How to transfer a Spotify playlist to YouTube Music

Moving between two streaming services, or do you actually want to keep the music? A transfer copies song titles from one rental library to another. If you would rather own the tracks as plain files, convert the playlist to MP3 instead.

· 9 min read

First, sort out which "YouTube" you mean

People search for this two different ways, and the tools are not the same.

YouTube Music is Google's Spotify competitor. It is a proper music streaming app with a library, an algorithm, and offline downloads if you pay for Premium. When most people say "transfer my Spotify playlist to YouTube Music," this is what they want: the same songs, as a real playlist, inside the YouTube Music app.

A plain YouTube playlist is a list of regular YouTube videos. Some of them happen to be official audio or music videos, plenty are live versions, lyric videos, or random uploads of varying quality. If you build a playlist on youtube.com (not the Music app), you get videos, not clean audio tracks, and the matches are much rougher.

The rest of this guide is about YouTube Music, because that is what the transfer tools target and what gives you a listenable result. If you truly want a youtube.com video playlist, the same tools below can usually do it, but expect worse matches and a lot of "close enough" videos.

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The fastest path: a playlist transfer tool

You cannot copy and paste a playlist between Spotify and YouTube Music directly. There is no shared format, and the two catalogs do not line up track for track. What actually works is a middleman service that logs into both accounts, reads your Spotify playlist, searches YouTube Music for each song, and rebuilds the list on the other side.

Three tools do this reliably in 2026: TuneMyMusic, Soundiiz, and FreeYourMusic. They all follow the same shape.

  1. Open the tool and choose Spotify as the source.
  2. Sign in to Spotify and grant read access (this only lets the tool see your library, not change it).
  3. Pick the playlist or playlists you want to move. You can usually select "Liked Songs" and whole albums too.
  4. Choose YouTube Music as the destination and sign in to your Google account.
  5. Start the transfer. The tool matches each track and builds a new YouTube Music playlist, then hands you a report of what moved and what it could not find.

The whole thing takes a few minutes for a normal playlist. A library of thousands of songs runs in the background and can take a while.

Worth knowing: YouTube Music now has its own built-in importer. Google's official help page documents a feature under Settings, then Privacy & data, then "Transfer playlists from other apps." It can pull playlists, albums, artists, and tracks from other services into your library. Even so, Google's own page points you to TuneMyMusic and Soundiiz for services it does not connect to directly, so the third-party route is still the one most people end up using. This built-in import is the descendant of the tool YouTube Music launched on May 12, 2020 to move entire Google Play Music libraries (uploads, purchases, playlists, likes) when that service shut down. Back then, importing your music into YouTube Music was a first-party, one-click affair. For Spotify, it mostly still runs through the same third-party tools it always did.

Free-tier limits, honestly

All three tools let you do a transfer for free, but the free tiers are capped, and the caps are the whole business model. Here is where each one stops before it asks for money.

Tool Free-tier limit Paid unlocks Notes
TuneMyMusic Up to 500 tracks per transfer Unlimited transfers, auto-sync (about $4.50 to $5.50/mo) Runs in a browser, no install. The most generous free cap of the three.
Soundiiz Up to 200 tracks per playlist, one transfer at a time Batch transfers, larger playlists (Premium about €4.50/mo) Free is fine for a single normal playlist. Big libraries hit the wall fast.
FreeYourMusic 600 songs and 1 playlist, no card required Unlimited, auto-sync, rematch (yearly ~€39.99, lifetime ~€199.99) Desktop and mobile app rather than a pure web tool.

Those numbers come from each tool's own pages and from hands-on comparisons like PlaylistGo's TuneMyMusic vs Soundiiz breakdown. If your playlist is under 200 songs, any of the three moves it for nothing. If it is 500 songs, TuneMyMusic does it free in one shot while Soundiiz would make you split it. If you have a whole library of thousands of tracks and dozens of playlists, you are going to pay somebody, and the question is just whether you want a subscription (TuneMyMusic, Soundiiz) or a one-time lifetime license (FreeYourMusic).

For a single playlist, start with TuneMyMusic. It has the highest free ceiling and needs no download.

The part nobody warns you about: unmatched tracks

A transfer is not a copy. It is a search-and-rebuild, and the match is never perfect.

Spotify and YouTube Music have different catalogs. Some songs sit on one and not the other. Regional licensing, remasters, "Taylor's Version" style re-recordings, remixes, live cuts, and anything from a small or self-released artist are the usual casualties. The tool matches on title and artist text, so a track that exists under a slightly different name (a feat. credit written differently, a "Remastered 2011" tag, an explicit versus clean version) can either get skipped or matched to the wrong upload.

Every one of these tools gives you a report at the end listing the songs it could not place. Do not close that window. Skim it, because those are the tracks you will have to add by hand, and you cannot get the list back easily once it is gone. Google's help page says it plainly: "Not all songs may be available on YouTube Music."

