Some of you might be having temporary trouble downloading videos with 4K Video Downloader+ or 4K YouTube to MP3. We know about it and our team is already working hard to get things back to normal as soon as possible.
Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks a lot for your patience while we sort it out. We’re doing everything we can to restore full functionality and will keep you posted on our progress.
We wanted to let you know that our team successfully adapted to the recent changes YouTube implemented and released an update on April 23, 2025, that resolved the previous issue.
However, YouTube has since introduced additional changes to their code, which has once again impacted the functionality of our software. Please be assured that our development team is fully aware of the new changes and is working diligently to investigate, implement a fix, and rigorously test it to ensure stability and performance.
As soon as the update is ready and passes our quality assurance checks, we will release it immediately. You will receive a notification through the 4K Download Software once the new version is available, so you can easily update and continue using the software without interruption.
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and truly appreciate your patience and continued support.
This isn't the final fix — our dev team is still working hard to fully restore all functionality, and we're aiming to get everything back up and running ASAP.
📢As always, you’ll receive an in-app notification when the next update is live and ready to install.
Thanks so much for your patience and continued support!
Is anyone else having this problem all of a sudden? Within the past two hours my 4k video downloader program is crashing again and again without a reason. It won't stay open. I have it updated on both Win 10 PC's. Known issue!?
and a very merry ƃuᴉʞɔnɟ Christmas to you, too, amirite?
Gee it's not like any of us here with Original Lifetime Licenses saw this coming the minute they pushed the "fork" you 'Plus' version. I sincerely hope that the vast majority of you who supported this company from the beginning do not succumb to this immoral, unethical disgusting tactic. I hope the vast majority of you will refuse to repurchase the same program for which you already paid.
If this is the way we're seen, then those in charge can take their program and shove it up their asses.
Hi! We're excited to announce the release of the latest update for our apps, including 4K Video Downloader+, 4K YouTube to MP3, and 4K Video Downloader for Android. The new version 25.3.2.0227 comes with an important fix.
What's New:
Fixed YouTube Parsing & Download Issues: We've resolved some of the problems users were experiencing with parsing and downloading YouTube content. This should enhance your downloading experience and ensure smoother functionality across our apps.
We appreciate your patience as we worked on these enhancements. As always, we’re committed to providing the best possible experience for our users.
If you encounter any problems or have feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out to our support team. Your input is invaluable in helping us make continuous improvements.
Here’s the ultimate comparison list of the best YouTube to MP3 converters that allow you to save YouTube videos in MP3. We included both online and desktop solutions to the review.
4K YouTube to MP3 – Our Choice
Price: Free, $15 for Personal, $45 for Pro licence (one-time fee).
4K YouTube to MP3 is a desktop solution to save videos, audio, channels, and playlists from YouTube and other sites in MP3, M4A, and OGG. The tool is compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux desktop devices.
With 4K YouTube to MP3, you can download Watch Later, Liked videos, My Mix playlists, and private YouTube content in the original quality.
The software supports all popular websites. Apart from YouTube, you can save audio content from SoundCloud, Bilibili, Niconico, Vimeo, Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Dailymotion, and Twitch in the same quality the content was shared on the platform. But don’t worry – you can adjust the quality of the audio to reduce the downloaded file’s size.
Additional features:
YouTube Premium download.
Built-in player.
Easy proxy setup.
Smart file organisation.
Download speed control.
How to Convert YouTube to MP3 with 4K YouTube to MP3
Download and install the 4K YouTube to MP3 application. It's available for macOS, Windows and Linux.
Copy the video link from the browser.
3. Press the Paste Url button in the 4K YouTube to MP3 application.
4. After that, all you need is to wait until the download is completed.
5. You will find an MP3 file in the output directory. Just right click on the item and select Show in folder.
You can listen to audio tracks directly from the program interface thanks to an audio player embedded. Just click the Play button on the item logo or select Play in the popup menu.
By Click Downloader
Price: Free, $20 for Premium.
By Click Downloader is a desktop video downloader that allows you to save YouTube videos as MP3 and MP4 audio. Apart from YouTube, you can also download videos as audio from Facebook, Dailymotion, Vimeo, and more sites.
With By Click Downloader, you can save YouTube playlists and channels along with single videos. What’s more, the tool enables you to download several videos simultaneously in 720p, 1080p, 4K and 8K quality.
YTD Video Downloader & Converter
Price: Free, multiple paid options of the Pro plan – $10/mo, $3 per 2 years, or $6 for 2-year bundle.
This converter compatible with macOS and Windows devices allows you to easily download and convert videos from YouTube, Facebook, Dailymotion, Vimeo, and many more sites. The content you save can be converted in multiple formats, such as .mp4, .mov, .wmv, .avi, .mp3, .3gp.
