Audio-Only Mode¶

Basic Audio Download¶

ytdl-go -audio URL

Selects the best available audio-only format automatically.

Selection Priority¶

1. Highest bitrate audio-only format
2. Best codec (Opus > AAC > MP3)
3. Falls back to progressive format if audio-only is unavailable

Specific Audio Quality¶

# 128kbps audio
ytdl-go -audio -quality 128k URL

# Best quality audio
ytdl-go -audio -quality best URL

# Lowest quality (smallest file)
ytdl-go -audio -quality worst URL

Specific Audio Format¶

# M4A (AAC)
ytdl-go -audio -format m4a URL

# Opus
ytdl-go -audio -format opus URL

Download Strategy¶

Audio-only downloads use a multi-layered fallback strategy:

1. Direct audio-only download — Standard chunked download of the audio stream
2. Single request retry — If a 403 error occurs, retries without chunking
3. FFmpeg fallback — Downloads a progressive video and extracts the audio track

The FFmpeg fallback requires FFmpeg to be installed. See Installation for setup instructions.

Music Library Archiving¶

Combine audio mode with output templates and metadata overrides:

ytdl-go -audio \
  -o "Music/{artist}/{album}/{index} - {title}.{ext}" \
  -meta album="Album Name" \
  URL

ID3 Tags¶

For MP3 files, ytdl-go automatically embeds ID3 tags with available metadata (title, artist, album). Use -meta to override:

ytdl-go -audio \
  -meta title="Custom Title" \
  -meta artist="Custom Artist" \
  -meta album="Custom Album" \
  URL