How to painlessly switch from Spotify to Apple Music and transfer your playlists

• If you want to switch from Spotify to Apple Music, you can use a third-party app to transfer your playlists.
• SongShift is free, but it charges for premium features and is only available for iPhones.
• Free Your Music doesn't cost anything and works with iPhones and Androids.

Spotify and Apple Music are two of the most popular music streaming services, but most people don't need to use both, and there are some great reasons to make the move to Apple. If you're considering moving from Spotify to Apple Music, you don't need to lose access to the Spotify playlists you've curated and saved over the years. There are a few tools you can use to make that transition painless.

Reasons to switch from Spotify to Apple Music

Spotify has one substantial advantage over Apple Music: It offers a free tier of service that lets you stream any music, albeit with commercial interruption.

That aside, Apple has some compelling advantages. Apple Music offers a high-quality lossless audio option, for example, which is better for audiophiles than what Spotify includes. If you have an Apple smart speaker like the HomePod mini, Apple Music is the logical streaming service, because it's fully integrated into Siri's voice commands; Spotify is not.

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And it's also an integral part of the Apple ecosystem; if you subscribe to Apple One, you get Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, iCloud+, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, and Apple Music included for a single price. If you have that, you probably don't need to continue to pay for or use Spotify as well.

How to sign up for Apple Music

To switch between the streaming services, you'll first need to sign up for an Apple Music subscription, transfer your playlists if you want to, and then cancel your Spotify subscription.

To sign up for Apple Music:

1. Open the Apple Music app on your Apple device, iTunes on your PC, or the Apple Music website.

2. Click or tap Listen Now or For You.

3. Click or tap the Try it Free button or other listed free trial icon.

4. Choose to sign up by creating a new Apple ID, or sign in with an existing Apple ID.

5. Select an individual subscription plan, a student plan, or a family plan to share with up to six users.

6. Follow the prompts to continue, confirm your billing information, and add a payment method.

7. Click or tap Join.

How to transfer Spotify playlists to Apple Music

The biggest question you might have when making the switch from Spotify to Apple Music is if it's possible to import your existing Spotify playlists so you don't have to rebuild them from scratch in Apple Music. Thankfully, yes — you can easily do that with third-party apps.

Import Spotify playlists with SongShift

SongShift can easily transfer your playlists to Apple Music, but it's only available for iPhone. If you have an Android device, check out the Free Your Music section below instead.

1. Download SongShift from the App Store.

2. Start SongShift.

3. In the Available Services section of the app's main page, tap Apple Music and then tap Continue. Give the app permission to access Apple Music.

4. Repeat the process for Spotify, which you'll find near the bottom of the list. You'll need to enter your login credentials for Spotify.

5. Tap Continue and then on the next page, tap Get Started.

6. On the My Shifts page, tap the plus sign at the top right.

7. Tap Setup Source and then, in the Source Setup pop-up, tap Playlist and the Spotify icon. Then tap Continue.

8. On the Source Playlist page, tap the playlist you want to move to Apple Music and tap Done.

9. Tap I'm Finished.

10. After a moment to process, tap the playlist to review the results.

11. If you're happy with the matches that SongShift made, tap Confirm Matches.

You should now see the Spotify playlist in Apple Music.

Quick tip: SongShift has a lot of other capabilities including the ability to select multiple playlists at once, but these features require in-app paid upgrades.

Import Spotify playlists with Free Your Music

Free Your Music is another option for transferring playlists from Spotify from Apple Music, and has the advantage of being available for both iOS and Android. All its features are also free, including the ability to transfer multiple playlists at once.

1. Download Free Your Music.

2. Start Free Your Music.

3. On the Select Source page, tap Spotify and then log into Spotify, giving the app permission to access your account.

4. On the Select Destination page, tap Apple Music.

5. Select the playlists you want to transfer and then tap Begin transfer.

After a few moments, the songs will be transferred. You can tap the playlist on the Your transfers page to see if all the songs were successfully transferred or go directly to Apple Music.

How to cancel your Spotify subscription

If you want to transfer your Spotify playlists to an Apple Music subscription, make sure to follow the section above before canceling your Spotify subscription, as you'll need access to your Spotify account to make the switch.

Otherwise, or once you've finished transferring playlists, you can proceed to cancel your Spotify premium subscription to avoid paying for two services.