Apple looks to poach Spotify users with new playlist transfer tool

Users are often reluctant to switch from one music-streaming service to another, even if they find the price, features, algorithm, curation, or song library more appealing. And that’s because of playlists.

A huge part of the streaming experience is being able to create cross-device playlists of songs for studying, working out, driving, sleeping, parties, and so on. There are ways to take these playlists with you when you move from Spotify to Apple Music, for example, but for many it represents enough of a hassle to keep them with the original service. It’s enough of a problem, in fact, that Apple is releasing a tool to migrate playlists for you.

A support document published this week (spotted by MacRumors) reveals the existence of a new “Transfer Music from Other Music Services” function in Apple Music. At the time of writing, it appears to be undergoing testing in Australia and New Zealand only, but we’d expect it to roll out elsewhere if it proves popular.

The way it works is appealingly simple. You go into the settings for Music on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device (or access Apple Music on the web), select the transfer function, choose the service you want to transfer from and what you want to transfer, then tap Add To Library. The software will flag up anything that isn’t available in Apple Music and suggest a similar track, but other than that, the process should be complete without further input.

In the support document Apple is coy about who does the work, saying only that “Transferring music to Apple Music is provided by a third-party [sic].” That third party is SongShift, as we knew as long ago as February last year, when Apple’s plan leaked in an Android beta.

In other words, the essential functionality isn’t new. But bringing this within Apple’s Music app reduces the friction of the process and is likely to make customers significantly happier to trust that their data won’t be misused. And anything that makes it easier to switch to Apple Music from Spotify (or Tidal, Deezer, Amazon Music, and so on) is good news for the company’s all-important services revenue.