Fix `compile_list()` to work again after changes to `$counts` in object returned by `get_download()`

The recent change to the returned object of `get_download()` broke `compile_list()`. This pull request fixes `compile_list()` to work with the new returned object. In addition it removes the two **plyr** calls to use just as simple calls to `lapply()` and `sapply()`, plus a few other minor fixes and one robustification.