YouTube Music Downloader (MP3) Actor

Overview

This Apify actor extracts audio from YouTube videos and Shorts, outputting files in various formats and quality settings. It's built for batch processing and uses residential proxies to ensure reliable operation.

Key Features

• Source Support: Works with standard YouTube videos, music videos, and Shorts.
• Quality Control: Offers audio bitrates from 64 kbps to 320 kbps, with an auto-select "Best" option.
• Format Flexibility: Outputs to multiple formats including MP3, AAC, M4A, FLAC, Opus, WAV, Vorbis, and ALAC.
• Batch Processing: Accepts multiple YouTube URLs in a single run.
• Reliable Infrastructure: Uses Apify's residential proxy by default to avoid rate limits.
• Managed Storage: Provides direct download links for extracted audio files via Apify's key-value store.

How to Use

Configure the actor run via input JSON. The core settings are urls, quality, format, and proxy.

Basic Input Structure

{
  "urls": [
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" },
    { "url": "https://youtube.com/shorts/SHORTS_ID" }
  ],
  "quality": "320",
  "format": "mp3",
  "proxy": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Input Settings Explained

1. YouTube URLs (urls): An array of objects, each containing a url key with a valid YouTube link.
2. Audio Quality (quality): Choose from "Best", "320", "256", "128", or "64" (kbps).
3. Audio Format (format): Options are "default" (auto-select), "mp3", "aac", "m4a", "flac", "opus", "wav", "vorbis", or "alac".
4. Proxy Settings (proxy): Use the shown configuration (useApifyProxy: true with "RESIDENTIAL" group) for production runs. This is required for consistent performance.

Input/Output

Input Example: Download a Podcast

{
  "urls": [{ "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=examplePodcast" }],
  "quality": "128",
  "format": "m4a",
  "proxy": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Output

For each successfully processed audio file, the actor outputs a dataset item with a direct download link.

{
  "title": "Audio_Track_Title",
  "downloadURL": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/..."
}

Important Notes

• The actor is for audio extraction only (not video).
• Apify's RESIDENTIAL proxy is required for reliable, production-level use.
• Processing time varies based on the selected output format and source quality.
• Final audio quality cannot exceed the quality of the original YouTube source.
• You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to download and use any content.

Error Handling

The actor provides descriptive error messages for common issues like invalid URLs, proxy misconfiguration, download failures, and format conversion problems.

Related Actors

• ** YouTube Video & Music Downloader:** Download both video and audio.
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• ** TikTok Profile Scraper:** Scrape profile data, videos, and captions from TikTok.
• ** Website Media Link Scraper:** Extract media links from websites.