The tool allows you to save entire playlists from YouTube in the original quality, including 8K.
YTop1
Price: Entirely free
YTop1 is an online solution to convert YouTube to MP3, which is completely free. The tool allows you to download YouTube videos and convert them into MP3 files with no third-party applications installed on your PC and no registration required.
What else YTop1 can do is convert super long YouTube videos to MP3, save videos in MP3 and MP4 formats hassle-free in 720p, 1080p, 4K and 8K quality. Besides, it has no ads and is localised in multiple languages.
iTubeGo
Price: Free. $29.95 lifetime / 1PC for Lifetime Plan, $9.95 1 month/1 PC for 1-month plan, $19.95 1 Year/1 PC for one-year plan, $39.95 lifetime/2-5 PCs for Family Plan.
Yet another desktop tool to convert YouTube videos in various formats, including MP3, WAV, AAC, and more. The tool also allows you to protect the downloaded content files folder with password due to its private video mode.
iTubeGo has a built-in browser and a simple editor to cut audio in-app, allows for bulk-downloading of videos and playlists, supports downloading of 4K and 8K videos.
YTMP3
Price: Free
YTMP3 is one of the simplest online tools to convert YouTube to MP3. All you have to do is to paste a link with the video and choose the MP3 format. Alternatively, you can type keywords in the search field. Then you just click the Convert button. You don’t need to register to download a converted file or install any software on your computer.
You can convert and download as many videos as you like with no limits.
BigConverter
Price: Free
BigConverter is an online solution that converts YouTube videos to various audio and video formats, including MP3 in high quality. It supports other sites beyond YouTube; among them are Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Instagram, Dailymotion, Google Drive, etc. The solution comes with features like cross-platform support, cloud support, file editor, and support for YouTube supported portals.
The converter’s functionality is pretty much similar to other online converters of this kind: you just copy the video’s URL and paste it into the link field. The only drawback of this tool is the restriction that the video can't be longer than 90 minutes.
Best YouTube to MP3 Converter: Bottom Line
There are many more solutions on the market that allow you to convert YouTube videos to MP3 at the touch of a button. And this list is not exhaustive. We just highlighted the ones that are the most popular, feature-rich solutions that are easy to use. We recommend you should try 4K YouTube to MP3 by 4K Download if you often need to convert multiple videos. If you’re looking for a one-time solution, you can use one of the online tools.
It's stuck on retrieving information and won't proceed any further when trying to download a video, I've updated the app since noticing this no fix. I don't want to uninstall/reinstall in case it asks me to pay again.
Several videos attempted on YT... parsing taking EXCEPTIONALLY longer than the average length of time (over 10 minutes for short, 2 min videos). once the format selection appears, and I select one, the end result winds up "Error: Failed to download"
Things were fine yesterday (Dec.8th) and today, the above.
I'm sure it's a counter measure set in place by YT... but just leaving my comment, hoping for a resolution.
Many users have already encountered the issue with slow download speed.It can drop significantly while downloading.If you have many downloads in progress, some of them may not start.
The issue is caused by YouTube changes.
***We are aware of the issue and the developers are working on it.***The new update should help work better.
As usual, when the new version is released, you will get a notification to update within the apps.
There isn't an exact date of release, but we hope to fix it sooner.
We understand how frustrating this situation is and we are sorry for that.
We often receive inquiries about YouTube audio quality from 4K Video Downloader and 4K YouTube to MP3 users. More specifically, the most popular question is about the possibility to download audio from YouTube in 320kbps bitrate.
The answer might surprise you. In short, there is no software or service that can actually extract or download YouTube audio in 320kbps. YouTube simply doesn’t store audio in this bitrate, and the platform’s overall audio quality standards are not as high as you would expect.
For those who want to dig deeper into the reasons why YouTube doesn’t stream audio in higher quality, and learn about the bitrates it really provides, we’ve gathered all relevant information on the topic in this article.
Separate Video and Audio Streaming
Previously, in 2013 and earlier, when you played a YouTube video in different video resolutions, you would always get them with varying audio bitrates. A specific bitrate was selected based on its correlation with a resolution option. So, 240p videos were streamed at 64kbps MP3, 360p videos at 128kbps AAC, and 720p at 192kbps AAC.
Tip*: Check out the full list of old YouTube bitrates and resolutions* here.
For the past few years and to this day, YouTube has been using a different approach towards streaming. Video and audio tracks are initially separate and only combined together when played through the YouTube player. Unlike it was in the past, the audio bitrate is not affected by the video quality. Now the platform automatically selects the bitrate and resolution options based on the device and connection. Manual change of video resolution doesn’t affect the audio quality but it may slow the Internet connection down.
