William Gallagher
The latest beta version of Apple Music for Android includes screens prompting users to import their playlists from other services, such as Spotify.
Music tracks themselves do not move between streaming services, unlike moving old iTunes libraries around. Instead, what has been possible if a little fiddly, is to move playlists.
Apple appears to be trialling a method of helping users do this within the Apple Music app, instead of via hit and miss alternatives. It appears to be doing this in collaboration with one of the more successful options, a service called SongShift.
At present, the feature is only in the Android version of Apple Music, only in the latest beta of the app, and then seemingly only for some number of users. Not even everyone on the beta is seeing the feature — and those who are say that it isn't working yet.
So it really barely counts as a beta test, it's more like an alpha test being presented randomly to users to gauge interest or reactions.
However, if the feature makes it out of beta and becomes available for all Apple Music users on Android, it seems inevitable that it will come to the iPhone too. It's unusual to see an incomplete alpha test and to not see it first on an iPhone, but Apple Music Classical did launch on Android before it came to the iPad.
Separately, in 2020, the SongShift app behind this new feature, was threatened by Spotify with having its access to the service revoked. SongShift announced it would drop Spotify transfers from its app's version 5.1.2. but by version 5.2.3, the feature was back.
Christine McKee
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6 Comments
Hopefully this won't just be for folks switching over and transferring out of their Spotify account, but will also address the annoying situation when public figures, musicians and others share interesting playlists, but they can only be imported into Spotify.
I’ve used Songshift to transfer playlists (both from Spotify to Apple Music, and from Apple Music to Spotify). Works well enough for me.
Cue new EU legislation that forbids Apple from importing playlists from competitors (but not vice versa) in 3…2…1…
Great news for anyone who wants to change music services, no matter which way they’re going to or from. Spotify’s offering is great except that they barely pay artists anything. Apple Music pays nearly three TIMES as much and it’s still a small amount, but it’s not minuscule like Spotify’s royalty.