The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents the global recording industry, has asked the European Commission to add yt-dlp to its 2027 Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List. TorrentFreak reports that the group calls the software a “major problem” for the music business but stops short of asking for any concrete action against it.
yt-dlp is a free, open-source tool that downloads video and audio for offline viewing and listening. Beyond YouTube, it supports more than 1,500 other sites and services. The project has racked up over 190,000 stars on GitHub, making it the 32nd most-starred repository on the platform.
IFPI argues that yt-dlp lets users download and permanently keep music and video from licensed streaming platforms, YouTube included, without permission. Its open-source code, large developer community and wide distribution make it hard to contain, the group says. The submission names four of the project’s developers by their GitHub handles and asks for yt-dlp to be listed alongside stream-ripping services Savefrom.net and Y2mate.
The list itself doesn’t ban anything. The Commission uses it to flag marketplaces and services outside the EU that rights holders say facilitate piracy, though a spot on it can push authorities to act. According to TorrentFreak, this is the first time yt-dlp or its predecessor youtube-dl has been named in such a submission.
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Rights holders have gone after youtube-dl before. In October 2020, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) got GitHub to take youtube-dl down, but the platform restored the repository a few weeks later. The labels fared better in Germany, where they won a case against Uberspace, the host of youtube-dl’s official website. In November 2024, the Hamburg Court of Appeal rejected the host’s appeal. Meanwhile, development has largely shifted to yt-dlp, a youtube-dl fork launched in 2021.
Beyond yt-dlp, IFPI also flags two AI apps, Rythmix and MusiQ AI. Paste a YouTube link into either one and it turns the track into an AI cover with a cloned version of the artist’s voice. Rythmix alone has been downloaded more than 5 million times on Google Play. The Commission will decide in the coming months whether yt-dlp and these apps make the 2027 list.
