7 ms·

I’m confused by their obsession with youtube-dl. I don’t really know anyone that pirates music, seems like streaming has really solved that with ad-supported li

I’m confused by their obsession with youtube-dl. I don’t really know anyone that pirates music, seems like streaming has really solved that with ad-supported listening. The common cases for using youtube-dl, as I understand, is for archival (mostly non-music), watching videos content out of the browser (also mostly non-music), and derivative works purposes.

endofreach 5y ago
Don‘t forget that many countries don‘t have spotify or any other streaming service. These are countries with much lower GDPs, where buying a song for .99 is not an option. Music is culture and important. Yes, it is important to be paid for your music, but it is more important for music to be heard. Piracy should live. Fuck the labels, fuck the whole music industry creating plastic „art“ that has no meaning whatsoever. Let‘s make art, not money.
- edanm 5y ago
  > Music is culture and important. Yes, it is important to be paid for your music, but it is more important for music to be heard. If artists aren't paid for making art, much less art is created. So if music is important to you, you can't just ignore the question of how to pay for it. It's nice to say "let's make art, not money", great soundbite, but artists are people just like everyone else, who deserve to be compensated for their work. And who can't live without having money to buy food.
  - endofreach 5y ago
    I have worked in the music industry for a short time. Most people who claim they are artists, are not. Let‘s talk about this differently. The impact of real art is way more important than a few plastic pseudo-art creating „i am special“ people not making money to live a life as an „artist“ / influencer on instagram… Buuut: anyway.
grishka 5y ago
> I don’t really know anyone that pirates music I do. And I pirate it myself. Though many people around me did get Spotify when it launched here recently.
shaan7 5y ago
It also depends on your social circle, I know some young people who do use `youtube-dl --extract-audio` for downloading some songs from YT. My choice is usually to just reboot to Windows, fire up iTunes, buy the songs I want and listen to them DRM free. The only Apple product that I use xD
lfmunoz4 5y ago
matheusmoreira 5y ago
It's about control. As a user agent, youtube-dl acts in our behalf in order to do what we want and protect our interests. That's why they hate it. It's the antithesis of everything they want: something that acts on their behalf, does what they want and protects their interests. If something gives us any power at all, they'll sue it into oblivion.
- nomel 5y ago
  > in order to do what we want and protect our interests Letting everyone do things in their own self interest, unchecked, is rarely found in stable societies. For example, one persons interest (getting music for free) may not align with another's (the starving artist's).
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Then stop making music for free. Find a way to get paid before you put the work in. Because after it's been made and published, it's already over. Computers exist and are networked. Data is trivially and infinitely copyable. The clock will not be rewound back to the dark ages where data was a finite product that people could buy and sell. No matter how much the music industry rages and sues, it won't change the fact that YouTube is just sending me data via HTTP and there's absolutely nothing they can do if I decide to redirect that data to my hard disk instead. It's up to them to adapt to their new reality. If they can't, that's their problem.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      I mean eventually it’s gonna be YouTube only sends a DRM video stream and then the problem is done. Okay sure pirates will still exist but casual piracy got harder which is the point. DRM doesn’t try to put the genie back in the bottle, it only makes the path of least resistance going through legal channels.
      - copperx 5y ago
        I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened yet. There must be some technical reason for that. Is Widevine problematic?
davidgerard 5y ago
Streaming has largely defeated torrents, but anti-piracy people in the record companies want to preserve their jobs. So they've invented a bogeyman of massive stream-ripping going on amongst young people.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I just assume they are about 5+ years behind most of the population because in this kind of media stuff I tend to be about 4 years behind the population and a little over a year ago I decided ah, this using youtube-dl to download music etc. and rip it with ffmpeg and save it to my iphone is sort of a hassle I guess I will get that damn spotify membership like everyone else. I mean obviously I am not the last person to make this decision, but I have a feeling that the population yet to do so are vanishingly small.
- Shared404 5y ago
