Compared to plain audio, videos are the more powerful media of engagement for artists. For one, the public not only gets to hear the song, but it also enjoys its visualization. Therefore, it is not surprising most artists release a song and follow it up almost immediately with the music video.
About 99 per cent of the time, the video has more view count than the audio. Having discovered the power of video to engage and entertain, artists are now using videos to extend the lifespan of their songs.
For the most part, fans don’t just want to watch a video on the streaming platforms to which it has been uploaded. Instead, they want to download the video to their pc and mobile devices as well.
The question arises, how do I download this video?
The streaming platform of choice, and the home to the most videos on the planet, is YouTube. So it will be the medium of example in this post.
YouTube videos are generally available for viewing to the public for free. However, before you watch the video, YouTube tosses an advert or two your way – plays an ad right on the video you want to play. Fortunately, after a few seconds, you are given the option to skip the ad and watch the video that led you to YouTube in the first place.
Some find the ads intrusive and annoying – and indeed they are – but then that’s how YouTubers and Google make money.
To view YouTube videos without the intrusive ads, you might want to subscribe to YouTube Premium. At 11.99/ month, the service might be affordable to some and beyond the reach of others.
Anyway, with a YouTube Premium service, which you can try for 1 month free, you get to enjoy ad-free music and background play, free YouTube Music Premium, free download, and more.
Understandably, and as stated earlier, not everyone can afford to pay for YouTube Premium to download videos.
This leads us to…
Other Options to Download South African Music Videos
There are online services that enable you to download South African music videos pretty easily. These sites include.
1) SaveFrom
Savefrom.net has been around for years and makes it easy to download any video of your choice. The main advantage of this medium is that you can either output the video as mp4 or audio mp3—your choice.
There are two options open to you:
- a) Visiting the site and pasting the URL of the video you want to download in the box provided
See the screenshot below.
- b) Pasting into a browser the URL of the video you want to download, preceding the URL with “ss” (without quotes). Example: ssyoutube.com/watch?v=gydT26****E
X2Convert
X2Convert.com is another notable choice to download videos from
If you don’t fancy these options, you may want to download the 4k video downloader app. The page looks like this.
After downloading the app, which is available for Windows, Ubuntu and macOS, install and run it on your system. Now copy the URL of the video you want to download and paste it in the “paste link” interface provided in the app (see screenshot).
You are provided with a preview of the video you want to download and options for download. Choose what you desire and click the download icon to begin downloading.
Speaking of Android and iOS, it is hard to get an app that can download YouTube videos on the mobile arena. When such apps are found on Google Play, they are usually removed as they violate Google’s policy.
To beat this, on your android phone, you may have to change your settings to enable you to install apps from unknown sources, then head over to InsTube and install its free video and music downloader. On iOS, you may have to jailbreak your iPhone…
