Spotify Unveils Native Playlist Transfers

Spotify is developing a native way to take your music life with you. They’ve also built TuneMyMusic directly into the mobile app, letting users transfer playlists from rival services to and from Spotify in a few taps — a development that shaves down one of the barriers facing people who might jump ship, making the streaming wars wheel toward greater portability.

The option resides in Your Library. At the bottom, tap Import your music, select a source service and follow the prompts. At launch, the offering will be available with Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, Deezer, Pandora, SoundCloud, and more. Transfers copy tracks to playlists on Spotify; the source service’s songs are placed in a new playlist in Spotify.

How the new transfer works inside Spotify’s app

After you tap “Scan to Add,” Spotify connects you to TuneMyMusic within your app and asks for permission to read and add items in your library.

You can choose individual playlists or entire collections to be migrated. The tool will map tracks to Spotify’s catalog, adjusting for differences in things like regional availability, album editions (i.e., standard versus deluxe), and clean/explicit versions.

Third-party migration tools generally provide great match rates on popular releases, but oddities (unofficial remixes, region-locked content, etc.) may require manual housekeeping.

There will be the occasional fill-in — a live version rather than a studio recording — and you will have to make peace with duplicates if any given song shows up on more than one compilation.

Historically, the standalone website for TuneMyMusic caps free transfers at 500 tracks and you need a paid plan to move more than that. Spotify is not sharing the terms of its partnership, but the in-app flow removes friction and centralizes a process that could help push more users to at least try making a full migration.

Why it’s important for switching between services

Library lock-in has long served to prevent subscribers from swapping services. It can be a risky, tedious job to move years of playlists — road-trip mixes, workout sets, and bedtime tracks. By baking transfers into the product, Spotify catches users at exactly the right moment of intent and makes that switching cost close to zero.

The stakes are meaningful at Spotify’s size. In company earnings reports for 2024, Spotify reported hundreds of millions of monthly active users around the world, and even marginal improvements to onboarding can equal significant net adds. An integrated transfer may be the tipping point for potential switchers.

Competitors and the broader music streaming context

Apple Music also has its own import route for iPhone and iPad through the iOS and iPadOS Settings app, with similar support on Android as well. YouTube Music Premium allows you to upload your own tracks and access playlists from other services. Before today, Spotify users have mostly had to use independent tools — SongShift, TuneMyMusic, or Soundiiz, for instance — outside of the app: a serviceable if not cumbersome workaround.

Bringing migration in-house closes feature gaps with competitors and repositions portability as table stakes, not a power-user hack. It also pressures the others to streamline their flows, or lose would-be converts at the door.

Data portability and privacy considerations for users

The integration also comes amid a broader push for data portability in tech. Regulators have promoted the idea that consumers should be able to bring their data with them — a principle echoed in privacy regimes like Europe’s GDPR and industry initiatives such as the Data Transfer Project. Music libraries are a good fit with those principles.

As with connecting any accounts, for privacy concerns it’s smart to check permissions and ensure you know what’s being shared: the transfer needs access to view and add to your library. You can withdraw third-party access at any time directly in your Spotify account settings if you change your mind.

Early limitations and tips for smoother playlist moves

Some nuances won’t migrate perfectly. Collaborative playlists show up as regular playlists until you switch on collaboration in Spotify. Status (private/public) may also change on import, so verify visibility after importing. Local files, play counts, and many niche metadata tags won’t usually come over.

For a smoother experience, start by transferring a small playlist to see what matches you get before moving on to larger ones. Once you get the playlists imported, scan for missing tracks, live-versus-studio swaps, and explicit tags that you’d like to change. Consider combining the same track on multiple albums to avoid doubles.

Bottom line: built-in transfers reduce streaming lock-in

A native transfer tool like Spotify’s makes a chore into a quick setup step, reducing lock-in and giving users the freedom to change. For anyone thinking about switching from Apple Music, YouTube Music, or any other service, the route just became Your Library — Import your music — and minutes later you’ll have a set of familiar playlists ready to stream.