YouTube Music can also transfer playlists to Apple Music in Google & Apple partnership

Ben Schoon | Aug 29 2024 - 1:15 pm PT

Through a new joint initiative, Google and Apple are making it possible to transfer playlists between Apple Music and YouTube Music in either direction using the “Data Transfer Project.”

This week, a support page published by Apple (first spotted by 9to5Mac) shed light on the new ability to directly transfer playlists from Apple Music over to Google’s YouTube Music through an account linking process. It’s a handy option, but one that Apple alone didn’t build as it turns out.

This new option arrives via Google and Apple both using the “Data Transfer Project” stack which was developed by the two companies as a part of the Data Transfer Initiative, of which both Google and Apple are members. This same ongoing partnership has also previously delivered the photo-sharing tool used to transfer photos and videos from iCloud to Google Photos.

As such, this isn’t a one-way tool.

YouTube Music can also now transfer playlists over to Apple Music. Google details on a support page that users can transfer YouTube Music playlists to Apple Music through Google Takeout. Like through the reverse process on Apple’s end, you’ll need to sign into your Google account to start the transfer process, and then also sign into an Apple ID and have an active Apple Music subscription to complete the transfer.

YouTube Music will let you bring any playlists you’ve created to Apple Music, excluding only shared playlists that you’re a part of but did not create.

Apple Music is currently the only service that Google allows this transfer with, but the company directly recommends Soundiiz and TuneMyMusic for transferring to other streaming services

In a blog post, the Data Transfer Initiative (DTI) teases that other services may join in time, saying:

Portability is a hard problem, and no tool can be perfect. But at DTI, our ambition – shared with our partners – is to build and ship best-in-class offerings for direct portability. We believe we have accomplished that goal with this newest DTP-powered tool, and we’re proud that users of Apple Music and YouTube Music can now transfer playlists between those services, free of charge, with a high quality experience. We hope and anticipate that other services will join us in this journey over time.