  > using youtube-dl to download music etc. and rip it with ffmpeg For those who don't know, youtube-dl can do this oob if ffmpeg is installed: youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format <best|mp3|ogg|*> <url>
  - emmfr 5y ago
    Some websites even make audio streams available separately. You can learn about those with the -F flag, and then select an audio stream with the -f flag. E.g. on youtube, you can use [youtube-dl | yt-dlp] -f 140 <url> to download 128k mpeg4 audio.
- nine_k 5y ago
  You may be surprised that Spotify may have rather large holes in its coverage, and these holes are also dynamic: things recently available may become unavailable without notice.
  - Mezzie 5y ago
    I like to work to classic video game soundtracks. Streaming services are garbage for those, but YT is pretty good. You have to play whack a mole with copyright strikes, but somebody will upload most things. It's also the best way to listen to actual game music (the music designed to help you focus) as opposed to orchestral remasters, remixes, homages, etc. RIP my most recent favorite Zelda background music vid.
  - 5y ago
chaos_a 5y ago
youtube-dl is what makes most youtube music ripping sites function. Which are widely used by people who aren't paying for music streaming subscriptions. ex: https://github.com/Rudloff/alltube https://github.com/Rudloff/alltube
- lkxijlewlf 5y ago
  It's not generally that great a quality right? Why even bother when you there are so many different ways to get music?
  - yobert 5y ago
    It's as good of quality as listening directly on YouTube, which is fine enough for most people.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    >It's not generally that great a quality right? You just described youtube in general. As the old saying goes, "content is king". Look at VHS (if you're old enough to remember). As bad of a quality as it was, everyone used it. Pros would complain about how bad it looked, but the mass populace was just fine with it. Youtube is the same way. In the beginning, the quality was soooo bad, but users didn't care because it gave them endless content.
    - justsomehnguy 5y ago
      > Look at VHS Pfft, people bought 5-in-1 DVDs. People bought 10-in-1 DVDs. Average Joe doesn't care about "quality", he wants the content.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        5 movies encoded to fit on a DVD-9 will still look much better than the typical VHS. They will also sound much better. Comparing DVD to VHS will always have DVD winning, unless the content was encoded from VHS.
    - 5y ago
bushbaba 5y ago
I believe that to maintain copyright control you need to enforce it. By not enforcing it they are effectively granting permission to the behavior.
- dotnet00 5y ago
  No, that's a trademark thing. Copyrights do not need to be consistently enforced to maintain.
jasode 5y ago
>The common cases for using youtube-dl, as I understand, is for archival (mostly non-music), watching videos content Even though videos are the main content, Youtube is also the #1 website in the world for streaming music: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-did-youtube-become-the-most-popular-music-streaming-site-by-sounding-like-the-world-itself/2019/07/30/f7428388-afdd-11e9-8e77-03b30bc29f64_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-did-youtu... https://musically.com/2021/03/22/surprise-youtube-is-the-most-popular-music-streaming-service/ https://musically.com/2021/03/22/surprise-youtube-is-the-mos...
- habeebtc 5y ago
  I was also surprised at this. Despite all the copyright claim controls, I was under the impression that YT was still the biggest source unauthorized music distribution. This seems to me to be akin to bullying a mouse because bullying the elephant in the room isn't going to pan out.
- abakker 5y ago
  And, even as a YouTube red subscriber, I like YouTube DL because it lets me create local Copies of music from great concerts. Many artists release a lot more great live stuff than there are albums for.
  - helloworld11 5y ago
    And if you don't mind my asking, what's the most practical/useful way to download videos from YT without using spammy 3d party websites?
    - raptorfactor 5y ago
      Uhh, how about youtube-dl?
      - Larrikin 5y ago
        Youtube-dlc works much better currently
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
They do things like this and then turn around and say "X will destroy the recording industry" and are surprised when voters start wondering why it's taking so long and asking if there are any legislative changes or tax incentives that could be used to assist X in its meritorious endeavor.
- jrockway 5y ago
  If X will destroy the recording industry, please give me lots more of X!
- redwall_hp 5y ago
  "Home taping is killing record industry profits! We left this side blank so you can help." - The front of a Dead Kennedy's tape released in the 80s. The recording industry's been beating the same drum since before I was born. I don't care about the longevity of the record industry. Music is alive and well, with liberal distribution on the Internet making discovery and independent distribution so much easier. There's more music than ever, and much of it goes straight to YouTube (or Nico Nico).
