How to Convert YouTube to MP3 Legally
Get audio from YouTube legally with YouTube Premium, the YouTube Audio Library, or Creative Commons videos, buy DRM-free files elsewhere, and see where the courts stand on converter sites.
You will end up with the audio you want from YouTube, saved offline, downloaded as a licensed MP3, or bought as a file you own, without using a converter site. Steps 1 to 5 cover the legal routes, and step 6 explains why converter sites are the risky one.
Converter sites are what a search for this turns up first, and the legal ground under them has been shrinking for years. YouTube's terms of service prohibit third-party downloading. Two federal district courts have treated YouTube's download protection as an access control under the DMCA, which is the federal law against circumventing technical measures, and the biggest converter sites have been sued into shutting down. The law is unsettled, and the appeal that would settle it has been undecided since 2024. We checked the YouTube, Bandcamp, and Apple pages linked here, and the court record, in September 2026.
Use YouTube Premium for offline listening
YouTube Premium costs $15.99 a month in the US, up from $13.99 in April 2026, and lets you download videos and music for offline playback. Check the current figure before you sign up, because it has moved twice in three years. Downloads work within the YouTube app on mobile and through Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera on desktop. This is the closest thing to "converting YouTube to MP3" that YouTube actually allows. You can save entire playlists, albums, or individual videos and listen without an internet connection. The catch is that downloads are not MP3 files you can move around. They stay encrypted inside the app. You need to reconnect to the internet at least once every 29 days or your downloads expire. Cancel your subscription and the downloads disappear entirely. For copyrighted music you only want to listen to, it is the one offline option YouTube itself offers.
Good to know: YouTube Music, included with Premium, lets you switch to audio-only mode. If you just want the music without the video, this saves battery and data on mobile.
Download free tracks from the YouTube Audio Library
If you need music or sound effects for a project, the YouTube Audio Library is free and needs no Premium subscription. Go to YouTube Studio and click "Audio Library" in the left menu, or go directly to youtube.com/audiolibrary. Browse thousands of royalty-free tracks and sound effects. When you find one you like, click the download button to get an MP3 file. Tracks come under two license types. The standard YouTube Audio Library license lets you use the music without crediting the artist. Tracks marked with a Creative Commons Attribution license require you to credit the artist in your video description. This is the only way to get an actual MP3 file directly from YouTube without any legal gray area. Google also states that these tracks will not be claimed by a rights holder through Content ID, which is the part that matters if the music is going behind a video you want to monetize.
Good to know: Filter by track title, genre, mood, artist name, attribution, and duration, the filters YouTube's help page lists. Choose Attribution not required if you do not want to add a credit to your video description.
Search for Creative Commons content on YouTube
Some YouTube creators license their videos under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY), which means you can legally reuse, redistribute, and adapt their content as long as you credit the original creator. To find CC BY videos, run a search on YouTube, click "Filters," and under "Features" select "Creative Commons." Every result is a video whose uploader chose that license. YouTube does police it a little, since you can only mark a video CC BY if it is all content you are able to license, and a video carrying a Content ID claim cannot be marked CC BY at all. Treat it as a good signal rather than a guarantee, because somebody who mislabels a track they do not own cannot hand you rights they never had. When you use CC BY content, include the title of the work, the author's name, a link to the source, and a note that it is licensed under CC BY. You can add this in a video description, a text overlay, or a voiceover. The standard YouTube license is the default for every upload, so a video is CC BY only if its uploader changed that setting, and the Creative Commons filter leaves out everything else.
Buy DRM-free MP3s from Bandcamp
If you want to own an MP3 of a specific song, check Bandcamp first. Artists sell directly to fans, and every download is 100% DRM-free. That means no app required, no expiration date, and no restrictions on how you use the file. You download it and keep it. Many artists let you name your price, and some tracks are free.
Good to know: On Bandcamp Fridays the platform waives its own revenue share, which normally leaves artists with 80 to 85% of the sale. Not quite everything reaches them even then, because Bandcamp says plainly that it cannot waive the payment processor fees. Eight of these were scheduled across 2026, so check the next date if you are buying anyway.
Purchase tracks from Amazon or the iTunes Store
Both Amazon and Apple sell individual song downloads without DRM. Amazon's digital music store sells MP3 files, priced on each song's and album's own page. Once you buy a track, you download it and keep it, with no subscription. On the Apple side you want the iTunes Store rather than Apple Music, and the difference is the whole point of this step. Apple's documentation says that every song the iTunes Store sells comes without DRM, as a 256 kbps AAC file Apple cannot revoke. Apple Music is the subscription, and its downloads stop playing when you stop paying, exactly like the YouTube Premium downloads in step 1. The store sits inside the Music app on desktop and in a separate iTunes Store app on iPhone. AAC is not technically MP3, but it plays on effectively everything made since the store dropped DRM in 2009. Both stores let you download purchased music to any device, with no app lock-in, no expiration, and no recurring fee. If the song you heard on YouTube is by a signed artist, search both stores for the studio version before you look anywhere else.
