New music playlist transfer tool released by Data Transfer Initiative members Apple and Google
At DTI, we are delighted today to announce a new music playlist transfer tool, offered by two of DTI’s founding members, Apple and Google, which will be rolling out over the next week. This new tool powered by the open source Data Transfer Project (DTP) technology stack allows users of Apple Music and YouTube Music to transfer music streaming playlists between the two services. It adds to the existing library of DTP-powered tools offered by DTI and its partners.
Music transfer tools are different from existing DTP verticals, and one particular difference is worth noting: what is being transferred is not the music library, but a user’s playlists. The selection and ordering of songs in that list reflects human creativity and investment of emotion and time. Because the playlist transfer doesn’t include copies of the song files themselves, matching songs on the destination end becomes a potential challenge.
Any serious fan of Dave Matthews Band, for example, will tell you the live recordings are superior to the studio versions. If a source playlist includes a live recording but the destination matches the song name and artist to the studio version, the resulting playlist is simply not the same. Or to put it in tech sector framing: that would be a poor user experience.
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.
You can learn more about importing (Apple, Google) and exporting (Apple, Google) directly from the companies’ support pages.