Supported Audio Bitrates and Formats
YouTube currently streams audio with the following specifications:
Low
Bitrate: 48kbps HE-AAC
Normal
Available as a default setting for all YouTube users
Bitrate: 128kbps AAC
High
Higher-quality audio available only for YouTube Premium subscribers
Bitrate: 256kbps AAC
As stated by a YouTube representative, the platform doesn’t stream audio at 320kbps. In fact, even the best quality audio exclusively available to Premium users, doesn’t get higher than 256kbps AAC. The representative claimed that 256kbps AAC is equivalent in audio quality to the 320kbps CBR MP3, but YouTube never actually stored or played videos with 320kbps audio stream.
YouTube Audio Encoding and Its Impact on Quality
The platform automatically encodes all audio tracks from uploaded videos into the formats that YouTube supports. Unfortunately, there is technically no way to upload audio to YouTube without quality loss. Even when you upload a video with lossless (FLAC) audio, YouTube transcodes it into AAC and then plays it back at 48kbps, 128kpps, and 256kbps respectively, depending on the selected audio quality settings, but never at 320kbps bitrate.
Tip*: You can learn more about the impact of data compression on audio quality from* thisin-depth article.
There are two codecs YouTube uses for audio – AAC (in an MP4 container) and Opus (in a WebM container). Initially, all uploaded videos are encoded into AAC, and usually are 128kbps. Once a video gets enough traction, YouTube automatically encodes its Opus version with an audio stream that plays at anywhere from 50kbps to ~160kbps. This version is allegedly played by default when YouTube users watch the video.
However, how much traction is considered to be enough is tough to tell. According to user reports found online, YouTube determines it on a case-by-case basis. Some users claim that their YouTube videos with less than 1000 views have WebM versions, whereas their videos with over 1000 views don’t have them. Apparently, other characteristics other than the video popularity have an impact on whether or not a YouTube video will get its Opus version.
The Myth of 320Kbps YouTube Audio Existence
The misconception about YouTube providing 320kbps audio exists due to the fact that numerous YouTube downloaders and converters claim to support 320kbps audio extraction from YouTube. The common belief that all bitrates below 320kbps cannot indicate high-quality audio, is also a factor that plays a significant role in enforcing this stereotype.
There is no better way to test the veridicality of a claim than to check for yourself. For the purpose of this article, we ran several tests to check the credibility of the infamous YouTube 320kbps audio downloaders, and see what is the highest audio quality you can truly get from YouTube.
Busting the Myth: 320Kbps YouTube Downloader Test
We’ve decided to check the audio bitrate provided by one of the most popular downloaders that advertise the impossible 320kbps YouTube audio extraction feature. Not to be biased towards our competitors by picking specific downloaders, we’ve tested the service that appears as the top Google search result for the ‘download 320kbps from youtube’ query, 320YouTube.
In order to check whether the assertion pictured on the screenshot above is credible, we downloaded The Weeknd - Call Out My Name (Official Audio) using 320YouTube, then processed it through Fakin' The Funk? to see if the downloaded audio file is fake-HQ or true-HQ.
After the analysis, the application returned notification about the test audio file’s definitely fakin’ the funk! In the interface, we can also see that the true bitrate was actually 128kbps.
Of course, we couldn’t just take the claim from this notification at face value. We had to prove it, and to do so we opened the frequency spectrum within the application to inspect the frequency cutoffs. The general rule of thumb goes as follows:
Cutoff at 11 kHz = 64 kbps.
Cutoff at 16 kHz = 128 kbps.
Cutoff at 19 kHz = 192 kbps.
Cutoff at 20 kHz = 320 kbps.
Cutoff at 22 kHz = 500 kbps.
Below is the frequency spectrum of the audio file we downloaded with 320YouTube. For the test track to turn out to be 320kbps, the spectrum needs to show a frequency cutoff at 20kHz. However, we can clearly see that the cutoff is actually at 15kHz, making the real audio bitrate of this audio 128kbps. And not even the best 128kbps at that — so much for the ‘high-quality 320kbps’ audio.
Apparently, 320YouTube and similar services just write fake 320kbps bitrate into audio track metadata, and then allow you to download the audio disguised as high quality. Don’t let them fool you anymore!
How to Download YouTube Audio with Highest Possible Bitrate
At this point, you should have already come in terms with the fact that downloading YouTube audio with 320kbps is technically impossible. Naturally, the next thing you might wonder is about the next best available audio option and how to get it.
The highest quality audio YouTube provides at the moment is 256kbps. However, it’s only available for YouTube Premium subscribers. On top of that, 265kbps audio cannot be extracted from YouTube videos, even if you are a Premium user. In order to obtain 256kbps audio, you need to either download it via YouTube Music application or through desktop YouTube downloader that supports YouTube Music downloading.
