I'm not updating this project anymore and some dependencies (kdi3-cli) are now missing in mainstream repos. It may be usable as-is from sources, but there's no guarantee.
I know, yet another youtube-dl wrapper. But this one does something others don't: ability to automate your new music downloads, just like package managers automate your updates.
aytdl update
And that's it. (Some initial setup is required of course, so auto-ytdl knows what music to download, but the most used commands are that simple)
--playing now supports music.youtube too
Licence
important fix for --include-old behavior
Youtube-dl executable can be configured (still defaults to youtube-dlc)
Soundcloud is now explicitly supported, though the user should tweak config options to not be limited to free-tier low quality audio.
Windows support
fix music with no length bug
Fix --playing option not working in chrome 86 Youtube-dl dependency is replaced by youtube-dlc since former was not updated to a working version yet. I expect youtube-dlc to release fixes faster now that the whole RIAA thing has seriously hurt youtube-dl. If you execute from source and modify your config to use "youtube-dl", the requirement becomes optional.
- Why does it exist? / Motivation / Rant
- Doesn't it exist already?
- How does it works?
- Features
- Dependencies
- Install
- Usage
- Examples
[DISCLAIMER: informal language]
Y'all know how we live in the 5G era, so for us music * folks that would mean streaming music 24/7... but (one or more of):
- there is no mobile network / wifi at your office / parent's home / hotel room / on the road / at the back of your house
- you have a limited data allowance anyway
- spotify feels like both an ad gatling gun and a noisy radio (because of the network bandwith playing yo-yo)
- your entry-level phone/PC 2.4GHz antenna can't deal with both Wi-Fi music streaming and bluetooth connection to headphone/speakers
- youtube/yt music either replay the same 5 songs forever or goes its way on some crappy music that's unlike everything you like. It's a nice tool to discover new things, but not to actually listen to music. Some other services** may be relevant to audiophile-class folks, but down here the de-facto service for music is Youtube.
- yeah, music streaming is pretty not here yet
[DISCLAIMER: personal opinion]
For people who truly enjoy music *, nothing beats yet having a local library, even with the hassle of managing, de-duplicating, and updating it constantly.
Auto-ytdl is there to help (you) with all that: there are tons of great artists that publish new songs everyday; having a local music library should not mean that we have to forsake listening to those! Plus, auto-ytdl comes with management of duplicates of newly-downloaded songs, based on metadata so you don't have multiples identical song but from different youtube channels.
* (yes I know youtube and other video streaming services do not have extremely good audio, but it's out of convenience): hardcore audiophile abstain
No.
However, olivia is a music player that propose a similar feature named 'smart playlist', the beta I tested could auto-download individual songs. You may want to check it out!
It's more of an all-rounder and I believe auto-ytdl + your favorite music player may be a better combo if your use case is similar to mine.
[deserves mention for existing]
The closest idea I could find is MediaHuman's (paid, expensive, closed-source) Youtube-Downloader: as of writing, it seems to have 'tracking' capabilities, and little explications given. All this looked a bit fishy, though it has a nice GUI. It also only offers a .deb package for "GNU/Linux OS" and .deb support for Arch (btw I use Arch) is not first-class.
-
Add some of your favorite (youtube*) channels / referencers /artists
-
At your next update command, all newly-released music from specified sources will be downloaded, cleaned, de-duplicated, and added to your music library.
-
[optionnal] Tinker with the options
* playlist or channels from Dailymotion, vimeo or anything youtube-dl can download from can in theory work, but have not been tested yet
- Auto-download of all new music from a simple command (music-only download, best quality available (often opus format ~160kbps for youtube), no conversion by default)
- Add/remove/list all your favorite music providers; mainly tested on youtube and soundcloud channels, but should work on playlist, and other video platforms
- Clean tags, so e.g. the displayed artist name does not look like "Nirvana (lyrics) [Music video] official" but just "Nirvana"
- Filter by tags so only 'true' and unique songs (according to config) end up in your library
- Ignore the filter if you really want that weird video
- Can still handle one-shot downloads, or include older songs of (newly discovered) artists
- Comprehensive config options
- No missing/skipping/forgetting songs, even if a previous download was interrupted
- Download video currently playing in chrome + youtube / music.youtube
- Thumbnail embedding supported for mp3 and opus (default) format
- youtube-dlc (need to be in the PATH or current folder)
- ffmpeg (need to be in the PATH or current folder)
- pip/python3-pip (need to be in the PATH or current folder)
(optionnal dependency for better OPUS handling, (windows users, don't bother))
Some python modules, such as music-tag and mutagen, will be pulled automatically. If that step fails, you can run pip install -r dependencies.txt (or python3-pip ....)
(Install the dependencies first)
- auto-ytdl is available in the AUR here (you can get executables from the latest release )
- install from source:
git clone https://github.com/michaelb/auto-ytdl
cd auto-ytdl #you can run ./aytdl.py if you don't wish to install
pip install --user .
# to uninstall if installed manually
pip uninstall auto-ytdl
If you didn't (want to) install, you can directly run:
python aytdl.py instead of aytdl
Once installed you can run
aytdl [COMMAND][OPTIONS] [URLs ..]
# asking for help
aytdl --help
#asking for help about 'update' command
aytdl update --help
#edit the config file (you should do that, rather sooner than later)
aytdl edit
#add Mr SuicideSheep to followed channels
aytdl add https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5nc_ZtjKW1htCVZVRxlQAQ
#also work with soundcloud, and probably other video platforms such as dailymotion
aytdl add https://soundcloud.com/nemenmusic
#see all the added sources
aytdl list
> url1
> url2
> ...
#remove Mr SuicideSheep channel from followed sources
aytdl remove https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5nc_ZtjKW1htCVZVRxlQAQ
#download all new music from all sources
aytdl update
#download rick's astley famous song
aytdl update https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
#download rick's astley famous song while it's playing in chrome (linux-only)
aytdl update -p
#download all music ever from Mr SuicideSheep, no just new ones
aytdl update --include-old https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5nc_ZtjKW1htCVZVRxlQAQ
# download a 1-hour concerto (not fitting the (configurable) criteria for 'normal' music)
aytdl update https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM0HqmptYlY --force
On Windows, aytdl has trouble with embedding thumbnails with opus and mp3.
MP3 issues with thumbnails migth be bypassed by adding:
embed-thumnail = true
to the end of the config file. It makes youtube-dl the one in charge of embedding the thumbnail in the mp3, and it should work great!!