Content revision ea31a3343577b30cee4337cf2fef2b0864a5741341f27598e9108766c486fb2d

## Music streaming hacks

How I Started Building with Code
Source ID early:music-streaming-hacks
Original https://www.henryw.me/#/early#music-streaming-hacks

In my first year of high school, I spent several months developing a music downloader for Chinese streaming services. Users could paste a song-page link into one interface to download music across several services.

The technical work involved web scraping and reverse engineering how the services exposed media URLs. The interface accepted song-page links from QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music, KuGou, and KuWo. Users could choose the audio quality and download multiple songs from an artist’s catalogue. I also built an account system with different levels of access, including restricted lossless downloads.

The service ran for about six months and reached 413 registered users. It could also retrieve paid tracks without authorisation, an implication I had not understood when I began. I closed it once I recognised the problem.

These screenshots show the Simplified Chinese interface used by the original audience.