Understand the legal problem with converter sites
You will find hundreds of "YouTube to MP3" converter websites if you search for them. They are easy to use and free. They also break YouTube's terms. Under the legal theory two federal courts have now accepted, they put you on the wrong side of the DMCA too. YouTube's Terms of Service say you are not allowed to download any part of the Service or any Content except as specifically permitted by the Service or with written permission. The legal issue goes further than a terms-of-service violation. YouTube uses a technology called a "rolling cipher" to control access to its video streams. On January 23, 2026, a federal court in California let a DMCA circumvention claim go forward in Cordova v. Huneault, a fight between two YouTube channels over clips one had ripped from the other. The judge held that the channel owner had adequately pled that the rolling cipher effectively controls access under section 1201 of the DMCA, and that it makes no difference that the videos are public to watch. That was a ruling on a motion to dismiss, so it settles what can be argued rather than who wins, and nothing in it says fair use is unavailable as a defense to circumvention. This was not the first time the argument reached a court. In 2017, YouTube-MP3.org, the largest converter site at the time, was permanently shut down after settling with the RIAA. In 2022 a court in Connecticut threw out Yout.com's case at the pleading stage, holding the company had not shown that its service avoids circumventing YouTube's protections. The Second Circuit heard that appeal in February 2024 and still had not ruled by April 2026, and no decision had been published when we checked again in September 2026. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and GitHub back Yout, and the Copyright Alliance backs the RIAA. Until that decision lands, the central question here is formally open.
Heads up: Before you reach for a converter, check the video description for a direct download, a Bandcamp page, or a store listing. If the creator links one, that link is the legal copy.
Pick the route by what you need. For music to listen to offline, use Premium (step 1). For a track behind your own video, use the Audio Library (step 2) or a CC BY video (step 3). For a file you keep, search Bandcamp, then Amazon and the iTunes Store (steps 4 and 5). If none of them has the audio, ask the creator for permission, which FAQ 1 below lists as the other legal exception. One caveat on all of the above. We are describing US law as it stood in September 2026, and this is information rather than legal advice. Other countries treat personal copying differently, and the Second Circuit ruling everyone is waiting on could shift where the line sits. Torrents raise a related question, where the tool itself is legal and the content decides, and our guide on how to use magnet links covers where that line falls.
Questions we get asked about this
Answers from experience, not a textbook.
It breaks YouTube's Terms of Service, which do not allow downloading except as the Service permits or with written permission. And two federal district courts have now treated bypassing YouTube's technical protections as illegal circumvention under the DMCA, whether or not the audio is for personal, non-commercial use. Both of those decisions came at an early stage and one is on appeal, so the question is not finally settled, but the safe assumption is that it counts. The legal exceptions are content you have explicit permission to download, Creative Commons licensed videos, and tracks from the YouTube Audio Library.
These are open-source command-line tools that can download YouTube videos. In 2020, the RIAA filed a DMCA takedown against youtube-dl on GitHub. The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that the tool does not violate the DMCA because YouTube's streams are not encrypted in the traditional sense, and GitHub reinstated the repository. However, this was not a court ruling. It was a DMCA takedown dispute resolved through GitHub's internal review. Courts in 2022 and 2026 have leaned the other way, treating YouTube's rolling cipher as a protection measure under the DMCA, though both of those decisions came at an early procedural stage and the 2022 one is still on appeal. The tools remain available on GitHub, but using them to download copyrighted content carries legal risk.
YouTube-MP3.org was the world's largest YouTube-to-MP3 converter site, operated by Philip Matesanz. In 2016, the RIAA sued on behalf of major record labels. Matesanz settled in 2017, and the two sides jointly asked the court to enter judgment for the labels on every count, including DMCA circumvention. That makes it a consent judgment rather than a decision anyone fought to the end, so it says less about the law than the headlines suggested. He was permanently banned from operating any stream-ripping service and had to transfer the domain to the RIAA. The site has been offline ever since.
Screen recording captures the audio output of your device rather than downloading from YouTube's servers. That sidesteps the circumvention theory in the cases above, because you are not bypassing an access control. However, recording copyrighted audio still raises copyright infringement concerns under separate provisions of copyright law. The audio itself is still protected, and making an unauthorized copy is not automatically legal just because you used a different capture method. For royalty-free or Creative Commons content, screen recording is fine.
If a creator explicitly states that their content is royalty-free or licenses it under Creative Commons, you have permission to use the audio. But you still need to follow the specific license terms. Creative Commons Attribution requires you to credit the creator. And "royalty-free" does not always mean "free to download by any means." Check the video description for the license and for a direct download or Bandcamp link, and get the file from there.