Repository: yt-dlp
Issue: Downloading TikTok sound links fail.
Labels: site-bug

### Checklist

- [X] I'm reporting a broken site
- [X] I've verified that I'm running yt-dlp version **2022.06.29** ([update instructions](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#update)) or later (specify commit)
- [X] I've checked that all provided URLs are playable in a browser with the same IP and same login details
- [X] I've checked that all URLs and arguments with special characters are [properly quoted or escaped](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl#video-url-contains-an-ampersand-and-im-getting-some-strange-output-1-2839-or-v-is-not-recognized-as-an-internal-or-external-command)
- [X] I've searched the [bugtracker](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q=) for similar issues **including closed ones**. DO NOT post duplicates
- [X] I've read the [guidelines for opening an issue](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#opening-an-issue)
- [X] I've read about [sharing account credentials](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#are-you-willing-to-share-account-details-if-needed) and I'm willing to share it if required

### Region

Canada

### Provide a description that is worded well enough to be understood

While TikTok profiles are working, I'm noticing failures whenever I add links to sounds. For clarification, such a link would contain a playlist of clips from different users - all using a similar "sound/audio".

These "sound" links can be in the "vm" format if copied from mobile, or a standard "tiktok" url if copied from web browser. Both kinds are failing to download.

In the attached verbose log, it uses a random sound link that contains only two or three videos. But it fails to download anything. I have reproduced this error with every kind of sound link.

This is my first bug report. Hope I typed it out correctly. Forgive any mistakes!

### Provide verbose output that clearly demonstrates the problem

- [X] Run **your** yt-dlp command with **-vU** flag added (`yt-dlp -vU <your command line>`)
- [X] Copy the WHOLE output (starting with `[debug] Command-line config`) and insert it below

### Complete Verbose Output

```shell
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19044.1766]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Administrator>yt-dlp -vU --no-config --config-location "A:\DataBase\Programs\-- YouTube DL --\[Configs]\[TikTok].conf" -a "A:\DataBase\Programs\-- YouTube DL --\[Batch]\[TikTok] [Sounds].txt" pause
[debug] Command-line config: ['-vU', '--no-config', '--config-location', 'A:\\DataBase\\Programs\\-- YouTube DL --\\[Configs]\\[TikTok].conf', '-a', 'A:\\DataBase\\Programs\\-- YouTube DL --\\[Batch]\\[TikTok] [Sounds].txt', 'pause']
[debug] | Config "A:\DataBase\Programs\-- YouTube DL --\[Configs]\[TikTok].conf": ['--download-archive', 'A:\\DataBase\\Programs\\-- YouTube DL --\\[History]\\History.txt', '--user-agent', 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/96.0.4664.116 YaBrowser/22.1.1.1544 Yowser/2.5 Safari/537.36', '--cookies', 'A:\\DataBase\\Programs\\-- YouTube DL --\\[Cookies]\\tiktok.com_cookies.txt', '--no-playlist', '--cache-dir', 'A:\\DataBase\\Programs\\-- YouTube DL --\\[Cache]', '-S', 'res,ext', '--sleep-requests', '1', '--sleep-interval', '2', '--max-sleep-interval', '4', '-R', 'infinite', '-o', 'A:\\[Drive] [4]\\Virtual\\Downloads\\-- YouTube-DL --\\[TikTok]\\[%(uploader)s] [%(uploader_id)s]\\[%(title).30s] [%(id)s] [%(resolution)s].%(ext)s', '-i']
[debug] Batch file urls: ['https://www.tiktok.com/music/sonido-original-7106590513599433477']
[debug] Encodings: locale cp1252, fs utf-8, pref cp1252, out utf-8, error utf-8, screen utf-8
[debug] yt-dlp version 2022.06.29 [9d339c4] (win32_exe)
[debug] Python 3.8.10 (CPython 64bit) - Windows-10-10.0.19044-SP0
[debug] Checking exe version: ffmpeg -bsfs
[debug] Checking exe version: ffprobe -bsfs
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-104454-gd92fdc7144-20211101 (setts), ffprobe N-104454-gd92fdc7144-20211101, phantomjs 2.1.1, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Optional libraries: Cryptodome-3.15.0, brotli-1.0.9, certifi-2022.06.15, mutagen-1.45.1, sqlite3-2.6.0, websockets-10.3
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[debug] Loading archive file 'A:\\DataBase\\Programs\\-- YouTube DL --\\[History]\\History.txt'
[debug] Fetching release info: https://api.github.com/repos/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest
[debug] Downloading _update_spec from https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/download/2022.06.29/_update_spec
Latest version: 2022.06.29, Current version: 2022.06.29
yt-dlp is up to date (2022.06.29)
[tiktok:sound] Setting up session
[debug] [tiktok:sound] Extracting URL: https://www.tiktok.com/music/sonido-original-7106590513599433477
[download] Downloading playlist: 7106590513599433477
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 1 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 2 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 3 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 4 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying...
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 1)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 1 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 1)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 2 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 1)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 3 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 1)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 4 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 1)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying...
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 2)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 1 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 2)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 2 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 2)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 3 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 2)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 4 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 2)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying...
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 3)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 1 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 3)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 2 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 3)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 3 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 3)
WARNING: [tiktok:sound] Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). Retrying... (attempt 4 of 5)
[tiktok:sound] Sleeping 1.0 seconds ...
[tiktok:sound] 7106590513599433477: Downloading video list page 1 (attempt 3)
ERROR: 7106590513599433477: Failed to parse JSON (caused by JSONDecodeError('Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)')); please report this issue on  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using  yt-dlp -U
  File "yt_dlp\extractor\common.py", line 942, in _parse_json
  File "json\__init__.py", line 370, in loads
  File "yt_dlp\utils.py", line 599, in decode
  File "json\decoder.py", line 337, in decode
  File "json\decoder.py", line 355, in raw_decode
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

[tiktok:sound] Playlist 7106590513599433477: Downloading 1 videos of 0
[download] Finished downloading playlist: 7106590513599433477
[debug] [generic] Extracting URL: pause
ERROR: [generic] 'pause' is not a valid URL. Set --default-search "ytsearch" (or run  yt-dlp "ytsearch:pause" ) to search YouTube
  File "yt_dlp\extractor\common.py", line 640, in extract
  File "yt_dlp\extractor\generic.py", line 2792, in _real_extract


C:\Users\Administrator>
```