Too hot?
Regarding HotPicks this month, and the program youtube-DL. Is it possible to find a program to convert YouTube videos into just music (MP3) files? One that comes complete with a GUI? I’ve never asked before in case it’s illegal, and I like to stay on the right side of the law. Ian L ear month, via email Jonni says: There is a utility called youtube-dlg, available on GitHub, which is precisely a GUI for youtube-dl. You can find it at https://mrs0m30n3.github.io/ youtube-dl-gui.
Legality varies from place to place and we’re not lawyers, so you’re best off ignoring everything we say. The site youtube-mp3.org – which did MP3 conversion online – was recently shut down. We’re pretty sure that if you like a piece of music that’s sold commercially then you should pay for it by one of the many available channels for doing so.
You’ll likely find it in a superior format (MP3 is old) and higher quality too. If you can’t, then buy the CD and rip it. Here in the UK this has ping-ponged from illegal to legal back to illegal, but we can barely pay for our own police force these days.
There are many issues here. If you just wanted a small clip to use in some other project, then that would almost certainly come under fair use, as far as the artist is concerned. However, using YouTube, not via a web browser or their API, is a breach of their conditions, which you have implicitly agreed to by visiting their site, don’t you know? And if you didn’t, you do now.