a quick look at MusicBrainz, it appears to also be in JSON format - maybe I'll devote an extra 30 5 mins to this

MusicBrainz version, they don't appear to include the year in the JSON data though:

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. <#
2.   .\DiscoFile-MB.ps1 <Uri>
3.  
4.   Given the URI from https://musicbrainz.org for an artist it will retrieve the
5.   discography.
6.  
7.   eg.
8.  
9.   .\DiscoFile-MB.ps1 https://musicbrainz.org/artist/66c662b6-6e2f-4930-8610-912e24c63ed1
10.  
11.   Will result in a file called 'AC_DC-MB - Discography.txt' in the same directory as
12.   DiscoFile.ps1
13.  
14. #>
15.  
16. param (
17.   [string]$Uri
18. )
19.  
20. $web = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Uri).RawContent
21.  
22. $temp = $web -replace '[\s\S]+application\/ld\+json..([\s\S]+?)<\/script>[\s\S]*$', '$1'
23.  
24. $json = $temp | ConvertFrom-Json
25.  
26. $outFile = ($json.name + "-MB - Discography.txt").Split([IO.Path]::GetInvalidFileNameChars()) -join '_'
27.  
28. for ($i = 0; $i -lt $json.album.Count; $i++) {
29.   "$($json.album[$i].name)" | Out-File -FilePath $outFile -Append
30. }

[fred dred]

Thank you very, very much for taking the time to do this !

I've never used powershell, so it took half an hour to figure out how to get it to run, but works great now

The discogs output is good, but as you said, it's far from complete - so it doesn't really help as a resource to check my collection against.

The MusicBrainz output is brilliant - but no dates means it's a pain to cross reference with my existing files.

But thank you again for taking a look - you've done far more than I ever accomplished in the months and months of tinkering with Python !

Cheers

 

[4wd]

Thank you very, very much for taking the time to do this !

-fred dred (November 07, 2020, 02:36 AM)

No problem, it was quite literally 20 minutes of playing around - working out the RegEx to remove everything I didn't want took the most time.

The MusicBrainz output is brilliant - but no dates means it's a pain to cross reference with my existing files.

You can get the dates, you just have to follow every album link but they do provide the info in JSON format without having to strip it out of the page.

For example, AC/DC's High Voltage:

XML
JSON

So it can be obtained, just grab the JSON and pull out the first date value, as an example:

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. $album = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://musicbrainz.org/ws/2/release-group/2b81e645-4586-4456-843a-9bc19a217470?inc=releases&fmt=json") | ConvertFrom-Json
2. "$($album.releases[0].date) - $($album.title)"

The only problem being multiple release dates, eg. for that particular entry there are nine dates ... which one do you choose really?

Considering MusicBrainz provide album data in JSON, I'm kind of surprised that the artist page doesn't provide the same, (I mean including the album details, ie. combined artist+releases).

[4wd]

This'll just grab the first date in a release:

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. <#
2.   .\DiscoFile-MB2.ps1 <Uri>
3.  
4.   Given the URI from https://musicbrainz.org for an artist it will retrieve the
5.   discography.
6.  
7.   eg.
8.  
9.   .\DiscoFile-MB2.ps1 https://musicbrainz.org/artist/66c662b6-6e2f-4930-8610-912e24c63ed1
10.  
11.   Will result in a file called 'AC_DC-MB - Discography.txt' in the same directory as
12.   DiscoFile.ps1
13.  
14. #>
15.  
16. param (
17.   [string]$Uri
18. )
19.  
20. $web = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Uri).RawContent
21.  
22. $temp = $web -replace '[\s\S]+application\/ld\+json..([\s\S]+?)<\/script>[\s\S]*$', '$1'
23.  
24. $json = $temp | ConvertFrom-Json
25.  
26. $outFile = ($json.name + "-MB - Discography.txt").Split([IO.Path]::GetInvalidFileNameChars()) -join '_'
27. if (Test-Path $outFile) {
28.   Remove-Item $outFile -Force
29. }
30.  
31. for ($i = 0; $i -lt $json.album.Count; $i++) {
32.   $albumUri = ($json.album[$i].'@id' + "?inc=releases&fmt=json") -replace '\.org\/', '.org/ws/2/'
33.   $album = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$($albumUri)") | ConvertFrom-Json
34.   "$($album.releases[0].date) - $($album.title)" | Out-File -FilePath $outFile -Append
35. }

Example output:

Code: Text [Select]

