1 files changed, 2 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py b/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py
index e5a96cad5..c18ce9660 100755
--- a/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py
+++ b/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ if os.name == 'nt':
     import ctypes
 
 from .compat import (
+    compat_basestring,
     compat_cookiejar,
     compat_expanduser,
     compat_http_client,
@@ -1558,7 +1559,7 @@ class YoutubeDL(object):
         # urllib chokes on URLs with non-ASCII characters (see http://bugs.python.org/issue3991)
         # To work around aforementioned issue we will replace request's original URL with
         # percent-encoded one
-        req_is_string = isinstance(req, basestring if sys.version_info < (3, 0) else compat_str)
+        req_is_string = isinstance(req, compat_basestring)
         url = req if req_is_string else req.get_full_url()
         url_escaped = escape_url(url)