Apple Music subscribers can now transfer their playlists over to YouTube Music, according to a recent support document spotted by MacRumors. Up until now, Apple did not offer native tools for transferring playlists to rival music services, making YouTube Music the first.
There are some caveats, however. Only songs available on YouTube Music can be transferred over, which means you won’t be able to migrate audio files like podcasts or audiobooks. You also can’t transfer curated or non-collaborative shared playlists, music files, or the folders you’ve created to organize playlists in Apple Music.
To move your playlists over to YouTube Music, you must have an active Apple Music or iTunes Match subscription, as well as an active YouTube Music account. Once logged into Apple’s Data and Privacy page, simply select “Transfer a copy of your data” and follow the onscreen instructions. Depending on how many playlists you’re migrating, it could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.
Apple Music still doesn’t allow users to transfer playlists to other services, though, so you’ll still need to use a third-party tool to move your playlists to Spotify, Amazon Music, and other streaming services. However, Apple might be looking into making importing playlists easier. In February, Redditors noticed an Apple Music on Android beta that lets you use third-party service SongShift natively, allowing you to move playlists from Spotify and other services to Apple Music.