1. 1976-02-14 - Dreamboat Annie
2. 1977-04-19 - Magazine
3. 1977-05-15 - Little Queen
4. 1978-10-07 - Dog & Butterfly
5. 1980-02-14 - B??b?? le Strange
6. 1982-06-05 - Private Audition
7. 1983-08-20 - Passionworks
8. 1985-07-06 - Heart
9. 1987-06-05 - Bad Animals
10. 1990-03-26 - Brigade
11. 1993-10-30 - Desire Walks On
12. 2004-06-22 - Jupiters Darling
13. 2010-08-27 - Red Velvet Car
14. 2012-09-28 - Fanatic
15. 2016-07-08 - Beautiful Broken
16. 1980-11-29 - Greatest Hits / Live
17. 1981 - Heart: Best of the Early Years
18. 1995-12-11 - Definitive Collection
19. 1996-07-03 - Ballads: The Greatest Hits
20. 1997-03-11 - These Dreams: Heart???s Greatest Hits
21. 1998-08-25 - Greatest Hits
22. 2000-06-27 - Greatest Hits: 1985???1995
23. 2002-11-26 - The Essential Heart
24. 2005-09-27 - Love Alive
25. 2005-11-15 - The Collection
26. 2006-01-10 - Love Songs
27. 2008 - Playlist: The Very Best of Heart
28. 2009 - Private Audition / Passionworks
29. 2011-06-23 - Heart / Bad Animals
30. 2012-06-01 - Strange Euphoria
31. 2012 - Super Hits
32. 2013-05-13 - Icon
33. 2013 - Original Album Classics
34. 2014-10-14 - The Box Set Series
35. 1991-09-24 - Rock the House Live!
36. 1995-08-09 - The Road Home
37. 2003 - Alive in Seattle
38. 2007-10-23 - Dreamboat Annie Live
39. 2008-08-05 - Live
40. 2014-02-21 - Fanatic Live From Caesars Colosseum
41. 2014-11-07 - Heart & Friends: Home for the Holidays
42. 2016-11-25 - Live at the Royal Albert Hall
43. 2019-01-25 - Live in Atlantic City
44. 1975-06 - Magic Man
45. 1975 - Crazy on You
46. 1975 - How Deep It Goes
47. 1976-12 - Dreamboat Annie
48. 1976 - (Love Me Like Music) I???ll Be Your Song
49. 1977 - Barracuda
50. 1977 - Heartless
51. 1977 - Kick It Out
52. 1977 - Little Queen / Treat Me Well
53. 1978 - Straight On
54. 1978 - Without You
55. 1985-09-14 - Never
56. 1985 - Nothin??? at All
57. 1986-01-18 - These Dreams
58. 1986-07-19 - If Looks Could Kill
59. 1987 - There???s the Girl
60. 1987 - Who Will You Run To
61. 1988-02 - Never / These Dreams
62. 1990-03-28 - All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You
63. 1990-09 - Stranded
64. 1990 - I Didn???t Want to Need You
65. 1990 - Secret
66. 1991 - You???re the Voice
67. 1993-11 - Black on Black II
68. 1993 - Will You Be There (In the Morning)
69. 1994 - The Woman in Me
70. 1998 - What About Love
71. 2012-08-21 - Fanatic
72. 2013-11-08 - Heart Christmas Single 2013
73. 2017-11-03 - Band on the Run
74. 2017-11-03 - Letting Go
75. 2013-01-15 - Stairway to Heaven (live at the Kennedy Center Honors)
76. 2018-10-23 - Lost Angel
77. 2019-01-11 - B??b?? le Strange
78. 2019-01-16 - Crazy on You
79. 2012-11-12 - A Million Miles (Abe Clements remix)
80. 1988 - If Looks Could Kill
81. 2010-03-05 - WTF+4

You could add filtering to restrict it to certain types of releases by matching in the albumProductionType or albumReleaseType, eg.

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. for ($i = 0; $i -lt $json.album.Count; $i++) {
2.   if ($json.album[$i].albumProductionType -match 'StudioAlbum') {
3.     $albumUri = ($json.album[$i].'@id' + "?inc=releases&fmt=json") -replace '\.org\/', '.org/ws/2/'
4.     $album = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$($albumUri)") | ConvertFrom-Json
5.     "$($album.releases[0].date) - $($album.title)" | Out-File -FilePath $outFile -Append
6.   }
7. }

So goes the theory

[fred dred]

(EDIT - I was writing this as you posted your last post above)

The only problem being multiple release dates, eg. for that particular entry there are nine dates ... which one do you choose really?

-4wd (November 07, 2020, 03:21 AM)

That's one of the reasons I became fixated on the allmusic site.

