What's the big deal about YT-dl when streaming has replaced downloading?
Back in the day, we had thumb drives, external hard drives, internet download managers, torrent websites, video player software, and ways to download yt videos for later use.
But now there's barely any need for those as streaming has pretty much replaced the old mediums of acquiring and consuming video. But having a look at youtube-dl's repo, there's more than 109k stars, which shows how popular the thing is. Even a DDG bug that would exclude youtube-dl from the search results received so much attention by HN.
Still though, I don't understand why downloading from yt is so important nowadays. To be clear, I'm not asking whether it's ethical or not. I'm asking why do people need to download stuff in the first place?
Downloading is more alive than it was 5 or even 10 years ago. And it all started, as usual, because of mega-corp greed.
Netflix solved most of the problem, it was paradise (aside from licensing issues that may mean that you can't watch some stuff in your country)! But... Thus came greed.
And all of the sudden, you need 10 subscriptions to access it all. And not everyone has that money. Actually, most people don't. So you... Choose? You either watch Disney stuff or the other stuff... But Game Of Thrones? Oh now you're on HBO... But no, you need HBO MAX as well... Oh...
So that's the story of how I rediscovered Jellyfin, sonarr, radar, etc... I can have it all and it's free.
It's sad that piracy is the best and most reliable way to consume media, but here we are.
One day I was scrolling through my Youtube Favorites playlist, and was devastated to discover 10-20% of the videos were deleted or unavailable. The worst part is it's nearly impossible to get any information about which videos were deleted, so I can't look for re-uploads or even know if they are worth looking for in the first place. Ever since then, I run a script to periodically backup my Favorites playlist with youtube-dl.
More generally, I've learned the hard way to never trust that any content on the internet will stay up forever. If something is important to you, back it up, sooner rather than later. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is great but it does not backup everything!
I have a music collection at YouTube. Because of this when I like something I just click like and it's added to my list.
The problem is, YouTube and others will remove music from time to time. All of a sudden a song you liked but didn't bother to check what it's called is gone and you don't even know it's gone. At some point you remember something about it but you can't find it anywhere.
It's like a piece of memory has been removed from your brain but you have some residue left, "was it real or was it a dream? I can't remember".
I disagree with the claim in the title that "streaming has replaced downloading" since disk space is incredibly cheap now relative to video size. It also depends on what kind of content we're talking about
Also I think that the streaming mentality treats content as something more disposable and constantly changing. Why would someone want to download something when it'll soon get old?
I think that disposable content is a waste of time. Downloading makes more sense when the content has higher value as a work and is more permanent
But of course, it makes more sense from a business standpoint to make people pay for access as opposed to ownership
The video is not guaranteed to stay up. I download videos I may want to watch again in the future.
It is good practice to store your media locally, espcially for something you'll consume more than once. It keeps the costs down on the remote server, which in the long run provides a better experience for the user.
I do not have constant internet access. Furthermore mobile internet is very expensive. I can just run a bash script on my terminal emulator that checks if I'm on a known wifi network and runs my downloads and copies them to proper folder.
This way I can listen to music without the internet and/or without requiring that i leave my screen open and on the youtube app.
I do it for convenience.
I have fast internet, but battery consumption of tabs and mobile is too high for my comfort with data/wifi turned on.
I download 4k/2k videos for anything super interesting and >= 30 minutes and watch them later.
Some episodes of some podcasts are super worth it to keep in your hard disk.
I also download and save Chopin and Bach playlist to device and then later play them for long hours.
Videos disappear a lot on YT. Interesting videos that I saved on "Watch Later" disappeared quite a few times.
Spotify keeps removing music I enjoy. Also the Shuffle function is fake and this shitty software keeps trying to guess what I want to listen to. Also last time I opened it there was a lot of bullshit about religion/self-help podcasts and I don't want to see that bs b4 my eyes...
That's why I went 100% youtube-dl + winamp and cancelled spotify subscription..
You can't package up bandwidth and send it to someone deployed to a war zone (unless you have a spare StarLink laying around)
Save content from the woke memory hole.
Want to download music? yt-dl, convert to mp3. Want to archive a video for later watching? yt-dl it. Want to avoid using a bloated webpage to watch a single video on YouTube? yt-dl it. Want to keep the video in case you're worried about it being taken down? yt-dl it.
I don't take streaming for granted. I don't take huge storage space for granted either, though the price per unit is more affordable. I like to save helpful audio in .opus format for future reference, though I try now to take notes in the moment, understanding that I seldom follow up with re-listening. I know now I have a tendency to collect, hoard, amass things for their potential, and so I practice relaxing and missing out.
I prefer written material for the ease of searching, but there are some things video is really good at, like showing how to make a fire.
I don't need to download. I prefer it to subscribing (with money and/or data) to a streaming service.
Things disappear all the time, as others have stated. Have you been to a video site recently? 75% of window is engagement garbage. Commercials are aggressive and repetitive.
Most of the time I use to be free from distraction.
The more interesting or sensitive stuff seems to be getting taken down increasingly quickly. At this point, I'd prefer not to watch something in the first place than to watch it and be unable to refer back to it later when I'm reminded of it by something else. I'm also motivated by the more general issue of cultural vandalism and activist agendas being pursued by tech and media companies, and I think that a system of decentralised offline backups provides the basis for a longer-term solution to this problem. Also, storage is incredibly cheap.
> Still though, I don't understand why downloading from yt is so important nowadays.
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In my personal case, almost all of my "quality Youtube time" is spent in areas where there's no wired internet or cellular signal. So I download what looks interesting and watch it when I have time.
Before that, when streaming was a practical option, I tried revisiting some videos I had already watched, only to be find they had been taken down. This happened often enough to be annoying.
So, everything gets saved to local storage, and eventually to on-site and off-site backups.
It’s not so important. It’s all the edge cases, like when the video isn’t available in your region or on your device, or when you need to use it in some other workflow. In other words, “fair use” (that is, as opposed to just “use”). And how those edge cases aren’t addressed by any part of most current systems. That’s also why the DDG issue was only a big deal on HN, rather than an actual news story.
With downloaded audio you can analyze it, slow it down (with better algorithms than youtube has), loop it, run an FFT for pitch detection, remix, etc.
With downloaded video you can play back with better control, look at individual frames, edit, remix, etc.
Low bandwidth. "streaming" just doesn't happen, an actual successful transfer of a movie's worth of (small) video might take a full 12hr or more.
“It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.” — John Andrew Holmes
Some content is not available on streaming platforms (live performances, mixes/compilations, for example).
Takedowns. If certain videos are important to you, make copies and store in your local drives, make encrypted backups and store in the cloud.
Too many forces want to change history, gaslight the masses and disinform them.
For example, how long do you think this video will be around: https://youtu.be/jiBXmbkwiSw
Not for long, that's for sure.
I am curious though. Can't Google just block all access from YouTube dl?
Streaming hasn't replaced downloading.
Evidence: Myself, who downloads things.
I feel a lot more people started using their usenet and torrent tracker accounts again. Especially if you are in Europe or the East you sometimes have no chance to even pay for the content you want to watch.