Photo: Tada Images (Shutterstock)
Music streaming apps are a convenient way to listen to your favorite songs and discover new bands, but none of them let you easily bring your created playlists, liked songs, or listening history with you if you decide to move to a different service.
This isn’t a problem if you’re happy with your current streaming app, but if you want to transfer from Spotify to Apple Music, for example, you have to start over from scratch. Luckily, there’s a third-party app that can move your playlists, songs, and other data between pretty much all major services with minimal fuss.
FreeYourMusic is a paid app available for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, and Linux that will transfer your data between Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, Deezer, Pandora, Tidal, Soundcloud, and at least a dozen other streaming apps. It also lets you back up and store some of your data locally on your device.
FreeYourMusic’s backup and transfer tools cost $15, but that’s a one-time purchase that grants you lifetime access on all supported devices and streaming apps.
Transferring is easy, too: Just install the FreeYourMusic app, link your streaming accounts, then select the source and destination apps. Some apps will require additional steps to ensure everything imports properly—such as needing to make a YouTube channel for your Google account before transferring so your playlists will show up—but FreeYourMusic has visual step-by-step instructions for every possible transfer combination (like Spotify to Deezer, Pandora to YouTube Music, etc.) on its website covering any additional steps, plus a general FAQ section and troubleshooting guides.
Once everything is set up, the FreeYourMusic app handles the data transfer on its own. After it’s done, your playlists and library from your original streaming app will be available in the new one.
Or at least, most of your library will be available: Since not all songs are included on every streaming service, it’s possible some artists, albums, and tracks won’t make the transfer—but the app will give you a head’s up as to what music can’t be transferred before you start the process.
Along with the basic $15 package, there’s also a premium FreeYourMusic service ($6.66/month, $20/three months, or $250 one-time purchase for lifetime access to all features) that will automatically update playlists between all your streaming apps, and allow you to create, share, and open links that can work in any streaming app (provided the music you’re linking is available).
Premium also includes a cross-app listening history and tracking tool that will probably appeal to anyone who likes to show off their listening history with features like Spotify Wrapped. If privacy is a concern, FreeYourMusic says all listening data is tracked and stored locally on your device, and not saved or shared with FreeYourMusic or anyone else.
The premium bonuses are nice, but if all you need is a quick, catch-all method for transferring music data between streaming apps, the $15 basic package should be more than enough.
