This is a 100% handwritten Lyrics Downloader from Visu. It scrapes Genius.com for song lyrics, and very fast. I cannot see any fast alternative with this many features, so I decided building one myself. I will keep it open-source, but please cite me whenever you fork or contribute to it. I am open to any Issues. I'll be willing to update the script accordingly, where possible.
Here is how ChatGPT describes my code: This is a JavaScript script that uses the Axios and Cheerio libraries to scrape lyrics from Genius.com. The script takes a list of artists from the config.js file and searches for the first artist in the list. It then retrieves the artist's ID and uses it to search for all of the artist's songs on Genius.com. The URLs for these songs are then stored in an array. The script then repeats this process for each artist in the list. Finally, the script uses the URLs stored in the array to scrape the lyrics for each song and saves them to a text file.
- Fast. Download approximately 1000 per minute, according to your internet connection.
- Download lyrics from multiple artists
- Format line breaks and get the lyrics delivered on a huge text lump, or properly formatted if you'd like
- Remove signs like [Chorus] and [Intro] depending on the config
- Start from any page
- Brilliant error handling, uninterrupted workflow.
- Better error handling
- Multiple artists
- Append track number (and/or artist and album name) to the lyric text file
- Retry skipped songs after the script is done (config.js: timedOutLyricRetryCount)
- Skip Instrumental songs
- Ability to only download specific album(s)?
All song lyrics can be saved in one single "MySongs.txt" or in subfolders and individual files like "MyArtist/MyAlbum/01-MySong.txt". See the filePerSong settings of the config.js file to configure to your needs.
- Install NodeJS from here if you haven't already. While installing, you need to add NPM to PATH.
- Go to the directory of the file.
- Edit
config.jsto your liking. - Run Command Prompt or Windows Terminal (recommended) in the directory. (The easiest way is typing CMD on the address bar on the folder.)
- Type
npm ioryarn(if you prefer, I think yarn is better.) and press enter. This will install all of the dependencies of the script. You only need to do this once. - Type
node lyricsornode lyrics "MyArtist1,MyArtist2"to launch the program. If no artist is specified then the exports.artistList value(s) will be used.
You can change the way Lyrics Downloader handles the downloaded lyrics and tinker with it.
| Setting Key | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
apiKey |
API Key | The API key from Genius.com. You can generate yours at: https://docs.genius.com |
artistList |
Artist List | The names of the artists as an array. Entering a full query isn't needed as the scraper is performing a search. If you only want one artist, put in ["ArtistName"] but if you want multiple artists put it in like ["Artist1", [Artist2]] |
pageCount |
Page Count | How many pages to scrape for each artist. Every page has 20 songs. Note: Some pages may have less songs than 20, but other pages may still have more. Obviously, this has to be a positive value. |
curPage |
Current Page | The page to start scraping from. It needs to be 1 or higher. |
fName |
File Name | The name of the TXT file. Leave it empty if you want it to be the same as the first artist's name. |
concDate |
Concatenate Date | Put the current date after the file name. |
songNameL |
Insert Song Name | Insert the song name before the lyrics. True or False. |
removeSigns |
Remove Signs | Remove signs in the lyrics like [Chorus] and [Intro]. This will remove everything between {}, [] and (). True or False. |
removeSpaces |
Remove Spaces | Remove line breaks. Useful when needed. This will put the whole song in a big lump without line breaks. Only line breaks between songs. |
hugeLump |
Huge Lump | Put absolutely everything on a big lump. No line breaks except between sentences. Any extra linebreaks are caused by the website. |
filePerSong |
File Per Song | Export each lyric to a single text file and allows the additional options below: |
filePerSongUseAlbumFolders |
Use Album Folder | Lyrics stored in output/album folder. filePerSong must be "True" |
filePerSongUseArtistFolder |
Use Artist Folder | Lyrics stored in output/artist/ or output/artist/album folder. filePerSong must be "True" |
filePerSongAppendGeniusURL |
Append Genius URL | Includes the genius.com url in each lyric file. filePerSong must be "True" |
filePerSongPrefixArtistName |
Prefix Artist Name | MyArtist-MySong.txt. filePerSong must be "True" |
filePerSongPrefixAlbumName |
Prefix Album Name | MyArtist-MyAlbum-MySong.txt or MyAlbum-MySong.txt. filePerSong must be "True" |
filePerSongPrefixAlbumWithYear |
Prefix Album with Year | output/2010-MyAlbum/MySong.txt. filePerSong must be "True" |
excludeInstrumentalLyrics |
Exclude Instrumental Lyrics | Tries to skip Instrumental songs. filePerSong must be "True" |
timedOutLyricRetryCount |
Timed Out Lyric Retry Count | Number of times to attempt to re-download previously-failed/timed-out lyrics. |
Errors are dumped carefully.
The log directory is logs and when you get a systematic error, two files will be generated for you.
You will also be notified when there is one and will be able to see the directory on the console.
dump-2000-00-00 00.00.00.txt and
error-2000-00-00 00.00.00.txt
The error one will return the error strings, in most cases there is none. The dump one will return the full error dump so you can look through it.
But if all of the system are okay, and the program fails to pull a song webpage from the list instead, you will see the error on the console... But it will just skip the current song and keep downloading the rest of the list. So the process won't be interrupted. You will get an output on the console to notify you the script has failed to fetch one of the songs.
Failed song URLs will be outputted to the logs directory as well.
skippedsongs-2000-00-00 00.00.00.txt