How to Extract Audio from a Video and Save It as MP3

Sometimes all you actually need from a video is the sound: a great piece of music, a lecture recording, a voiceover, or a podcast you'd rather listen to in a music player without the picture. Extracting the audio track from a video is easy.

What "extracting audio" means

A video file (say, MP4) contains two tracks — video and audio. "Extracting audio" means dropping the video and keeping only the sound, saved as a separate file, usually MP3. MP3 opens on any phone, in a car stereo, in any media player, and takes up little space.

How to extract audio from a video online

The simplest way is without any software, right in your browser. Open the video/audio to MP3 tool, upload your video file, choose MP3 as the output format, and download the result. The video track is discarded and what you get is clean audio. The file is processed on the server and deleted immediately after conversion.

Common video formats are supported (MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI, WebM, and others), as well as several audio formats, and the maximum file size is 50 MB — plenty for short clips and recordings.

Which format to save to

• MP3 — the universal choice: small, opens everywhere. Great for music, voice, and podcasts.
• WAV — uncompressed, maximum quality, but a large file size. Useful if the audio is headed into further editing.
• AAC / M4A — more compact than MP3 at similar quality, convenient within the Apple ecosystem.
• FLAC — lossless compression, for audiophiles.

For most tasks, MP3 is the way to go.

A note on copyright

Only extract audio from files you own or are allowed to use. Downloading music and video from streaming services (YouTube and similar) is a separate matter with its own legal restrictions; our tool only works with files you upload yourself.

Bottom line

You don't need heavyweight software to pull MP3 out of a video — just upload the file to the MP4 to MP3 converter and download the audio. A few seconds, and the track is ready for your player.