So am I, sans the paying part.

Enjoy the tiny hole in your wallet? Weird flex. I enjoy the same benefits using uBlock origin and yt-dl. And it didn't take any tinfoil :)

Thank you for reminding me that yt-dlp also works with youtube music (didn't think of that). I just tried to list all the available formats of a song there:

    ID  EXT   RESOLUTION FPS CH │   FILESIZE  TBR PROTO │ VCODEC         VBR ACODEC      ABR ASR MORE INFO
    ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
    233 mp4   audio only        │                 m3u8  │ audio only         unknown             Default
    234 mp4   audio only        │                 m3u8  │ audio only         unknown             Default
    599 m4a   audio only      2 │    1.05MiB  31k https │ audio only         mp4a.40.5   31k 22k ultralow, m4a_dash
    600 webm  audio only      2 │    1.27MiB  37k https │ audio only         opus        37k 48k ultralow, webm_dash
    139 m4a   audio only      2 │    1.67MiB  49k https │ audio only         mp4a.40.5   49k 22k low, m4a_dash
    249 webm  audio only      2 │    1.86MiB  55k https │ audio only         opus        55k 48k low, webm_dash
    250 webm  audio only      2 │    2.44MiB  71k https │ audio only         opus        71k 48k low, webm_dash
    140 m4a   audio only      2 │    4.42MiB 130k https │ audio only         mp4a.40.2  130k 44k medium, m4a_dash
    251 webm  audio only      2 │    4.71MiB 138k https │ audio only         opus       138k 48k medium, webm_dash

Hm ... no mp3 (my car accepts mp3 only) and the bit rate is not very high. Is youtube music that bad?

> no mp3 (my car accepts mp3 only)

Both AAC and Opus fix some of MP3's inherent design problems (like imperfect handling of short sharp transients no matter how much bitrate you throw at it), so the only reason to continue using MP3 is for compatibility with old devices.

Since downloads aren't an official part of Youtube's offering, they don't have to care about old offline-only hardware players only supporting MP3, either and anything that's modern enough to still support either a Youtube app or the website will also support either AAC or Opus.

> the bit rate is not very high

There's also a high bitrate available, but only for subscribers.

Tell me, do you casually click 15-20 videos on your phone while You're taxing before takeoff to be entertained for the whole flight? Do you use a media player that lets you turn off the screen but continue to listen to your just released yt podcast while you work out? Do you watch live feeds on your phone without ads? Or do you run a yt-dl scripts from the CL 3-4 times per year to farm w comments?

I use NewPipe for all of those use cases. No ads, playback while screen is off, queue up and download videos, watch live streams, etc.

Sorry, was that supposed to be a gotcha?

It's funny that all the counterarguments here depend on things staying exactly the same forever.