FORMAT SELECTIONīy default youtube-dl tries to download the best quality, but sometimes you may want to download other format. (For those thinking TL DR, just read the 4th paragraph, and you can use youtube-dl -x URL as it should download the best quality anyway :)Īlso youtube-dl -f bestaudio URL works in my experience! However with both these options most of the time you will need convert to MP3 using ffmpeg or similar - since you are already editing the file you can also tag it (use the old ID3 version for most device compatibility!). It is also worth noting other pieces out of man youtube-dl (a online copy can be found here): You can list the available format with youtube-dl -F Resulting in an m4a file or youtube-dl -f bestaudio -extract-audio -embed-thumbnail -add-metadata So, if quality and file size matter to you, you should avoid re-encoding and stay with Youtube's native music formats: youtube-dl -f bestaudio -embed-thumbnail -add-metadata The default is 5 and might be a better choice depending on the source quality. The -audio-quality 0 uses the highest encoding quality but can increase your file size unnecessarily.

So your command could be: youtube-dl -f bestaudio -extract-audio -audio-format mp3 -audio-quality 0 audio-quality QUALITY Specify ffmpeg/avconv audio quality, insert a value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse) for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K (default audio-format FORMAT Specify audio format: 'best', 'aac', 'vorbis', 'mp3', 'm4a', 'opus', or 'wav' 'best' by default From man youtube-dl: -x, -extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe)

Youtube to 320k