spotDL

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

What spotDL does:

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!

Announcing spotDL v3

We rebuilt spotDL from scratch to be faster, simpler, and better than spotDL v2. Documentation is still a work in progress.

We have dropped the active development of spotDL v2 due to support and maintainability. No focused efforts will be made to resolve v2 specific issues.

Join the spotDL Discord!!

Installation

You need to download FFmpeg to use this tool. Download and installation instructions can be found at FFmpeg.org

Installing spotDL

• Recommended Stable Version:

  $ pip install spotdl
  

• Install directly from master: (Use if experiencing issues)

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

• Dev Version: (NOT STABLE)

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

On Termux:

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

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.

Usage (Instructions for v3)

• To download a song, run:

  $ spotdl [trackUrl]
  

  ex. spotdl https://open.spotify.com/track/0VjIjW4GlUZAMYd2vXMi3b?si=1stnMF5GSdClnIEARnJiiQ

• To download an album, run:

  $ spotdl [albumUrl]
  

  ex. spotdl https://open.spotify.com/album/4yP0hdKOZPNshxUOjY0cZj?si=AssgQQrVTJqptFe7X92jNg

• To download a playlist, run:

  $ spotdl [playlistUrl]
  

  ex. spotdl https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E8UXBoz02kGID?si=oGd5ctlyQ0qblj_bL6WWow

• To search for and download a song, run, with quotation marks:
  Note: This is not accurate and often causes errors.

  $ spotdl '[songQuery]'
  

  ex. spotdl 'The Weeknd - Blinding Lights'

• To resume a failed/incomplete download, run:

  $ spotdl [pathToTrackingFile]
  

  ex. spotdl 'The Weeknd - Blinding Lights.spotdlTrackingFile'

  .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)

ex. spotdl 'The Weeknd - Blinding Lights' https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E8UXBoz02kGID?si=oGd5ctlyQ0qblj_bL6WWow ...

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

pipx Isolated Environment Alternative

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 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 ...

For Developers and Contributors

1. Clone this repository

   $ git clone https://github.com/spotDL/spotify-downloader.git
   $ cd spotify-downloader
   

2. Setup venv (Optional)
   • Windows

     $ py -3 -m venv env
     $ .\.venv\Scripts\activate
     

   • Linux/macOS

     $ python3 -m venv .venv
     $ source .venv/bin/activate
     

3. Install requirements

   $ pip install -e .
   

• Use as command (no need to re-install after file changes)

  $ spotdl [ARGUMENTS]
  

Thank Yous

1. @ritiek for creating and maintaining spotDL for 4 years
2. @rocketinventor for figuring out YouTube Music querying
3. @MikhailZex for, never mind...