ytdl-org/youtube-dl · error · ExtractorError

The page doesn't contain any tracks

Error message

The page doesn't contain any tracks

What it means

Raised by BandcampAlbumIE._real_extract when the embedded 'tralbum' JSON blob (read from the page's data attribute) has no 'trackinfo' key or an empty/null trackinfo list. The extractor treats a bandcamp album or discography page as a playlist of tracks; if the embedded metadata carries no track entries there is nothing to return, so it fails with this ExtractorError instead of returning an empty playlist.

Source

Thrown at youtube_dl/extractor/bandcamp.py:303

            'description': 'md5:b3cf845ee41b2b1141dc7bde9237255f',
        },
        'playlist_count': 2,
    }]

    @classmethod
    def suitable(cls, url):
        return (False
                if BandcampWeeklyIE.suitable(url) or BandcampIE.suitable(url)
                else super(BandcampAlbumIE, cls).suitable(url))

    def _real_extract(self, url):
        uploader_id, album_id = re.match(self._VALID_URL, url).groups()
        playlist_id = album_id or uploader_id
        webpage = self._download_webpage(url, playlist_id)
        tralbum = self._extract_data_attr(webpage, playlist_id)
        track_info = tralbum.get('trackinfo')
        if not track_info:
            raise ExtractorError('The page doesn\'t contain any tracks')
        # Only tracks with duration info have songs
        entries = [
            self.url_result(
                urljoin(url, t['title_link']), BandcampIE.ie_key(),
                str_or_none(t.get('track_id') or t.get('id')), t.get('title'))
            for t in track_info
            if t.get('duration')]

        current = tralbum.get('current') or {}

        return {
            '_type': 'playlist',
            'uploader_id': uploader_id,
            'id': playlist_id,
            'title': current.get('title'),
            'description': current.get('about'),
            'entries': entries,
        }

View on GitHub (pinned to 956b8c5855)

Solutions

  1. Confirm the URL points to a real album (contains '/album/') rather than an artist or discography root page.
  2. View page source and check the data-tralbum (or equivalent) attribute actually contains a populated trackinfo array for that URL.
  3. If trackinfo exists but all entries lack 'duration', note the extractor filters those out; a fully filtered list still passes this check, so verify at least one track has duration in the raw JSON.
  4. If the attribute name/schema changed, update _extract_data_attr usage in bandcamp.py:303 to the new embed location.

Example fix

// before
tralbum = self._extract_data_attr(webpage, playlist_id)
track_info = tralbum.get('trackinfo')
if not track_info:
    raise ExtractorError('The page doesn\'t contain any tracks')

// after: distinguish 'no data at all' from 'data present but empty', which aids debugging
tralbum = self._extract_data_attr(webpage, playlist_id)
track_info = tralbum.get('trackinfo')
if not track_info:
    raise ExtractorError('The page doesn\'t contain any tracks' if tralbum else 'Unable to extract album data from page', expected=True)
Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

import json, re, requests

def bandcamp_page_has_tracks(url):
    html = requests.get(url).text
    m = re.search(r'data-tralbum="([^"]+)"', html)
    if not m:
        return False
    tralbum = json.loads(m.group(1).replace('"', '"'))
    return bool(tralbum.get('trackinfo'))

Type guard

def has_playable_tracks(tralbum):
    return (
        isinstance(tralbum, dict)
        and isinstance(tralbum.get('trackinfo'), list)
        and any(t.get('duration') for t in tralbum['trackinfo'])
    )

Try / catch

try:
    ydl.extract_info(bc_url)
except ExtractorError as e:
    if "doesn't contain any tracks" in str(e):
        # artist/merch page or layout change; not transient - do not retry
        log.skip(bc_url)
    else:
        raise

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Extracting a Bandcamp URL whose _VALID_URL matched (album_id or uploader_id) but whose page's data-tralbum attribute contains trackinfo that is missing, null, or [] — e.g. an artist/discography landing page with no playable album embedded, a track-only page that leaked through suitable(), or a page layout change that moved the tralbum JSON so _extract_data_attr pulls an empty object.

Common situations: Passing a bandcamp artist homepage instead of a specific album URL; Bandcamp A/B testing or redesign moving the embedded tralbum payload; pages region-locked or behind an age/country interstitial that lacks trackinfo; a band whose album has no streaming tracks (merch-only page).

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of ytdl-org/youtube-dl@956b8c5855 (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e80a470c86917080. Report an issue: GitHub.