Here's the info. There's a nice list of release dates and album titles, surely it can't be that difficult I kept telling myself - to my mind it's just a matter of pulling those bit's of info off the page haha. (My coding skills are extremely basic, and I just couldn't get any of the Python modules to get the info I wanted - or even to work most of the time if I'm honest).

[4wd]

That's one of the reasons I became fixated on the allmusic site.

-fred dred (November 07, 2020, 04:43 AM)

Yes, nicer format but unfortunately in HTML which can be a P.I.T.A to parse.

They might have an API which can be leveraged but I couldn't find one in a quick look at the site.

Addendum: Looks like there is an API through Rovi (TiVo) if you get an API key here - although a quick look seems to indicate no way to get a list of releases for an artist.

[fred dred]

It makes me very happy that you mention html to be a pain to work with - maybe I'm not as stupid as I thought I was 

AFAIR even when I could get beautiful soup or one of the other html parsers to grab the page, there didn't seem to be any of the relevant information in it !

You've given me a lot to play with, thanks again,

Steve.

[Nod5]

Nice 4wd! One idea is to search for artist name and use the first match as artist page URL input into the rest of your program.
The URL format is

[Select]

https://www.discogs.com/search/?type=artist&title=ac+dc

Other URL parameters can be detected by playing around with options on https://www.discogs.com/search/advanced

This could be a little NANY 2021 app.

[4wd]

Nice 4wd!

-Nod5 (November 07, 2020, 10:11 AM)

Thanks!

One idea is to search for artist name and use the first match as artist page URL input into the rest of your program.
The URL format is

[Select]

https://www.discogs.com/search/?type=artist&title=ac+dc

I think that given the incomplete records on Discogs, time would be better spent on either MusicBrainz, (filtering their overly complete lists down to just the studio releases, or otherwise selecting what you want), or trying to parse allmusic's HTML, (that'll be fun but it is just one big table, so maybe it won't be that hard - PowerShell can get at elements within HTML, just never really looked at it).

eg. For MusicBrainz, pipe the output into a ListView with checkboxes, select the ones you want, output to a text file - if you want to use manual selection.

This could be a little NANY 2021 app.

... it might inspire someone

-4wd (November 06, 2020, 09:41 PM)

 

Looking at AllMusic, their info is a little mixed up also, Live albums in amongst Studio albums whereas MusicBrainz splits Studio and Live.

Since MusicBrainz list the Studio albums first, we can prune everything down to just those easily enough:

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. <#
2.   .\DiscoFile-MB3.ps1 <Uri>
3.  
4.   Given the URI from https://musicbrainz.org for an artist it will retrieve the
5.   discography.
6.  
7.   eg.
8.  
9.   .\DiscoFile-MB3.ps1 https://musicbrainz.org/artist/66c662b6-6e2f-4930-8610-912e24c63ed1
10.  
11.   Will result in a file called 'AC_DC-MB - Discography.txt' in the same directory as
12.   DiscoFile.ps1
13.  
14. #>
15.  
16. param (
17.   [string]$Uri
18. )
19.  
20. $web = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Uri).RawContent
21.  
22. $temp = $web -replace '[\s\S]+application\/ld\+json..([\s\S]+?)<\/script>[\s\S]*$', '$1'
23.  
24. $json = $temp | ConvertFrom-Json
25.  
26. $outFile = ($json.name + "-MB - Discography.txt").Split([IO.Path]::GetInvalidFileNameChars()) -join '_'
27. if (Test-Path $outFile) {
28.   Remove-Item $outFile -Force
29. }
30.  
31. $i = 0
32. do {
33.   if ($json.album[$i].albumProductionType -match 'StudioAlbum') {
34.     $found = $true
35.     $albumUri = ($json.album[$i].'@id' + "?inc=releases&fmt=json") -replace '\.org\/', '.org/ws/2/'
36.     $album = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$($albumUri)") | ConvertFrom-Json
37.     "$($album.releases[0].date) - $($album.title)" | Out-File -FilePath $outFile -Append
38.   } else {
39.     $found = $false
40.   }
41.   $i++
42. } while ($found)

Which makes it a little nicer:

Code: Text [Select]

1. 1975-02-17 - High Voltage
2. 1975-12-01 - T.N.T.
3. 1976-05-14 - High Voltage
4. 1976-09-20 - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
5. 1977-03-21 - Let There Be Rock
6. 1978-05-05 - Powerage
7. 1979-07-27 - Highway to Hell
8. 1980-07-25 - Back in Black
9. 1981-11-23 - For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)
10. 1983-08-15 - Flick of the Switch
11. 1985-06-28 - Fly on the Wall
12. 1988-01-18 - Blow Up Your Video
13. 1990-09-21 - The Razors Edge
14. 1995-09-22 - Ballbreaker
15. 2000-02-25 - Stiff Upper Lip
16. 2008-10-17 - Black Ice
17. 2014-11-28 - Rock or Bust
18. 2020-11-13 - Power Up

I guess AllMusic could be parsed using the HTML Agility Pack ... if I could work out how to use it

[fred dred]

Wow. 