dheera 5y ago
Can it just be hosted on some blockchain so that there is nobody to sue except the likes of Satoshi?
- xbar 5y ago
  Schneir talked about putting contraband on the blockchain. How many copies of youtube-dl and DeCSS and PlayStation 5 private keys and such need to get put onto the blockchain before the Music Industry tries to sue it out of existence?
  - dheera 5y ago
    I mean, who are they going to serve papers to? All of Nigeria, India, China, and El Salvador? It's not exactly possible to sue it out of existence. Also, there's enough money in blockchain to buy out the music industry.
TeeMassive 5y ago
Copyright ceased to be a way to reward creators and has now been used to create private monopolies on huge chunk of popular culture.
- pydry 5y ago
  I think that was always the point. Rewarding creators was the pretext for this system, not the reason.
  - redwall_hp 5y ago
    Especially since the recording industry has never been a friend to artists. They used to pay musicians a one off fee to come down to the studio and make some recordings, and didn't pay royalties, in the old days. Now they pay pennies on the dollar. Meanwhile, independent music is thriving thanks to the Internet. Let it burn.
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  I'll just mention, because it hasn't been mentioned before: this is obviously wrong... We all know that it's wrong, but saying it has some symbolic meaning, right? Because to find a counterexample you would only need a single artist who has the opportunity to spend more of their time working creatively (rather than their previous civilian job) because they get a royalty cheque every now and then. I personally know four of five such people.
  - nmilo 5y ago
    Artists make most of their money from touring and merchandise. It's the labels that benefit off of their copyright-given monopoly.
taneq 5y ago
> I don’t really know anyone that pirates music, seems like streaming has really solved that with ad-supported listening. Someone's told them that "X million songs per year" are downloaded via youtube-dl. They get $Y in royalties per thousand views, and they have some number Z which is the average number of times an individual will listen to a song. There's been a boardroom meeting where these numbers have been presented as "X million songs per year are being pirated, costing us X * $Y * Z / 1000 per year, THIS must STOP!"
nitwit005 5y ago
If you hire some people to take down tools to bypass copyright, they'll go try to do that, whether it's really a good idea or not. Honestly, they're probably targeting it because it's easy to find with the Google searches they're trying.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
biztos 5y ago
> The common cases for using youtube-dl It works very well with many non-YouTube sites, especially ones hosting “adult” videos. I assume porn is the most common case, but archiving Stanford lectures might well be second.
emilsedgh 5y ago
Music piracy isa solved issue. But those people who's job was to fight music piracy need to justify their salaries, departments and budgets.
LoveMortuus 5y ago
I'm running what basically a prepaid SIM, meaning I don't use mobile data. Thus I do use yt-dlp/youtube-dl to download music so that I can listen to it offline. I'm actually quite proud by the system I've set up. I've got a playlist called music into which I add music. ^^ On my mobile phone I've got Termux with an add-on that allows you to add widgets that run custom code. I've written a simple script ( yt-dlp -P ~/storage/shared/Music -i -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" --no-restrict-filenames --download-archive ~/music_archive.txt -x --audio-quality 0 <link to the playlist> ). Which is ran whenever I press on the widget. I could use crontab, but since I don't add music that often, I prefer to do it manually. ( The -o is for file name, normally the file would have the same name as the source, but for unknown reason so of my files' names for restricted to ~40 chars, doing it the way you see above solves the issue). Before this system I used to have a similar script on my PC and crontab running it. The script downloaded music into Google Drive and on the mobile phone I had a program that would sync that folder with music to the phones music folder. But the current system is far superior, for one it doesn't fill up my Google Drive and secondly it doesn't require multiple devices to work. Being able to use a terminal on my phone makes me really happy! ^^
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  What's the add-on? So when you press the widget it runs yt-dlp on your phone, or is it sending a command to a remote PC?
  - LoveMortuus 5y ago
    The add-on is called Widget, your can find it by googling Termux Widget. When I press on the widget it runs yt-dlp on my phone. There are no other devices involved in the process, just my phone.
    - brokenmachine 5y ago
      Oh cool, I didn't realize yt-dlp would run on Android.