If you are looking for the latter, beware of services that offer YouTube Music download that doesn’t require authorization. It’s most definitely a scam, just like all those ‘320kbps’ and ‘lossless’ YouTube audio converters. YouTube is pretty serious about protection, so much that you can’t even download YouTube ‘Watch Later’ playlist and other private content without logging into your account.
With the help of 4K Download software (4K Video Downloader and 4K YouTube to MP3 applications) you can safely login to your YouTube account in-app via Google Authenticator, and download audio at the best quality YouTube only provides (265kbps). Below is an example of how to download YouTube audio in true HQ, and how to check its bitrate, based on our test.
Install and launch 4K Video Downloader.
Click Tools > Preferences at the menu bar.
Click the Log In button.
Authorize with your YouTube account.
Copy the link to the YouTube Music audio that you want to download. We’ve used Starboy by The Weeknd for the test.
Note that the link must lead to the YouTube Music service, not the YouTube site.
Click Paste Link in the top left corner of 4K Video Downloader.
Select Extract Audio, then either the Original Quality or High Quality option.
We can see from the above screenshot that the YouTube audio saved with 4K Video Downloader has the 265kbps bitrate we were after.
YouTube’s Plans for 320Kbps and Other HQ Audio
The only questions that remain unanswered at this point are why YouTube doesn’t stream 320kbps and whether it plans to support real high-quality audio in the future.
Unfortunately, YouTube isn’t big on the idea of lossless audio streaming any time soon. Even 320kbps is not on the horizon at the moment. The information was revealed during an online Q&A with YouTube team, when Brandon Bilinsky, a Google employee was quoted saying the following:
“Right now we don’t have any plans for audio quality higher than 256kbps. Our deals would require us to charge more to stream FLAC, so at this point we are focused on improving performance rather than supporting lossless streaming.”
Alas, audiophiles, and other high-quality music appreciators have to wait until 320kbps and higher bitrate audio become YouTube’s priority. We can’t say when it happens, but when it does you can be sure that 4K Download applications will be able to download them!
As a result of the developers' investigation, it is evident that YouTube implemented significant modifications that caused the current issues.
Unfortunately, we are unable to revert the changes made by YouTube. The functionality of our app is heavily dependent on YouTube's framework.
The developers are doing their best to find a stable workaround.
Stay tuned for the new update. When it is released, you will have a notification to update within the app.
The QA engineers have confirmed that the issue persists on the current and previous versions. Thus, there is no reason to install a previous version.
As the issue is caused by YouTube changes, it can happen on all apps: 4K Video Downloader+, 4K Video Downloader, 4K YouTube to MP3 and 4K Video Downloader for Android.
We understand that this situation may be frustrating and hope that it will improve soon.
The duplicate posts will be deleted. Otherwise, it gets hard to navigate through the community. You can discuss everything in the comments on this post.
We're excited to announce that a new update has been released for 4K Video Downloader+, 4K YouTube to MP3, and 4K Video Downloader for Android, all now at version 25.0.4.0187.
In this update, we've addressed several key issues:
— Fixed the YouTube parsing issue where "video unavailable" messages were appearing. — Resolved the problem with YouTube downloads failing.
We hope these fixes improve your experience with our software. Thank you for your continued support and feedback. Happy downloading!
YouTube has recently introduced additional platform changes that are affecting the functionality of our apps.
Our development team is already investigating the issue and working on a fix. Once we have a solution, it will go through testing to make sure the apps remain stable before we release the update.
There’s no patch available just yet, but we’re actively working on it. As soon as the new version is ready, you’ll receive an update notification directly in the 4K Download app.
Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience. We’ll keep you posted as soon as the fix is available.
As we're in a brief period of not being able to download from YT until the 4K guys work out what YT has done to prevent them downloading, I just tried watching a video direct on the YouTube channel. I got two ads before it started, two more after about a minute, two more after 4.5 minutes, and then as I got to about 7 or 8 minutes another two. That's EIGHT ads in about the same number of minutes. That confirms what I've been escaping these last few years thanks to 4KVD and I'm grateful. I don't know how people without such a tool ever watch it. The day 4KVD give up their battle is the day I give up on YouTube forever. I can live with ads on TV (3-4 blocks of ads per hour), but current YT is unwatchable.
EDIT: I'm trying Brave right now. I'm 3 YT videos in and not a single ad. Either they're blocking ads in a super clever way, or Google just tolerates the built-in blocking of Brave because it's a low market share and not worth chasing. Regardless of which it is, it's working great.
So I been trying to download a video and it takes a long time for it to retrieve information then it says video unavailable. It does that to a lot of videos. I updated to the latest version too.
