How-to guide
How to separate drums from a YouTube video
YouTube is the biggest music library in the world, and sometimes you want to isolate the drums from a specific performance, cover or live recording. DrumSplit does not fetch from YouTube directly, but the two-step workflow takes under 5 minutes.
Downloading copyrighted YouTube content beyond personal use may violate YouTube's Terms of Service and copyright law in your jurisdiction. Use this for practice, study and private projects.
Step-by-step
- Download the audio from YouTube. Use a yt-dlp-based tool or browser extension to save the audio as MP3 or WAV. Save to your Downloads folder.
- Open DrumSplit.io. Any browser. No install or account needed.
- Upload the downloaded audio. Drop the MP3 or WAV onto DrumSplit. Up to 100 MB.
- Pick Natural mode and pay $0.99. Most YouTube music content has real or programmed drums — Natural mode handles both.
- Download 7 files in 2-3 minutes. Kick, snare, hi-hats, toms, cymbals and a drumless music track — all as WAV.
Tips for better results
- Download as WAV rather than MP3 if the tool supports it — YouTube serves audio at up to 256 kbps Opus quality.
- Live performance videos produce usable but less clean results than studio recordings — see our guide on live recordings.
- For music videos, the audio track is the same as the studio version in most cases.
Try DrumSplit
Upload a song to the drum splitter & drum stem separator and get 7 files: kick, snare, hi-hats, toms, cymbals, a drum bus and the music without drums. From $0.99 per split. No subscription. Purchased credits never expire.
Try DrumSplit