Converting a youtube link to any alternative front-end is as i remember correctly as easy as changing the youtube.com part to whatever the front-end link is.
I think pipedbot should use the open source link redirection service called farside. It take care of automatic redirection when a front-end is momentarily dead and also do some load balancing by redirecting between multiple self-hosted front-ends so as to not Hug a single one to death while others get barely any use.
Only the funniest one ever: Radioactive by Imagine Dragons. Don't get me wrong, I love Weird Al, but the video for Radioactive is like something from the best fever dream ever.
May if it worked. I haven't had a single piped link work so far. Yeah, bad timing is bad timing but there is a strong implication from my experience that it's effectively down more than it's up.