rv3392 / spotify-to-pocketcasts

A script to transfer podcast subscriptions and listening history from Spotify to Pocket Casts

spotify-to-pocketcasts

This is a script to transfer Spotify podcast subscriptions and listening history to Pocket Casts.

It uses the openly available Spotify API through the spotipy module as well as a reverse-engineered Pocket Casts API. So far, I've only tested it for my own switch from Spotify to Pocketcasts for which it worked fairly well.

Features

• Transfer subscriptions
• Transfer listening history (including marking as played on Pocket Casts)
• Optional script to delete subscriptions from Spotify

Drawbacks

Before you start using this script please read the drawbacks as there are some fairly large failure cases where the script does not work 100%. The summary is that:

1. Sometimes there are 2+ podcasts with the same name and in those cases syncing may not work correctly. You could end up subscribed to the wrong podcast so to mitigate this you should verify your subscriptions after the transfer, and manually fix any errors.
2. Sometimes the name of episodes is mismatched between Spotify and Pocketcasts. In such cases the episode with the mismatched name will not have its listening history synced.

How to Use

1. Install Python >= 3.11 and run pip install -r requirements.txt to install all Python requirements
2. Setup a new application at https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard. The name does not matter.
   • Export the client ID, client secret and redirect URI as suggested here: https://spotipy.readthedocs.io/en/2.22.0/#quick-start
3. Set the environment variables POCKETCASTS_EMAIL and POCKETCASTS_PW for your Pocketcasts username and password respectively.
   • Windows: Use set POCKETCASTS_EMAIL='[email protected]'
   • Linux or MacOS: Use export POCKETCASTS_EMAIL='[email protected]'
   • Repeat the same but for POCKETCASTS_PW
4. Run the script using

   python spotify_to_pocketcasts.py

   You'll be asked to authorise the script to read your library and podcast data - this is required to be able to transfer the data.

If you encounter any bugs please open an issue to let me know.

Future Plans

I welcome any forks and/or open a pull requests for any changes you'd like to make. The main todo just involves making this easier to run by:

• Adding CLI options for passwords/usernames/secrets
• Lots of tests
• Push to pip to make the script easier to install
• A web-app version of this script if there is demand

spotify-to-pocketcasts's Issues

Can the package requirements relaxed?

Current requirements.txt
spotipy==2.22.0
urllib3==1.26.14

Is it important, that the packages are exactly those version?

Would these be enough:
spotipy>=2.22.0
urllib3>=1.26.14
(or if the bigger changes of 2.x break things: urllib3>=1.26.14, <2)

Add a testing harness

Before adding any new features, there needs to be a way to test the script without actually logging into Spotify + Pocket Casts and doing a transfer.

This needs to:

• Mock the relevant Spotify APIs
• Mock the relevant Pocket Casts API
• Verify that the resulting data in Pocket Casts is what's expected
• Verify the stdout/stderr
• Contain a minimal number of useful test cases

If there are several matches for the podcast name, show them in a list and allow users to select the correct one

Most of my podcasts matched correctly but some of them were incorrectly matched. Within the incorrect ones some of them:

• Were in Spotify but not in the Pocket casts. In those cases I would have wanted to skip the sync instead of trying to sync with incorrect podcast.
• Were in both Spotify and Pocket casts, but for some reason were incorrectly matched (maybe because they had non us characters in the name or something). In those cases I would have liked to select the correct one from the list.

Add more detailed instruction for creating a new app in Spotify developer account

For example what shoud be entered in the Redirect URI field.

Error in sync of a specific podcast

There was one podcast that caused the script to stop in a error. The podcast was found in both services, but was maybe incorrectly matched because of the quite common word in the name or something. Unsubscribing the show in Spotify let the script run completely.

Here is the error dump:

Processing Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
There are 396 episodes!
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/-/opt/spotify-to-pocketcasts-master/spotify_to_pocketcasts.py", line 109, in <module>
    main()
  File "/Users/-/opt/spotify-to-pocketcasts-master/spotify_to_pocketcasts.py", line 87, in main
    podcast.episodes = spotify.get_listened_episodes_for_show(spotify_client, podcast)
                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/-/opt/spotify-to-pocketcasts-master/spotify.py", line 69, in get_listened_episodes_for_show
    episode["name"],
    ~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not subscriptable

Same happened with the "Rise and Play Podcast".

Add instructions how to use the redirect url during the script excecution

It became as a bit of a surprise that I needed to copy the url from the browser to the terminal window during the script execution. It wasn't difficult, but instructions beforehand would have made the experience even smoother :)

Fix the environment variables in the README.md

Fix the environment variables in the instructions to match ones used in the code:

• POCKETCASTS_EMAIL => POCKETCASTS_USER

The linked Spotipy package's documentation uses SPOTIPY in the env variables and the code uses SPOTIFY so either code should be changed or instructions clarified. Also the word "CLIENT" is missing from the variable used for the secret in the code:

• SPOTIPY_CLIENT_ID => SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID
• SPOTIPY_CLIENT_SECRET => SPOTIFY_SECRET
• SPOTIPY_REDIRECT_URI => SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI

Include CLI options in to README.md

Add instructions how to use the CLI options instead of the environtment variables

Clearer error messaging for the missing parameters

At the beginning I had troubles to get the script running because I didn't understand first that the POCKETCASTS_USER was not set (I had set the POCKETCASTS_EMAIL per instructions), because the script kept running and the "No Pocket Casts username given! ..." error message got lost in the output flow. The script stopped later during the execution when there was error caused by the missing user id. It would be better to stop the script immediately when the missing user id is noticed.

Here is an example run:

/Users/-/opt/spotify-to-pocketcasts-master/python spotify_to_pocketcasts.py
No Pocket Casts username given! Please set POCKETCASTS_USER or use the --pocketcasts_user option
Logged In!
Got podcast subscriptions from Spotify.
Processing The Hacker Mind
There are 86 episodes!
There are 8 started episodes!
The Hacker Mind: Syncing 8 episodes from Spotify to Pocketcasts
{'Authorization': 'Bearer None', 'content-length': 27}
b'{"term": "The Hacker Mind"}'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/-/opt/spotify-to-pocketcasts-master/spotify_to_pocketcasts.py", line 109, in <module>
    main()
  File "/Users/-/opt/spotify-to-pocketcasts-master/spotify_to_pocketcasts.py", line 91, in main
    uuid = pocketcasts.search_podcasts_and_get_first_uuid(http, token, podcast.title)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/-/opt/spotify-to-pocketcasts-master/pocketcasts.py", line 57, in search_podcasts_and_get_first_uuid
    search_result = search_podcasts(http, token, term)
                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/-/opt/spotify-to-pocketcasts-master/pocketcasts.py", line 53, in search_podcasts
    return json.loads(response.data)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/-/opt/anaconda3/anaconda3/lib/python3.11/json/__init__.py", line 346, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/-/opt/anaconda3/anaconda3/lib/python3.11/json/decoder.py", line 337, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/-/opt/anaconda3/anaconda3/lib/python3.11/json/decoder.py", line 355, in raw_decode
    raise JSONDecodeError("Expecting value", s, err.value) from None
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

It would be better to end the script after the second row:

/Users/-/opt/spotify-to-pocketcasts-master/python spotify_to_pocketcasts.py
No Pocket Casts username given! Please set POCKETCASTS_USER or use the --pocketcasts_user option