Getting MIDI from a YouTube video: what actually works
There is no direct "YouTube to MIDI" tool here, and there is a reason for that. What legitimate options exist, and how to get the audio into a transcription tool once you have it.
Searching "YouTube to MIDI" usually turns up tools that ask for a video URL and silently download someone else's copyrighted audio server-side. MelodyTrace doesn't have a tool like that, and it's a deliberate choice, not an oversight — bulk-downloading other people's YouTube videos server-side without permission runs into both YouTube's Terms of Service and copyright law, and "the audio disappears after conversion" doesn't really change that. Here's what's actually available instead.
If the video is yours
If you uploaded it, YouTube Studio lets you download your own video directly (Content → select the video → the download icon, or the ⋮ menu). That's a first-party file, no ambiguity, and you can drop it straight into MP4 to MIDI.
If it's Creative Commons or you have explicit permission
Some YouTube content is published under a Creative Commons license that permits reuse, and some creators will grant permission directly if you ask. In either case, download via YouTube's own tools where available, keep a record of the license or permission, and then transcribe the resulting file normally.
If you're transcribing a melody for personal reference
If what you actually need isn't the file itself but the melody — you're learning a piece by ear, working out a chord progression, or capturing an idea a video gave you — the practical path is to play the video and record what you hear (or hum/play it back yourself) rather than downloading the source. That sidesteps the file-rights question entirely, since you're transcribing your own performance or recording, not distributing someone else's audio. This is also just how musicians have transcribed by ear from any external source, video included, for as long as recordings have existed. Upload that recording to Audio to MIDI same as any other file.
What we deliberately didn't build
docs/seo-tools-roadmap.md in this project explicitly defers a direct YouTube-URL-to-MIDI tool over ToS and copyright exposure — that's a product decision, not a technical limitation, and it stands regardless of how much search demand there is for it. If your use case is one of the three above, the existing tools cover it without that tool needing to exist.
Related
- MP4 to MIDI — for a video file you already have the rights to.
- Audio to MIDI — for a recording of yourself playing or humming something back.
- How accurate is audio-to-MIDI transcription? — what to expect from the transcription itself, whatever the source.