If you’ve ever tried slowing down YouTube videos to practice music, you can feel and know my pain: distorted playback and loss of detail that makes serious listening nearly impossible--and distracting.

That’s why I stopped relying on YouTube’s player and started using an open-source tool called yt-dlp, which appears to be the successor to youtube-dl It helps me extract the original, high-quality audio stream from any YouTube video—and that’s a game-changer when you pair it with practice apps like Music Speed, which let you slow down or loop tracks without sacrificing clarity.d

Why Use yt-dlp?

YouTube often compresses audio aggressively, especially during playback at reduced speeds. By using yt-dlp, you can download the best available audio stream and convert it to MP3, FLAC, or another cleadn format. The result is far better sound quality and full control over your files—perfect for focused music study.

Installation Guide

Getting started only takes a few minutes. Here’s how to set things up based on your system.

macOS

If you use Homebrew, installation is a one-liner:

brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg

That’s all you need to extract and convert audio. You should be able to install similarly on other platforms, including Linux via brew or pip.

Linux (Ubuntu/Debian)

Open a terminal and run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install yt-dlp ffmpeg

This installs both tools from your system’s package manager.

Windows (via WSL – Windows Subsystem for Linux)

If you’re on Windows and comfortable with WSL, this is a great option. First, install WSL from PowerShell:

wsl --install

Once your Linux environment (like Ubuntu) is set up, open the WSL terminal and run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install yt-dlp ffmpeg

You’re now ready to use yt-dlp just like on a native Linux system. It works great for tech-savvy users who prefer the command line.

Alternatively, Windows users can download standalone yt-dlp.exe and a static ffmpeg.exe from their respective websites, add them to your system PATH, and run commands from PowerShell or Command Prompt. (I don't recommend this option, of course.)

How to Extract Audio

Once installed, extracting audio is easy. To convert a YouTube video to MP3, just run:

yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

If you want MP3 audio, try:

yt-dlp -x --audio-format flac "URL"

You can also customize the filename for better organization:

yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" "URL"

It’ll save the audio with the title of the video—clean and ready to load into your music practice app.

Why This Matters

Apps like Music Speed are amazing for musicians. You can slow down a fast passage, loop difficult bars, or even adjust the pitch for transposing. But all of that relies on having clean, distortion-free audio. YouTube’s own playback often isn’t up to the task. By extracting and converting the audio with yt-dlp, you get a pristine source that responds well to speed and pitch adjustments—no weird digital artifacts.

This workflow has completely changed how I practice. Whether I’m analyzing a solo, learning a new tune, or transcribing by ear, I’m finally hearing the music as it’s meant to sound.

Downloading Playlists

Working through a set list or a playlist of Ă©tudes? Just pass the playlist URL:

yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 "https://youtube.com/playlist?list=YOUR_LIST_ID"

Each track will be saved separately with its own title. No need to download one-by-one.

If you’re a musician who uses YouTube to find practice material, yt-dlp is a must-have tool for maintaining your backing tracks and tunes offline. It turns YouTube from a streaming platform into a high-quality, offline-ready practice library.

More to come!