YouTube Music

The music command group talks to YouTube Music. It uses the WEB_REMIX client context (the same one music.youtube.com sends), so results are music entities (artists, albums, songs, and music playlists) rather than the plain video grid you get from ytb search. As with the rest of the tool, there is no API key and no quota.

ytb music search "daft punk"

Searching

music search queries across artists, albums, songs, and playlists at once. Narrow it to a single kind with --type, which takes song, album, artist, or playlist.

ytb music search "daft punk"                       # everything that matches
ytb music search "daft punk" --type artist          # artists only
ytb music search "random access memories" --type album
ytb music search "get lucky" --type song -n 20      # cap at 20 rows
ytb music search "deep focus" --type playlist

Results carry the browse id or video id you need to open the entity with the other subcommands, so the two compose:

ytb music search "daft punk" --type artist -o id    # just the browse ids

Opening an artist

music artist takes an artist browse id (or a music.youtube.com URL) and returns the artist profile, including their albums and top songs.

ytb music artist UC8j_C5jZheV_2g_AymBhI-A
ytb music artist "https://music.youtube.com/channel/UC8j_C5jZheV_2g_AymBhI-A"

Opening an album

music album takes an album browse id or URL and returns the album header plus its track list.

ytb music album MPREb_abc123def
ytb music album MPREb_abc123def -o json

Opening a music playlist

music playlist takes a playlist id or URL and returns the playlist with its tracks. These are YouTube Music playlists, so the track rows carry music metadata rather than plain video fields.

ytb music playlist RDCLAK5uy_l7
ytb music playlist RDCLAK5uy_l7 -n 100

Song detail and lyrics

music song takes a video id and returns the song detail. Pass --lyrics to also fetch the lyrics when they are available (not every track has them).

ytb music song 5NV6Rdv1a3I
ytb music song 5NV6Rdv1a3I --lyrics

Output and persistence

Every music subcommand renders through the same formatter as the rest of the tool, so -o, --fields, and --template all work:

ytb music search "lo-fi" --type song --fields title,artist,duration
ytb music artist UCabc123 -o jsonl

Pass the global --db flag and ytb also persists what it fetches into the local SQLite store, just as it does for the video and channel commands:

ytb music album MPREb_abc123def --db yt.db

See The local store for what gets persisted and how to query it.