• @Noobnarski
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    111 day ago

    Youtube Music doesn’t just serve the audio from a video. They do serve the audio from a video if nothing else is available, but they also get releases directly from the publishers/distributors.

    The difference in sound quality is definetly noticeable.

    • @[email protected]
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      6 hours ago

      Youtube Music doesn’t just serve the audio from a video.

      Yes it does. You don’t even need to take my word for it. Look up any song by any artist and find their official video for that song. Take this one as an example: https://youtu.be/kPa7bsKwL-c

      Analyze it with yt-dlp or something similar;

      249 webm  audio only      21.51MiB    50k https │ audio only           opus        50k 48k low, webm_dash
      250 webm  audio only      22.00MiB    67k https │ audio only           opus        67k 48k low, webm_dash
      251 webm  audio only      23.92MiB   130k https │ audio only           opus       130k 48k medium, webm_dash
      233 mp4   audio only        │                   m3u8  │ audio only           unknown             Default
      234 mp4   audio only        │                   m3u8  │ audio only           unknown             Default
      140 m4a   audio only      23.90MiB   129k https │ audio only           mp4a.40.2  129k 44k medium, m4a_dash
      

      YouTube already has access to the audio for that song without any additional effort because of how YouTube works. I’m sure publishers can provide higher quality audio, up to 256Kbps but that option isn’t even enabled for users by default. By default you’re listening to “normal” audio or 130Kbps: https://i.xno.dev/Ow2eC.png

      The reason why YouTube Music works is because they already have access to a huge library of music through music videos and the like. They save a ton of time and money by doing things this way and it makes perfect sense that they do…