How Do YouTube to MP3 Converters Work?

Learn how YouTube to MP3 converters in plain English


How Do YouTube to MP3 Converters Work

Building an MP3 library from YouTube videos is one of the most common trends we see in 2020. Most people use YouTube to MP3 converters to download their favorite songs to MP3 formats. This lets them listen to songs, podcasts, and other audio from YouTube whenever they want. Before using one, you may want to know how YouTube to MP3 converters work?

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How do YouTube to MP3 converters work?

There are plenty of YouTube to MP3 converters out there. And you may be wondering if they all use the same process. And this question makes sense, considering the audio quality seems to differ drastically from one converter to another. To answer this question concisely: Yes, almost all YouTube to MP3 converters use the same process.

How does the process work?

As you probably know, every website is composed of elaborate code or “script.’ This code is converted into web elements like video, text, colors, and graphics. There is an additional code that organizes the website’s layout. If you use Chrome, you can press Ctrl+Shift+C to see what some of this code looks like. 

YouTube to MP3 converters takes advantage of this code to identify patterns. Within the pattern of YouTube videos, you’ll find the code for the video and the audio. YouTube to MP3 converters use web crawlers (also called web scrapers, spiders, and spiderbots) to “scrape” the targetted data to create MP3s. If this sounds confusing, don’t worry, we’re about to break it down a bit more.

Web crawlers are bots. This means they’re a form of software with a specific task. And there are a ton of bots out there. Half of internet traffic is bots, hard at work. Have you gone on a website and had a chat screen pop up asking if you need help? That was a bot. Granted, its purpose differs from a data or content scraping bots like the ones that pull MP3 data from YouTube. 

When you paste a URL for the YouTube video you want the audio from into the text field on the MP3 converter, the converter you’re using sends a bot with “get” request to YouTube. This request identifies and separates the video code from the rest of the website code. It then splits the audio from the video and generates an MP3. The converter temporarily stores the MP3 on a cloud-based storage system where it’s available for you to download.

Sounds easy, right? It’s not quite as simple as the process above, but those are the fundamentals. Some complications arise from YouTube encrypting its code to prevent scapers from easily finding video data. They also throttle to cause web crawlers to produce errors. This is why some Youtube to MP3 converters will temporarily go down while they figure out a new way around the encryption or throttling process.

Now what?

If you’re wondering how to download MP3s from YouTube, check out our list of the best YouTube to MP3 converters. Using a YouTube to MP3 converter is easy, and the convenience of MP3s makes listening to music feel new and exciting again.


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