That's what I do. It's absolutely stellar that there are so many live concerts, old TV shows, etc. of things that I'm interested in. Maybe if you have interests outside of the mainstream it's safe for now, but sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't download absolutely everything I like in order to avoid a future where more copyright detectin' software and lawyers get involved.

Another angle that's nice about youtube are all the digitized LPs. An awful lot of music never made the jump to CD, I remember how huge the jazz album bins used to be at some record stores.

I mean this worked for a while, but many songs now are distorted or slowed down so they're not detected by Youtube copyright bots.

Many songs are sped up, and the discovery that this often has the effect of making them sound better than the original may have created a whole new "genre" of music --- nightcore. I've come across some very pleasing "nightcore'd" songs, and listened to the original, but still think the sped-up and higher-pitched version sounds better. It's an interesting psychological effect.

...and I've also noticed the content ID system still detects them, but they probably remain because the IP holders are content to monetise those videos and reap the profits rather than getting them taken down (and earning nothing.) That turns the question into "is adblocking piracy?" and that's a whole different can of worms...

It still works just fine for the kind of music I listen to, no distortion involved.

"I for one prefer the dmca evasion remix..."

Youtube-dl can turn the YouTube videos into audio tracks for you, at least a few steps closer to piracy.

Don't forget the lovely mps-youtube, which allows you to search YouTube, play audio and build playlists right from your terminal.

It's been a godsend for me in locations with extremely slow or intermittent connections.

https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube

If I wanted mp3s I'd just torrent them, though. The whole point of YouTube is I can stream them easily and not have to worry about moving files around, and especially, not deal with anything not above-the-board on work-owned computers.