Transfer Your Playlists From Spotify to Apple Music

Switching from Spotify to Apple Music used to mean staring down years of carefully built playlists and wondering if you’d have to rebuild them all by hand. That’s no longer true. Apple actually built a native transfer tool directly into Apple Music, and there’s a solid bench of third-party apps if you want more control or you’re moving from a platform Apple’s own tool doesn’t cover. This guide walks through both routes, plus a smart backup step that means you’ll never be stuck rebuilding a playlist from scratch again.

Start here: Apple’s own built-in transfer tool

This is the easiest method for most people, and a lot of switchers don’t even know it exists. Apple integrated a native “Transfer Music from Other Music Services” feature right into the Apple Music app, so you don’t need a third-party account or app at all for a basic move.

On iPhone or Android:

1. Open the Apple Music app and tap your profile icon.
2. Go to account settings and select Transfer Music from Other Music Services.
3. Choose Spotify and authorize Apple to access your account.
4. Select the playlists you want to bring over.
5. Tap Add to Library and let it run.

On desktop: Use the web player at music.apple.com rather than the Mac or Windows desktop app, since the native transfer tool currently lives on the web interface, not the installed apps. Click your profile icon, select Transfer Music, authorize Spotify, choose your playlists, and click Add to Library.

Once the transfer finishes, Apple flags any ambiguous matches — for instance, if it substituted a live recording for the studio version you had. You get a 30-day window to review that queue and manually fix anything that matched incorrectly, which is a genuinely useful safety net.

The whole point of this built-in option is that it’s free, requires no separate app, and handles the common case well. For most people with a normal-sized playlist collection, this should be the first thing you try.

When to use a third-party tool instead

Apple’s native tool covers the basics, but there are a few situations where a dedicated third-party app makes more sense:

You’re transferring from a platform other than Spotify, or to multiple destinations at once. You want ongoing sync between two services rather than a one-time move. You want more granular control over reviewing matches before they’re committed. Or you simply prefer a tool with a cleaner track record for very large libraries.

If any of that applies, here are the main options, each with real trade-offs worth knowing before you commit time to one.

SongShift (iOS and Mac)

SongShift is built specifically for the Apple ecosystem and works well as a dedicated migration app. You connect your Spotify account, browse your playlists and albums, select what you want, and hit its “Shift” function to migrate everything into Apple Music. It supports batch operations, and the paid Pro tier adds automatic syncing so future changes to your Spotify playlists carry over without you doing the transfer again. It’s a strong choice if you’re staying in the Apple hardware world and want a native-feeling app rather than a browser tool.

TuneMyMusic (web-based)

TuneMyMusic works entirely in the browser and supports a long list of platforms beyond just Spotify and Apple Music. The free version caps you at a limited number of total songs, generally around 500; unlimited transfers and ongoing sync require a paid plan. It’s a good option if you want to avoid installing anything and you’re moving a modest number of playlists.

Soundiiz (web-based)

Soundiiz is a similarly capable web tool, supporting a wide range of streaming services with a clean interface. The free tier limits you to a set number of tracks per playlist, commonly around 200, with premium unlocking bigger transfers and automatic syncing. One particularly useful feature: when a track can’t be matched, Soundiiz exports the unmatched items as a list so you can find and fix them manually instead of just losing them silently.

FreeYourMusic (cross-platform)

FreeYourMusic works across Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux, which makes it a flexible option if you’re not fully in the Apple ecosystem yet. The free tier covers a set number of songs (typically in the low hundreds), with a paid tier for larger or repeated transfers.

Choosing based on library size

If you’re moving a fairly small, curated set of playlists, the free tiers of TuneMyMusic or Soundiiz are usually enough on their own. If you’ve got a large library — thousands of tracks across dozens of playlists — the free caps on these tools will feel restrictive fast. In that case, a one-month premium subscription to whichever tool you prefer, used to push through the entire transfer in one sitting and then cancelled immediately afterward, is generally the most efficient and least frustrating approach. Trying to break a big library into dozens of small free-tier chunks tends to cost more time than it saves.

A few things to expect during any transfer

Whichever method you use, go in with realistic expectations, because moving between two different music catalogs is never perfectly clean.

Expect roughly a 90-95% match rate. Regional licensing differences, catalog gaps, and alternate versions of songs mean some tracks won’t transfer cleanly no matter which tool you use. This isn’t a flaw in any particular app — it’s just the nature of moving between two separately licensed catalogs.

“Liked Songs” needs special handling. Your Spotify Liked Songs isn’t a normal playlist, it’s a library flag, so most transfer tools can’t move it directly as-is. The reliable workaround is to create a new, static playlist in Spotify, copy your Liked Songs into it, and then transfer that playlist like any other.

Always audit afterward. Whichever tool you use, spend a few minutes checking your transferred playlists against the originals. Look for missing tracks, swapped live versions, or wrong albums, and fix them by hand where needed. A quick review saves you from a playlist that plays fine for months before you notice something’s off.

The backup approach: convert instead of (or alongside) transferring

Here’s a angle worth considering regardless of which transfer method you use: your playlists, once moved, are still just streaming entries in Apple Music. They depend on your subscription staying active and on Apple’s catalog continuing to license the same songs. If either changes, your “transferred” playlist can quietly break.

If there are specific songs or playlists you genuinely never want to lose, converting them to standalone MP3 files gives you a version that doesn’t depend on either service. A free tool like SpotiDown saves Spotify tracks and playlists as MP3 files before you even make the jump to Apple Music, which is a smart safety net to run before or during a platform switch. And once you’re settled into Apple Music, a tool like Apl Music Downloader does the same job for anything you add there, giving you a personal archive that isn’t tied to either platform’s licensing decisions or your subscription status.

This isn’t a replacement for actually transferring your playlists — you’ll still want them live and functional inside Apple Music for day-to-day listening. Think of the MP3 conversion as insurance: a copy of your favorites that keeps existing no matter what happens to either streaming catalog down the line. There’s a good explanation of that reasoning in this piece on the benefits of converting streamed music to MP3.

A note on doing this responsibly

Converting music for your own personal, offline use generally sits in a different category from sharing or redistributing it, and each platform’s terms of service set their own rules separate from copyright law. Keep any conversions for your own listening, never sell or share them, and follow the rules where you live.