Two more things that carry over badly:

  • Play order. Most tools preserve the order of the source playlist, but a skipped track leaves a gap, and if you split a big playlist across multiple free transfers the order can scramble. Check it.
  • Podcasts do not move. YouTube Music treats podcasts separately, and the transfer tools skip them. Same goes for local files you added to a Spotify playlist from your own computer; there is no streaming version to match.

If matching accuracy matters to you, do the transfer, then open the destination playlist next to the Spotify original and spot-check the first twenty tracks. That is usually enough to catch the obvious mismatches.

What people actually run into

Browse the YouTube Music and Spotify communities and the complaints rhyme. The transfer itself works; the disappointment is almost always about the tracks that did not make it, or matched to a worse version. A common story is someone moving a carefully built playlist, getting 90-something percent across, and then spending an evening manually re-adding the last handful of missing songs, some of which simply are not on YouTube Music at all. The other recurring gripe is the free-tier cap arriving mid-transfer, which forces a choice between paying or splitting the job. None of this makes the tools bad. It makes them what they are: a fast way to rebuild a list of songs on a service where that exact list may not fully exist.

There is also a free, technical option worth a mention for the command-line crowd: the open-source spotify-to-ytmusic Python tool does the same match-and-rebuild without a subscription, if you are comfortable installing a package and dealing with authentication yourself. For everyone else, the web tools are the sane choice.

The other option: stop renting the songs entirely

Here is the thing the transfer guides skate past. Moving a playlist from Spotify to YouTube Music does not give you the music. It gives you a new pointer to the same rented catalog on a different app. If YouTube Music ever pulls a track, changes its terms, or you stop paying, that playlist entry goes dark exactly the way the Spotify one would. You have swapped one landlord for another.

If your real goal is to keep a playlist you love no matter what any streaming service does, the move is not sideways to YouTube Music. It is down to files you own. Our Spotify playlist converter reads a public Spotify playlist link and hands you MP3s (or FLAC, WAV, or AAC) at up to 320 kbps. No app to install, no account, no subscription attached to the result. Those files play in YouTube Music as uploads, in Spotify as local files, on an old iPod, off a USB stick in the car, anywhere. Full walkthrough here: how to convert a Spotify playlist to MP3.

Two honest caveats, because overselling helps nobody. First, a converted file cannot beat its source. Spotify streams top out around 320 kbps Ogg Vorbis, so an MP3 made from that is a solid 320 kbps MP3, not "lossless." Anything claiming a lossless Spotify rip is lying to you. Second, keep it personal. Converting your own playlist for your own listening is one thing; uploading or selling those files is not, and the copyright still belongs to the artists regardless of what you paid Spotify.

A useful middle path: many people transfer to YouTube Music for the streaming experience and convert the handful of must-keep tracks to MP3 as a backup. You are not locked into one or the other.

Quick tie-off: moving to Apple instead?

If you landed here but you are actually weighing Apple Music, the process is nearly identical, same tools, same caveats, just a different destination. We wrote that one up separately: transfer a Spotify playlist to Apple Music. And if you just want your playlist as a spreadsheet of song titles and artists (handy for re-adding unmatched tracks by hand, or keeping a permanent record), see export a Spotify playlist to CSV.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do I transfer a Spotify playlist to YouTube Music for free?

Use TuneMyMusic, Soundiiz, or FreeYourMusic. Sign in to both accounts, pick your Spotify playlist, choose YouTube Music as the destination, and start the transfer. Free tiers cover up to 500 tracks (TuneMyMusic), 200 per playlist (Soundiiz), or 600 songs and one playlist (FreeYourMusic).

Does YouTube Music have a built-in way to import from Spotify?

Sort of. YouTube Music has a "Transfer playlists from other apps" option under Settings, then Privacy & data, but Google's own help page still recommends TuneMyMusic or Soundiiz for services it does not connect to directly, so most people use a third-party tool for Spotify.

Why are some songs missing after the transfer?

The tools match by title and artist, and the two catalogs do not fully overlap. Tracks that are exclusive to Spotify, regionally restricted, remixes, live versions, or from small artists often cannot be found on YouTube Music. Every tool gives you a report of the ones it skipped.

Is transferring a playlist the same as downloading the songs?

No. A transfer rebuilds the list of songs on YouTube Music using its streaming catalog. You still do not own the audio; it stays rented. To actually keep the tracks, convert them to MP3 files instead.

Will the transfer keep my songs in order?

Usually yes, but skipped tracks leave gaps, and splitting a large playlist across multiple free transfers can scramble the order. Check the destination playlist against the original.

Can I transfer to a regular YouTube playlist instead of YouTube Music?

Some tools can build a playlist on youtube.com, but you get regular videos (live versions, lyric videos, random uploads) rather than clean audio, and the matches are rougher. For listenable results, target YouTube Music.

Do I have to pay?

Not for a single normal playlist. Free tiers handle up to 200 to 600 songs depending on the tool. You only pay if you are moving a large library, want to move multiple playlists at once, or want automatic ongoing sync.

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