endofreach 5y ago

Don‘t forget that many countries don‘t have spotify or any other streaming service. These are countries with much lower GDPs, where buying a song for .99 is not an option. Music is culture and important. Yes, it is important to be paid for your music, but it is more important for music to be heard. Piracy should live. Fuck the labels, fuck the whole music industry creating plastic „art“ that has no meaning whatsoever. Let‘s make art, not money.

edanm 5y ago
> Music is culture and important. Yes, it is important to be paid for your music, but it is more important for music to be heard. If artists aren't paid for making art, much less art is created. So if music is important to you, you can't just ignore the question of how to pay for it. It's nice to say "let's make art, not money", great soundbite, but artists are people just like everyone else, who deserve to be compensated for their work. And who can't live without having money to buy food.
- endofreach 5y ago
  I have worked in the music industry for a short time. Most people who claim they are artists, are not. Let‘s talk about this differently. The impact of real art is way more important than a few plastic pseudo-art creating „i am special“ people not making money to live a life as an „artist“ / influencer on instagram… Buuut: anyway.

grishka 5y ago

> I don’t really know anyone that pirates music I do. And I pirate it myself. Though many people around me did get Spotify when it launched here recently.

shaan7 5y ago

It also depends on your social circle, I know some young people who do use `youtube-dl --extract-audio` for downloading some songs from YT. My choice is usually to just reboot to Windows, fire up iTunes, buy the songs I want and listen to them DRM free. The only Apple product that I use xD

lfmunoz4 5y ago

matheusmoreira 5y ago

It's about control. As a user agent, youtube-dl acts in our behalf in order to do what we want and protect our interests. That's why they hate it. It's the antithesis of everything they want: something that acts on their behalf, does what they want and protects their interests. If something gives us any power at all, they'll sue it into oblivion.

nomel 5y ago
> in order to do what we want and protect our interests Letting everyone do things in their own self interest, unchecked, is rarely found in stable societies. For example, one persons interest (getting music for free) may not align with another's (the starving artist's).
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Then stop making music for free. Find a way to get paid before you put the work in. Because after it's been made and published, it's already over. Computers exist and are networked. Data is trivially and infinitely copyable. The clock will not be rewound back to the dark ages where data was a finite product that people could buy and sell. No matter how much the music industry rages and sues, it won't change the fact that YouTube is just sending me data via HTTP and there's absolutely nothing they can do if I decide to redirect that data to my hard disk instead. It's up to them to adapt to their new reality. If they can't, that's their problem.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    I mean eventually it’s gonna be YouTube only sends a DRM video stream and then the problem is done. Okay sure pirates will still exist but casual piracy got harder which is the point. DRM doesn’t try to put the genie back in the bottle, it only makes the path of least resistance going through legal channels.
    - copperx 5y ago
      I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened yet. There must be some technical reason for that. Is Widevine problematic?

davidgerard 5y ago

Streaming has largely defeated torrents, but anti-piracy people in the record companies want to preserve their jobs. So they've invented a bogeyman of massive stream-ripping going on amongst young people.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

I just assume they are about 5+ years behind most of the population because in this kind of media stuff I tend to be about 4 years behind the population and a little over a year ago I decided ah, this using youtube-dl to download music etc. and rip it with ffmpeg and save it to my iphone is sort of a hassle I guess I will get that damn spotify membership like everyone else. I mean obviously I am not the last person to make this decision, but I have a feeling that the population yet to do so are vanishingly small.

