HTML version: http://www.panix.com/~ruari/dnots.html
Downloading mp3 files from NPR's online stream of Danger Mouse And
Sparklehorse's 'Dark Night Of The Soul'.
If you found this page you probably already know that due to a dispute
between Danger Mouse and EMI it would seem likely that 'Dark Night Of
The Soul' will never be officially released. :-(
However as you are also no doubt aware NPR currently have a stream of
the entire album. This obviously got many people thinking (me
included), if you could capture the stream you could download the album.
Before I start I should preface by saying, yes this album has already
shown up on various file sharing networks. However, it is not clear
what the quality of that recording is. The tagging is certainly way off.
Judging by last.fm scrobbles the most common tagging errors are on
"Revenge" which is all of the Flaming Lips, not just Wayne Coyne (see
the '' tag on [NRP's XML info file]), "Star Eyes (I Can't Catch
It)" should be credited as featuring David Lynch, the same for the last
(title) song "Dark Night of the Soul", "Daddy's Gone" features Mark
Linkous and Nina Persson, "The Man Who Played God" features Suzanne
Vega, and the twelfth song is "Grim Augury" not 'Grain' (which makes no
sense). Also the band name is "Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse", see:
http://www.dnots.com/. Finally, I would write out the word 'featuring'
rather than 'feat.', which looks like crap. Another advantage of
downloading via NPR is that depending on your own country's laws it
'MAY' (note I said 'may' .... in full caps no less) actually be legal
to download a copy from the NPR stream (ask a local lawyer if you are
not sure!).
As you know the NPR story can be found here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104129585
On that page are a number of JavaScript links to allow adding specific
songs to your play list. Within each of those JavaScripts links are
two nine digit numbers which are the keys to accessing the raw mp3
files. If you take these numbers and use them to construct new URLs (of
the format below), you will be able directed to XML files that give you
basic mp3 download URL information.
Here is sample to show how the URLs are constructed:
http://www.npr.org/templates/xanadu/xplayer.php?id=[First Number]&t=1&m=[Second Number]
Within the XML info files are 'MediaURL' tags. These contain the basis
for a download URL. The bit that is missing is the domain name and
initial directory. However I can tell you that this is
"http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3". Combining the domain name and
initial directory with the Media URL, and then removing the unneeded
section after .mp3, will allow you to construct the final download URLs.
Here is an example using the first song "Revenge":
Original JavaScript URL:
javascript:NPR.Player.openPlayer(104129585, 104104364, null, NPR.Player.Action.PLAY_NOW, NPR.Player.Type.STORY, '0')
Constructed XML Info URL:
http://www.npr.org/templates/xanadu/xplayer.php?id=104129585&t=1&m=104104364
Media URL from XML Info:
/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_01.mp3?primaryTopic=1108&assignedTopics=1108,1104&aggIds=100920965,98679384,10001&orgId=1
Having already run through this process for all of the songs I can tell
you that the rest of the songs just increment the number of the mp3,
with one exception: The number goes out of sync at "Star Eyes" (jumping
to 13) and then carries on counting as it was.
Here is the full list of songs for the Album "Dark Night of the Soul"
by "Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse" (2009):
Revenge (Featuring The Flaming Lips):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_01.mp3
MD5 = 1d1a41b4830a438405dbd85731ed25d3
Just War (Featuring Gruff Rhys):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_02.mp3
MD5 = 5c99aef8bfdd886f144e14bbb4ca54ce
Jaykub (Featuring Jason Lytle):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_03.mp3
MD5 = 59264d485d8a136867087f418060aeb9
Little Girl (Featuring Julian Casablancas):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_04.mp3
MD5 = 28918d3a87c163a7e035189c1595bca6
Angel's Harp (Featuring Black Francis):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_05.mp3
MD5 = 6e8c05a1e89a7587653a76ce058beb6a
Pain (Featuring Iggy Pop):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_06.mp3
MD5 = 42e464fd0125556c5e05048444f34cab
Star Eyes (I Can't Catch It) (Featuring David Lynch):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_13.mp3
MD5 = a8f58dab6de5dd21259562149b7f7a54
Everytime I'm With You (Featuring Jason Lytle):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_07.mp3
MD5 = bcea5fc87d799554c2629122b1419e63
Insane Lullaby (Featuring James Mercer):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_08.mp3
MD5 = 521f38ac8da6b52529f03fed1097b3e9
Daddy's Gone (Featuring Mark Linkous and Nina Persson):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_09.mp3
MD5 = 9192f811c6ac9146c017aa091ca6971e
The Man Who Played God (Featuring Suzanne Vega):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_10.mp3
MD5 = 4ae7ea005952aba68424c957c06d577d
Grim Augury (Featuring Vic Chesnutt):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_11.mp3
MD5 = 71c59557314b39161fff037d3f5fc059
Dark Night Of The Soul (Featuring David Lynch):
http://download.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/asc/2009/05/20090514_asc_12.mp3
MD5 = 0ccb1bb36a9247e905df95d08993a463
After downloading the files you will need to tag them. You can use the
information above.
Note: I worked this out using a combination of my browser (Opera) and
Paros Proxy. However after doing so and running a few searches on
google I later discovered http://suprbay.org/showthread.php?t=18169
and used that to clear up some of my own text. UPDATE: A search for
anon.npr-mp3 on google demonstates that many people have worked out this
exploit of the NPR server. Someone even wrote a User JavaScript:
http://edpad.com/npr-mp3/nprmp3.user.js (This doesn't work at the moment,
probably because of minor changes to the NPR site)