I'm be happy for the list to contain both studio and live albums, the ones I wouldn't want would be compilations.

Still ..... wow

[4wd]

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. <#
2.   .\DiscoFile-MB3.ps1 <Uri>
3.  
4.   Given the URI from https://musicbrainz.org for an artist it will retrieve the
5.   discography.
6.  
7.   eg.
8.  
9.   .\DiscoFile-MB3.ps1 https://musicbrainz.org/artist/66c662b6-6e2f-4930-8610-912e24c63ed1
10.  
11.   Will result in a file called 'AC_DC-MB - Discography.txt' in the same directory as
12.   DiscoFile-MB3.ps1
13.  
14. #>
15.  
16. param (
17.   [string]$Uri
18. )
19.  
20. $web = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Uri).RawContent
21.  
22. $temp = $web -replace '[\s\S]+application\/ld\+json..([\s\S]+?)<\/script>[\s\S]*$', '$1'
23.  
24. $json = $temp | ConvertFrom-Json
25.  
26. $outFile = ($json.name + "-MB - Discography.txt").Split([IO.Path]::GetInvalidFileNameChars()) -join '_'
27. if (Test-Path $outFile) {
28.   Remove-Item $outFile -Force
29. }
30.  
31. for ($i = 0; $i -lt $json.album.Count; $i++) {
32.   $temp = $json.album[$i].albumReleaseType
33.   if ($temp -match 'AlbumRelease') {
34.     $temp = $json.album[$i].albumProductionType
35.     if (($temp -match '(LiveAlbum)|(StudioAlbum)') -and !($temp -match '(CompilationAlbum)|(SoundtrackAlbum)')) {
36.       $albumUri = ($json.album[$i].'@id' + "?inc=releases&fmt=json") -replace '\.org\/', '.org/ws/2/'
37.       $album = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$($albumUri)") | ConvertFrom-Json
38.       "$($album.releases[0].date.Substring(0,4)) - $($album.title)" | Out-File -FilePath $outFile -Append
39.     }
40.   }
41. }
42.  
43. Get-Content $outFile | Sort-Object | Set-Content $outFile

Code: Text [Select]

1. 1975 - High Voltage
2. 1975 - T.N.T.
3. 1976 - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
4. 1976 - High Voltage
5. 1977 - Let There Be Rock
6. 1978 - If You Want Blood You???ve Got It
7. 1978 - Live from the Atlantic Studios
8. 1978 - Powerage
9. 1979 - Highway to Hell
10. 1980 - Back in Black
11. 1981 - For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)
12. 1983 - Flick of the Switch
13. 1985 - Fly on the Wall
14. 1988 - Blow Up Your Video
15. 1990 - The Razors Edge
16. 1992 - Live at Donington
17. 1995 - Ballbreaker
18. 1996 - No Bull: Live - Plaza De Toros, Madrid
19. 1996 - Westwood One Superstars In Concert Series
20. 2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
21. 2001 - Stiff Upper Lip: Live
22. 2007 - Plug Me In
23. 2008 - Black Ice
24. 2011 - Live at River Plate
25. 2014 - Rock or Bust
26. 2018 - Legendary FM Broadcasts - The Paradise Theatre, Boston MA 21st August 1978
27. 2018 - Live At Paradise Theatre Boston 1978
28. 2019 - Live at the Apocalypse
29. 2020 - AC/DC FM Broadcast Boston 1978
30. 2020 - Power Up

[fred dred]

 

[fred dred]

Any idea why I get

IDEA - Create a text doc of an artists discography.

And my text doc looks like

[Select]

1975 - High Voltage
1975 - T.N.T.
1976 - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
1976 - High Voltage
1977 - Let There Be Rock
1978 - Powerage
1979 - Highway to Hell
1980 - Back in Black
1981 - For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)
1983 - Flick of the Switch
1985 - Fly on the Wall
1988 - Blow Up Your Video
1990 - The Razors Edge
1995 - Ballbreaker
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip
2000 - Stiff Upper Lip

I also get the same errors when searching Aerosmith

[Select]

.\DiscoFile-MB3.ps1 https://musicbrainz.org/artist/3d2b98e5-556f-4451-a3ff-c50ea18d57cb

Their list looks like

[Select]

1973 - Aerosmith
1974 - Get Your Wings
1975 - Toys in the Attic
1976 - Rocks
1977 - Draw the Line
1979 - Night in the Ruts
1982 - Rock in a Hard Place
1985 - Done With Mirrors
1987 - Permanent Vacation
1989 - Pump
1993 - Get a Grip
1997 - Nine Lives
2001 - Just Push Play
2004 - Honkin??? on Bobo
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!
2012 - Music From Another Dimension!

