Apple Music search with Alfred

[gingerbeardman]

14 hours ago, Adrian00 said:

Thank you - works perfectly!

 

A donation would be appreciated! Creating these new files took 30 minutes of my life.

[McLawrence]

Hey @gingerbeardman. The workflow is really great!

 

However, I have one problem: 

 

When I am searching for song/artists/albums the results in Alfred work great. If, however, I hit the first option "Search Apple Music for songs matching <some name>", Apple Music opens and displays a spinning wheel loading animation in the middle of the screen which never ends.

 

Thanks,

McLawrence

[gingerbeardman]

Interesting! I don't have time to fix - paid work takes precedence at the moment - but it should be simple enough to track down the correct URL for that type of search.

Edited November 11, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[McLawrence]

I was not able to find that URL easily, though I have no expertise in that. If I fix it in the future, I will post the updated URL here. 

 

Removing the "app=music" shows iTunes Store results in Apple Music.

"itms://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/search?app=music&term=%s"

Maybe the Apple Music API can help?

 

 

[gingerbeardman]

Are you running Catalina by any chance?

[McLawrence]

Yes, that is exactly what is the problem, probably, since there is no iTunes anymore. 

[gingerbeardman]

Most likely.

 

Sadly, I will not be able to reproduce as I have no intention of moving to Catalina.

 

Also, it's possible to install iTunes etc on Catalina: 

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/28/free-retroactive-tool-brings-aperture-itunes-back-to-life-in-macos-catalina

Edited November 11, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[McLawrence]

Thanks anyway! 

I'll probably stay with the new replacements of iTunes. Maybe I'll be able to fix the bug, when I have a bit more time on the weekend.

[gingerbeardman]

You may get a hint looking inside the new Music.app for the URL schemes in its Info.plist

[tomliv]

On 8/30/2019 at 8:15 AM, gingerbeardman said:

 

Sure thing! I've added Artist search to both iTunes Music Store and Apple Music workflows.

 

Downloads: https://www.gingerbeardman.com/alfred/

 

If you find this useful, please leave a donation via the button on my site.

 

Support open-source software ❤️

 

cheers,

matt

 

I'm kinda new to Alfred. How do I use this Apple Music workflow?

[gingerbeardman]

1. have Alfred with Powerpack
2. install Workflow
3. look at commands listed in Workflow (artist, album, song, etc)
4. summon Alfred
5. type command from earlier (artist, album, song, etc)

 

Note, this is an old workflow so requires one of the following folders to be present to work.

• ~/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-3/Workflow Data
• ~/Library/Application Support/Alfred 3/Workflow Data
   

Edited February 7, 2020 by gingerbeardman

[morgdaddy]

This is a great idea. For what it's worth, I'd definitely donate if you ever upgrade this to work with Catalina (totally get your aversion to it, but it came installed on my new machine so I went with it).

 

[godbout]

seems only artist is working in the latest edition of that workflow? song and album return errors.

[Macchio]

Stumbled over this post and ran into the same issues that other users have mentioned when running macOS Catalina 10.15.

 

After running the debug I saw a duplicate error showing a missing directory, so as an experiment, I ran the following in Terminal:

 

mkdir ~/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-3/ && mkdir ~/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-3/Workflow\ Data/

This created the directory where the python script returns album thumbnails from the Album & Song search commands.

 

Additionally since Catalina replaces iTunes.app with Music.app, I went through the three python scripts and archived some of the URL scheme that Music doesn't seem to need. I bumped up the workflow version to 2.1 for tracking purposes.

 

Search Apple Music.alfredworkflow [Google Drive]

 

Thanks to all the creators who have put this together!

 

Pro-Tip: Update Line 19/20 in the artist, album, and song python scripts to your country code to improve search results with images.

[gingerbeardman]

On 4/9/2020 at 10:36 PM, morgdaddy said:

This is a great idea. For what it's worth, I'd definitely donate if you ever upgrade this to work with Catalina (totally get your aversion to it, but it came installed on my new machine so I went with it).

"I'll donate if you put yourself through a world of pain" that's not how this donation thing works. It should be "here's some money to try to persuade you to solve my problem". IMHO

 

On 4/19/2020 at 8:22 AM, godbout said:

seems only artist is working in the latest edition of that workflow? song and album return errors.

I use album search every day, works for me. See my note about missing directories, and the quote below.

 

On 4/21/2020 at 5:15 PM, Macchio said:

Stumbled over this post and ran into the same issues that other users have mentioned when running macOS Catalina 10.15.

 

After running the debug I saw a duplicate error showing a missing directory, so as an experiment, I ran the following in Terminal:

As I mentioned in my previous post!

[gingerbeardman]

Album search has stopped working for me, not sure why and sadly don't have time to investigate.

 

 

Edited March 17, 2021 by gingerbeardman

[gingerbeardman]

Ah, I see @Macchio has already fixed this issue by removing some params from the query.

 

My hosted copy also updated to v2.1

 

https://www.gingerbeardman.com/alfred/

 

Cheers!