Shared404 5y ago
> using youtube-dl to download music etc. and rip it with ffmpeg For those who don't know, youtube-dl can do this oob if ffmpeg is installed: youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format <best|mp3|ogg|*> <url>
- emmfr 5y ago
  Some websites even make audio streams available separately. You can learn about those with the -F flag, and then select an audio stream with the -f flag. E.g. on youtube, you can use [youtube-dl | yt-dlp] -f 140 <url> to download 128k mpeg4 audio.
nine_k 5y ago
You may be surprised that Spotify may have rather large holes in its coverage, and these holes are also dynamic: things recently available may become unavailable without notice.
- Mezzie 5y ago
  I like to work to classic video game soundtracks. Streaming services are garbage for those, but YT is pretty good. You have to play whack a mole with copyright strikes, but somebody will upload most things. It's also the best way to listen to actual game music (the music designed to help you focus) as opposed to orchestral remasters, remixes, homages, etc. RIP my most recent favorite Zelda background music vid.
- 5y ago

chaos_a 5y ago

youtube-dl is what makes most youtube music ripping sites function. Which are widely used by people who aren't paying for music streaming subscriptions. ex: https://github.com/Rudloff/alltube https://github.com/Rudloff/alltube

lkxijlewlf 5y ago
It's not generally that great a quality right? Why even bother when you there are so many different ways to get music?
- yobert 5y ago
  It's as good of quality as listening directly on YouTube, which is fine enough for most people.
- dylan604 5y ago
  >It's not generally that great a quality right? You just described youtube in general. As the old saying goes, "content is king". Look at VHS (if you're old enough to remember). As bad of a quality as it was, everyone used it. Pros would complain about how bad it looked, but the mass populace was just fine with it. Youtube is the same way. In the beginning, the quality was soooo bad, but users didn't care because it gave them endless content.
  - justsomehnguy 5y ago
    > Look at VHS Pfft, people bought 5-in-1 DVDs. People bought 10-in-1 DVDs. Average Joe doesn't care about "quality", he wants the content.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      5 movies encoded to fit on a DVD-9 will still look much better than the typical VHS. They will also sound much better. Comparing DVD to VHS will always have DVD winning, unless the content was encoded from VHS.
  - 5y ago

bushbaba 5y ago

I believe that to maintain copyright control you need to enforce it. By not enforcing it they are effectively granting permission to the behavior.

dotnet00 5y ago
No, that's a trademark thing. Copyrights do not need to be consistently enforced to maintain.

jasode 5y ago

>The common cases for using youtube-dl, as I understand, is for archival (mostly non-music), watching videos content Even though videos are the main content, Youtube is also the #1 website in the world for streaming music: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-did-youtube-become-the-most-popular-music-streaming-site-by-sounding-like-the-world-itself/2019/07/30/f7428388-afdd-11e9-8e77-03b30bc29f64_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-did-youtu... https://musically.com/2021/03/22/surprise-youtube-is-the-most-popular-music-streaming-service/ https://musically.com/2021/03/22/surprise-youtube-is-the-mos...

habeebtc 5y ago
I was also surprised at this. Despite all the copyright claim controls, I was under the impression that YT was still the biggest source unauthorized music distribution. This seems to me to be akin to bullying a mouse because bullying the elephant in the room isn't going to pan out.
abakker 5y ago
And, even as a YouTube red subscriber, I like YouTube DL because it lets me create local Copies of music from great concerts. Many artists release a lot more great live stuff than there are albums for.
- helloworld11 5y ago
  And if you don't mind my asking, what's the most practical/useful way to download videos from YT without using spammy 3d party websites?
  - raptorfactor 5y ago
    Uhh, how about youtube-dl?
    - Larrikin 5y ago
      Youtube-dlc works much better currently

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

They do things like this and then turn around and say "X will destroy the recording industry" and are surprised when voters start wondering why it's taking so long and asking if there are any legislative changes or tax incentives that could be used to assist X in its meritorious endeavor.

jrockway 5y ago
If X will destroy the recording industry, please give me lots more of X!
redwall_hp 5y ago
"Home taping is killing record industry profits! We left this side blank so you can help." - The front of a Dead Kennedy's tape released in the 80s. The recording industry's been beating the same drum since before I was born. I don't care about the longevity of the record industry. Music is alive and well, with liberal distribution on the Internet making discovery and independent distribution so much easier. There's more music than ever, and much of it goes straight to YouTube (or Nico Nico).

dheera 5y ago

Can it just be hosted on some blockchain so that there is nobody to sue except the likes of Satoshi?

xbar 5y ago
Schneir talked about putting contraband on the blockchain. How many copies of youtube-dl and DeCSS and PlayStation 5 private keys and such need to get put onto the blockchain before the Music Industry tries to sue it out of existence?
- dheera 5y ago
  I mean, who are they going to serve papers to? All of Nigeria, India, China, and El Salvador? It's not exactly possible to sue it out of existence. Also, there's enough money in blockchain to buy out the music industry.

