Hey there! Let’s get you sorted with grabbing every track from a SoundCloud channel at the best possible quality. Since youtube-dl is no longer actively maintained, I’d strongly recommend using yt-dlp instead—it’s a drop-in replacement with better support for modern SoundCloud features and regular updates. Your existing youtube-dl knowledge will translate perfectly here.

Local Ubuntu Mate 20.04 Setup #

• First, install yt-dlp if you haven’t already:
  1. Grab the latest static yt-dlp binary for Linux (you can find this on the project’s official release page).
  2. Move it to a system-wide accessible directory and make it executable:

  sudo mv ~/Downloads/yt-dlp /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
  sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
  

• To download the entire channel at highest quality:

  yt-dlp -f bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestaudio https://soundcloud.com/your-target-channel
  

  The bestaudio[ext=m4a] flag prioritizes the M4A format (typically SoundCloud’s highest quality option), and falls back to the next best available if M4A isn’t offered.
• If you want to download all playlists under the channel too, add --yes-playlist:

  yt-dlp -f bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestaudio --yes-playlist https://soundcloud.com/your-target-channel
  

SSH Server Setup (With Update Access) #

This is a great option for large channels since it won’t tie up your local machine’s resources. The steps are almost identical:

• Install yt-dlp using the same method above (download the static binary, move it to /usr/local/bin, and make it executable).
• Run the download command with optional extras to make it smoother:

  yt-dlp -f bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestaudio --download-archive archive.txt https://soundcloud.com/your-target-channel
  

  --download-archive creates a text file to track already downloaded tracks, so you can resume or re-run the command without duplicating files.
• To keep the download running even if you disconnect from SSH, use nohup:

  nohup yt-dlp -f bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestaudio --download-archive archive.txt https://soundcloud.com/your-target-channel &
  

Debian System (No Auto-Updates) #

Since your Debian machine can’t auto-update packages, you can manually set up yt-dlp without touching system packages:

1. Download the latest static yt-dlp binary for Linux.
2. Save it to your home directory and make it executable:

chmod +x ~/yt-dlp

• Run commands using ~/yt-dlp instead of just yt-dlp (e.g., ~/yt-dlp -f bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestaudio https://soundcloud.com/your-target-channel).

Extra Tips #

• For private tracks: Export your SoundCloud cookies from your browser using a browser extension designed for this purpose, then add --cookies cookies.txt to the command to access restricted content.
• To organize tracks into playlist-specific folders:

  yt-dlp -f bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestaudio --output "%(playlist)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" https://soundcloud.com/your-target-channel
  

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者LT.Smash