Edited March 17, 2021 by gingerbeardman

[gandalfsaxe]

On 4/21/2020 at 6:15 PM, Macchio said:

Stumbled over this post and ran into the same issues that other users have mentioned when running macOS Catalina 10.15.

 

After running the debug I saw a duplicate error showing a missing directory, so as an experiment, I ran the following in Terminal:

 

mkdir ~/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-3/ && mkdir ~/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-3/Workflow\ Data/

This created the directory where the python script returns album thumbnails from the Album & Song search commands.

 

Additionally since Catalina replaces iTunes.app with Music.app, I went through the three python scripts and archived some of the URL scheme that Music doesn't seem to need. I bumped up the workflow version to 2.1 for tracking purposes.

 

Search Apple Music.alfredworkflow [Google Drive]

 

Thanks to all the creators who have put this together!

 

Pro-Tip: Update Line 19/20 in the artist, album, and song python scripts to your country code to improve search results with images.

 

Artist work for me, album and song doesn't 🤔 Any suggestions?

 

 

[gingerbeardman]

There was a problem with song, please re-download my 2.1 to fix that.

 

All now work for me.

 

 

[gandalfsaxe]

1 minute ago, gingerbeardman said:

There was a problem with song, please re-download my 2.1 to fix that.

 

All now work for me.

 

 

 

I downloaded the workflow from link https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XmXl5nq9Qn8Lvo7Zv1ESyCmaRDhyh-2u/view but I'm still seeing the same behavior. I just re-downloaded to make sure, no dice. When did you fix it? Latest change in the workflow files were April 21st 2020.

[gingerbeardman]

That's not my file, that's a modification by somebody else.

 

My original files are here: https://www.gingerbeardman.com/alfred/

 

I just fixed it before my last message.

 

Also, make sure you search for reasonable terms:

• song taylor, generates an error somewhere at Apple for whatever reason (invalid resulting data?)
• song shake it off, returns good results
• song taylor shake, also good

Edited March 17, 2021 by gingerbeardman

[gandalfsaxe]

9 minutes ago, gingerbeardman said:

That's not my file, that's a modification by somebody else.

 

My original files are here: https://www.gingerbeardman.com/alfred/

 

I just fixed it before my last message.

 

Also, make sure you search for reasonable terms:

• song taylor, generates an error somewhere at Apple for whatever reason (probably too many results?)
• song shake it off, returns good results
• song taylor shake, also good

 

Ah my bad.. unfortunately still only artist work for me. Downloaded from https://www.gingerbeardman.com/alfred/Search Apple Music.alfredworkflow

 

[gingerbeardman]

How long are you waiting?

 

Queries take 5 to 15 seconds for me.

 

I've just re-uploaded the version I have here, just in case.

 

If it's not working after re-downloading one more time, then we'll have to debug:

1. view the workflow in Alfred
2. click the bug icon
3. pop up alfred bar and do a query, eg. song hyperballad 
4. copy the debug output from main Alfred window to a pastebin/gist
5. paste a link to it here

I see this output: https://pastebin.com/raw/yAzL8WRb

 

 

Edited March 18, 2021 by gingerbeardman

[gingerbeardman]

I think the ones failing for you are the ones with thumbnail images.

 

So, please make sure you have the required folders:

• ~/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-3/
• ~/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-3/Workflow Data/

See earlier messages for more about this.

 

It's always good to read the thread

[gandalfsaxe]

7 minutes ago, gingerbeardman said:

How long are you waiting?

 

Queries take 5 to 15 seconds for me.

 

I've just re-uploaded the version I have here, just in case.

 

If it's not working after re-downloading one more time, then we'll have to debug:

1. view the workflow in Alfred
2. click the bug icon
3. pop up alfred bar and do a query, eg. song hyperballad 
4. copy the debug output from main Alfred window to a pastebin/gist
5. paste a link to it here

I see this output: https://pastebin.com/raw/yAzL8WRb

 

 

I pressed "Paste" on pastebin, but then the text just vanished and I couldn't see any link. I'm not logged in. So you'll get it here.

 

This is the output. Have just replaced my real username with [USERNAME]:

 

```

[01:06:16.161] Logging Started...

[01:06:26.188] Search Apple Music[Script Filter] Queuing argument 'hyperballad'

[01:06:28.355] Search Apple Music[Script Filter] Script with argv '(null)' finished

[01:06:28.356] ERROR: Search Apple Music[Script Filter] Code 1: Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "song.py", line 48, in <module>

    filepath = os.path.join(alfred.work(True), str(e['trackId'])+".png")

  File "/Users/[USER]/Documents/-sync/Alfred/Alfred.alfredpreferences/workflows/user.workflow.B27FA796-BE33-4980-B971-E4C970639005/alfred.py", line 77, in work

    return _create(os.path.join(os.path.expanduser(path), bundleid))

  File "/Users/[USER]/Documents/-sync/Alfred/Alfred.alfredpreferences/workflows/user.workflow.B27FA796-BE33-4980-B971-E4C970639005/alfred.py", line 90, in _create

    os.mkdir(path)

OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/Users/[USER]/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-3/Workflow Data/com.gingerbeardman.alfredv3.applemusic'

```