The fastest, easiest, and most accurate command-line music downloader

1. Downloads music from YouTube as an MP3 file
2. Applies basic metadata gathered from Spotify such as:
   • Track Name
   • Track Number
   • Album
   • Album Cover
   • Genre
   • and more!

spotDL is being redesigned! This means we are currently not accepting new feature requests. You can talk to us on our Discord if there is anything further.

• Python 3.6.1 or above (added to PATH)
• FFmpeg 4.2 or above (added to PATH)

YouTube Music must be available in your country for spotDL to work. This is because we use YouTube Music to filter search results. You can check if YouTube Music is available in your country, by visiting YouTube Music.

• Windows Tutorial
• OSX - brew install ffmpeg
• Linux - sudo apt install ffmpeg

• Recommended Stable Version:

  pip install spotdl

• Dev Version: (NOT STABLE)

  pip install https://codeload.github.com/spotDL/spotify-downloader/zip/dev

If you have trouble installing spotdl take a look at the extended installation guide here or ask for help in our discord server

curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spotDL/spotify-downloader/master/termux/setup_spotdl.sh | sh

There is an Arch User Repository (AUR) package for spotDL.

• To download a song, run

  spotdl [trackUrl]

  example:

  spotdl https://open.spotify.com/track/0VjIjW4GlUZAMYd2vXMi3b

• To download an album, run

  spotdl [albumUrl]

  example:

  spotdl https://open.spotify.com/album/4yP0hdKOZPNshxUOjY0cZj

• To download a playlist, run

  spotdl [playlistUrl]

  example:

  spotdl https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E8UXBoz02kGID

• To download all songs from an artist run

  spotdl [artistUrl]

  example:

  spotdl https://open.spotify.com/artist/1fZAAHNWdSM5gqbi9o5iEA

• To search for and download a song, run, with quotation marks

  spotdl '[songQuery]'

  example:

  spotdl 'The Weeknd - Blinding Lights'

  Note: This is not accurate and often causes errors.

• To resume a failed/incomplete download, run

  spotdl [pathToTrackingFile]

  example:

  spotdl 'The Weeknd - Blinding Lights.spotdlTrackingFile'

  Note: .spotdlTrackingFiles are automatically created when a download starts and deleted on completion

• You can queue up multiple download tasks by separating the arguments with spaces

  spotdl [songQuery1] [albumUrl] [songQuery2] ... (order does not matter)

  example:

  spotdl 'The Weeknd - Blinding Lights' https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E8UXBoz02kGID ...

  Note: spotDL downloads up to 4 songs in parallel, so for a faster experience, download albums and playlist, rather than tracks.

• To download youtube video with metadata from spotify run:

  spotdl "YouTubeURL|SpotifyURL"

  example:

  spotdl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO7XnC1YpVo|https://open.spotify.com/track/4fzsfWzRhPawzqhX8Qt9F3"

  Note: Urls have to be separated with | and quoted properly ex. "YouTubeURL|SpotifyUrl"

• To download songs with different output format run

  spotdl [songUrl] --output-format mp3/m4a/flac/opus/ogg/wav

  example:

  spotdl [songUrl] --output-format opus

• To use ffmpeg binary that is not on PATH run

  spotdl [songUrl] --ffmpeg path/to/your/ffmpeg.exe

  example:

  spotdl [songUrl] --ffmpeg C:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe

• To generate .m3u file for each playlist run

  spotdl [playlistUrl] --m3u

  example:

    spotdl https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E8UXBoz02kGID --m3u

• To use youtube instead of youtube music run

  spotdl [songUrl] --use-youtube

  example:

    spotdl https://open.spotify.com/track/4fzsfWzRhPawzqhX8Qt9F3 --use-youtube

• To change number of threads used when downloading songs run

  spotdl [songUrl] --dt [number]

  example:

  spotdl https://open.spotify.com/track/4fzsfWzRhPawzqhX8Qt9F3 --dt 8

• To change number of threads used when searching for songs run

  spotdl [songUrl] --st [number]

  example:

  spotdl https://open.spotify.com/track/4fzsfWzRhPawzqhX8Qt9F3 --st 8

• To ignore your ffmpeg version run

  spotdl [songUrl] --ignore-ffmpeg-version

For users who are not familiar with pipx, it can be used to run scripts without installing the spotDL package and all the dependencies globally with pip. (Effectively skipping over the spotDL Installation step)

First, you will need to install pipx by running:

python3 -m pip install --user pipx
python3 -m pipx ensurepath

Next, you can jump directly to running spotDL with:

pipx run spotdl ...