Apple Music can now transfer playlists to and from YouTube Music…but not Spotify

Switching music streaming services can be a headache, but it’s getting a little easier…for two services, at least. Apple Music now lets you easily transfer playlists to and from YouTube Music. So if you’re looking to transfer music services—as long as Spotify’s not involved—there’s an easy process for doing so. Here’s how it works.

New music service transfer support

Today Apple published two new support documents:

• Transfer a copy of your music playlists to Apple Music
• Transfer a copy of your Apple Music playlists to another service

Each support page outlines the simple steps you need to take to move your data to or from Apple Music.

Unfortunately, playlists are the only data type currently supported for transfers. There’s no way to transfer your entire music library, listening history, algorithmic preferences, liked songs, or anything more complicated than playlists. But it’s a start at least.

Even though Apple’s support pages are technically service-agnostic in their description, currently the only service that Apple Music supports transfers with is YouTube Music.

Hopefully in the near future though, Apple Music and Spotify work out an agreement where transfers are supported between those services too. Based on the two companies’ history though, I’m not holding my breath.

How to transfer your playlists between Apple Music and YouTube Music

There are separate sets of instructions depending on whether you’re switching to Apple Music from YouTube Music, or away from Apple Music to YouTube.

To transfer your playlists from YouTube Music into Apple Music, you can follow the process available at Google Takeout. Make sure to choose ‘Apple Music’ as the destination.

To go the other direction, moving your Apple Music playlists into YouTube Music, you’ll visit the Data and Privacy page as part of your Apple Account. After hitting ‘Transfer a copy of your data’ you’ll see an option to transfer Apple Music playlists.

This cross-service data transfer support follows Apple and Google’s cooperation earlier this year on photo transfers.

Do you plan to use the playlist transfer tool? Let us know how it goes in the comments.