ytdl

What I usually do when I hear a song that I decide I like, is, I note it down in my phone. Previously, on, say, a weekend, I would sit in front of my computer and download all this songs that I have noted down (in Google Keep). But when the list becomes too large, I find that I cannot bring myself to sit down and download all the songs in them. I guess I just lack the patience and tolerance to do such arduous grunt (but essential) work. Hence the requirement for this Python script.

This script searches for each song, present on a text file, on Youtube and downloads the audio as an mp3 file. It uses the tool youtube-dl to do this.

Usage

python /path/to/ytdl.py /path/to/songs.txt /folder/to/save/songs/to

(The files will be downloaded in the the directory from which the above command is executed. The files ytdl.py and songs.txt can be present anywhere.)

Setting Things Up

I use the Youtube Data API to search for songs on Youtube. Hence, you will need a Google API key to be able to use ytdl. After getting this API key, create a new file called config.json (in the directory that contains ytdl.py). Add a json entry called API_KEY and mention your API key here. If you are behind a proxy, also add an entry with the key HTTP_PROXY to this json file.

Miscellaneous Info

1. This tool is intended to simply clone and run. No additional configuration should be required apart from setting the API key and the proxy. (And yes, you can run it on both Linux and Windows. - Nope, not right now.)

2. The file that contains the list of songs (I simply refer to it as songs.txt) should separate different songs by at least a newline. Also make sure to have one song on a single line.

3. youtube-dl requires some additional binaries to be able to convert files to mp3. They are present in the utils/ directory.

4. Songs will be deleted from your songs.txt after downloading them. This makes it possible to simply run the script on any computer without the fear of downloading songs multiple times between computers.

5. The script is intended to run with Python 3, not Python 2.

6. You need to always have the latest youtube-dl executable. Because Google frequently changes the way to access Youtube.