It seems to work fine searching for artists with smaller catalogues , ie 3 Doors Down (2386cd66-e923-4e8e-bf14-2eebe2e9b973)

Could it be a 'Too Many Requests' type issue? - they both failed on the 16th request.... coincidence?

(Just for info, I'm logged in on the MB site)

[4wd]

The only way being logged in, (or not), to the site would matter is if you are also doing searches or browsing at the same time, since you're increasing the number of requests per second.

It looks like they impose a rate limit of one request per second from the same IP, (strange I never hit it), unless it's from specific software, (eg. picard), or uses a recognisable UserAgent, (ie. a browser, PowerShell probably doesn't by default - I might look at how you can add it, if it's possible).

You can try putting in a Start-Sleep -seconds 1 after the for statement, that will delay the requests to about one per second.

Adjust the number up as necessary to increase the delay between requests, especially if you are browsing the site at the same time.

Or use Opera to browse the site with its internal VPN turned on so it looks like a different IP.

EDIT: Looks like PowerShell has its own UserAgent but can use one of the more standard browser settings which may decrease the rate limiting.  I'll look at it later today if I have time, or you can have a play

https://stackoverflo...a-powershell-request

[fred dred]

I was logged into the MB site, but I wasn't using it - I just added that info because 'more info is more better' when it comes to figuring out why it aint working

Adding a delay of 0.55 seconds to the loop seems to have fixed it 

[4wd]

Now uses Chrome's UserAgent and can set a delay from the command line:

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. <#
2.   .\DiscoFile-MB3.ps1 -uri <Uri> [-delay <seconds>]
3.  
4.   Given the URI from https://musicbrainz.org for an artist it will retrieve the
5.   discography.
6.  
7.   Where: Uri     = MusicBrainz artist page URI
8.          seconds = [optional] number of seconds delay between Web Requests (0.1-90)
9.  
10.  
11.   eg.
12.  
13.   .\DiscoFile-MB3.ps1 -uri https://musicbrainz.org/artist/66c662b6-6e2f-4930-8610-912e24c63ed1
14.  
15.   .\DiscoFile-MB3.ps1 -uri https://musicbrainz.org/artist/66c662b6-6e2f-4930-8610-912e24c63ed1 -delay 10
16.  
17.   Will result in a file called 'AC_DC-MB - Discography.txt' in the same directory as
18.   DiscoFile-MB3.ps1
19.  
20. #>
21. param (
22.         [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$Uri,
23.         [ValidateRange(0.1,90)][decimal]$delay
24. )
25. $sleep = $false
26. if ($delay -gt 0) {
27.   $sleep = $true
28. }
29. $userAgent = [Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.PSUserAgent]::Chrome
30.  
31. $web = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Uri -UserAgent $userAgent).RawContent
32.  
33. $temp = $web -replace '[\s\S]+application\/ld\+json..([\s\S]+?)<\/script>[\s\S]*$', '$1'
34. $json = $temp | ConvertFrom-Json
35.  
36. $outFile = ($json.name + "-MB - Discography.txt").Split([IO.Path]::GetInvalidFileNameChars()) -join '_'
37. if (Test-Path $outFile) {
38.   Remove-Item $outFile -Force
39. }
40.  
41. for ($i = 0; $i -lt $json.album.Count; $i++) {
42.   if ($sleep) {
43.     Start-Sleep -seconds $delay
44.   }
45.   $temp = $json.album[$i].albumReleaseType
46.   if ($temp -match 'AlbumRelease') {
47.     $temp = $json.album[$i].albumProductionType
48.     if (($temp -match '(LiveAlbum)|(StudioAlbum)') -and !($temp -match '(CompilationAlbum)|(SoundtrackAlbum)')) {
49.       $albumUri = ($json.album[$i].'@id' + "?inc=releases&fmt=json") -replace '\.org\/', '.org/ws/2/'
50.       $album = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$($albumUri)" -UserAgent $userAgent) | ConvertFrom-Json
51.       "$($album.releases[0].date.Substring(0,4)) - $($album.title)" | Out-File -FilePath $outFile -Append
52.     }
53.   }
54. }
55.  
56. Get-Content $outFile | Sort-Object | Set-Content $outFile