How to Import a Playlist to YouTube Music from a CSV File

YouTube Music can't read a CSV on its own. Here's the real workaround, the free-tier limits nobody mentions, and how to keep your own copy of the songs.

ยท 9 min read

YouTube Music has no CSV import, so you need a bridge

Start with the thing Google won't tell you on any help page: YouTube Music cannot import a CSV file. There's no "upload playlist" button in the app or on music.youtube.com. If you have a spreadsheet of songs, or a CSV you exported from Spotify, