Want to switch to Apple Music because you can’t find your favorite indie band on Spotify? Or maybe you’re on Amazon Music but saw a new subscriber offer on Tidal that’s too good to pass up.
There are a variety of reasons to change music providers. But if you’re thinking about it, and you’re worried about losing your library of saved songs and personalized playlists, fear not: There are ways to bring all of it with you.
Many music streaming services don’t make it obvious—often burying instructions deep in FAQs and making the process arduous—but they do offer options to help migrate your collection.
Apple made it easier last month when it quietly rolled out a new feature allowing users to import libraries from rival sites. Having Apple officially incorporate the feature might give reluctant users the confidence to move.
Some pointers to help you along with your musical migration.
Importing into Apple Music
The iPhone maker recently published a help page to walk users through the process of importing libraries into Apple Music.
The feature, buried in your settings, is provided by a third-party service called SongShift. It’s currently available to users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
To use it, you’ll need an Apple Music account and the latest version of iOS or the Android Apple Music app.
On iPhone, go to Settings, then Apps, then Music. Tap “Transfer Music from Other Music Services” to pop up a list of various streaming services. Android users can follow a similar process. Transfers can also be done through a web browser at music.apple.com.
After choosing a service, another screen appears, prompting you to log in to the target account.
Now you get a menu with options to import “All Songs and Albums” as well as “All Playlists.” If you don’t want all your playlists, you can untick the ones you don’t want. However, you can’t pick individual songs and albums.
Apple Music will then replicate your library based on your choices.
Importing my Spotify library, with about 150 playlists, went fairly smoothly, although the process took about half an hour because the service also downloaded around 1,230 songs and albums to my iPhone.
I had assumed that ticking “All Songs and Albums” meant that Apple Music would mirror the handful of music I had downloaded to my Spotify app, but it also downloaded all 63 albums in my Spotify library and the 440 songs on my “Liked Songs” list, which I normally listen to via streaming. If you don’t want to download everything, unselect that option before you start.
Also note that Apple says playlists “created by the music service” can’t be transferred, so I couldn’t bring Spotify-curated lists like “This is Taylor Swift” or “Alternative 80s” with me.
It also meant that my Liked Songs list, which Spotify generates for every user—and a list I’ve been adding to over the years—couldn’t be replicated. Any downloaded songs were just dumped into Apple Music’s library.
After this story was first published, reader Linda Feaster wrote in with a work-around: Create your own playlist and then add all the tracks from the Spotify playlist. It could be tedious if there are hundreds of songs but should do the trick.
If you’re tempted to try out the tool, note that it probably won’t work the same way with every service. Apple warns that what can be transferred is up to the source platform. Playlists made by others, such as BBC Music’s “The Sounds of 1994,” for example, did make it over.
After the move is done, you’ll have 30 days to review songs that aren’t available or don’t have an exact match in Apple’s catalog, and choose from any alternate versions.
Working with other music platforms
Most of the other big music streaming platforms offer ways to transfer your library to their site. They mostly rely on stand-alone third-party services that have been around for a while, are free to use, and don’t need app integration to work.
Tidal and Deezer both direct users on their websites to one such service, Tune My Music, which works with popular platforms like Spotify as well as a host of lesser-known sites.
Amazon Music’s web page has dedicated buttons for Tune My Music and two similar services, SongShift and Soundiiz.
Google also advises third-party services for YouTube Music users who want to import or export playlists, albums, artists, and tracks. However, for Apple Music users who want to move to YouTube Music, the process is different. You’ll have to sign in to Apple Music and find “Request to transfer a copy of your data,” then export it directly to YouTube Music.
“The transfer process may take several hours if you have many playlists,” Google warns on its support page.
Spotify says it’s currently testing a way for users to transfer their libraries and expects to provide more details soon.
Using a third-party service to migrate between platforms
It was super easy to move my Spotify library to Deezer using Tune My Music.
I clicked a button on the Deezer website that got the process started by prompting me to log in to my Spotify account. Then a menu came up with pre-ticked options on what I could migrate: my entire library, favorite songs, favorite albums, favorite artists, and any or all of my 150 playlists.
I decided to move it all over, which amounted to more than 16,359 items. It took about five minutes. Unlike Apple Music, Deezer didn’t download any files; it just copied lists.
A few dozen songs went missing, Tune My Music said.
“It usually happens because the song doesn’t exist on the new platform, or it’s named a bit differently and couldn’t be matched,” it said, but added that I could download a list of missing tracks to look for them on the new platform.
After you finish transferring your music library, don’t forget that it’s still on the original platform and hasn’t been deleted.
Most third-party transfer services are free, but also offer premium levels with more features, such as instant syncing of libraries between multiple streaming sites.
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—By Kelvin Chan, AP business writer
AP Business Writer James Pollard contributed to this report.