TeeMassive 5y ago

Copyright ceased to be a way to reward creators and has now been used to create private monopolies on huge chunk of popular culture.

pydry 5y ago
I think that was always the point. Rewarding creators was the pretext for this system, not the reason.
- redwall_hp 5y ago
  Especially since the recording industry has never been a friend to artists. They used to pay musicians a one off fee to come down to the studio and make some recordings, and didn't pay royalties, in the old days. Now they pay pennies on the dollar. Meanwhile, independent music is thriving thanks to the Internet. Let it burn.
KarlKemp 5y ago
I'll just mention, because it hasn't been mentioned before: this is obviously wrong... We all know that it's wrong, but saying it has some symbolic meaning, right? Because to find a counterexample you would only need a single artist who has the opportunity to spend more of their time working creatively (rather than their previous civilian job) because they get a royalty cheque every now and then. I personally know four of five such people.
- nmilo 5y ago
  Artists make most of their money from touring and merchandise. It's the labels that benefit off of their copyright-given monopoly.

taneq 5y ago

> I don’t really know anyone that pirates music, seems like streaming has really solved that with ad-supported listening. Someone's told them that "X million songs per year" are downloaded via youtube-dl. They get $Y in royalties per thousand views, and they have some number Z which is the average number of times an individual will listen to a song. There's been a boardroom meeting where these numbers have been presented as "X million songs per year are being pirated, costing us X * $Y * Z / 1000 per year, THIS must STOP!"

nitwit005 5y ago

If you hire some people to take down tools to bypass copyright, they'll go try to do that, whether it's really a good idea or not. Honestly, they're probably targeting it because it's easy to find with the Google searches they're trying.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

biztos 5y ago

> The common cases for using youtube-dl It works very well with many non-YouTube sites, especially ones hosting “adult” videos. I assume porn is the most common case, but archiving Stanford lectures might well be second.

emilsedgh 5y ago

Music piracy isa solved issue. But those people who's job was to fight music piracy need to justify their salaries, departments and budgets.

LoveMortuus 5y ago

I'm running what basically a prepaid SIM, meaning I don't use mobile data. Thus I do use yt-dlp/youtube-dl to download music so that I can listen to it offline. I'm actually quite proud by the system I've set up. I've got a playlist called music into which I add music. ^^ On my mobile phone I've got Termux with an add-on that allows you to add widgets that run custom code. I've written a simple script ( yt-dlp -P ~/storage/shared/Music -i -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" --no-restrict-filenames --download-archive ~/music_archive.txt -x --audio-quality 0 <link to the playlist> ). Which is ran whenever I press on the widget. I could use crontab, but since I don't add music that often, I prefer to do it manually. ( The -o is for file name, normally the file would have the same name as the source, but for unknown reason so of my files' names for restricted to ~40 chars, doing it the way you see above solves the issue). Before this system I used to have a similar script on my PC and crontab running it. The script downloaded music into Google Drive and on the mobile phone I had a program that would sync that folder with music to the phones music folder. But the current system is far superior, for one it doesn't fill up my Google Drive and secondly it doesn't require multiple devices to work. Being able to use a terminal on my phone makes me really happy! ^^

brokenmachine 5y ago
What's the add-on? So when you press the widget it runs yt-dlp on your phone, or is it sending a command to a remote PC?
- LoveMortuus 5y ago
  The add-on is called Widget, your can find it by googling Termux Widget. When I press on the widget it runs yt-dlp on my phone. There are no other devices involved in the process, just my phone.
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    Oh cool, I didn't realize yt-dlp would run on Android.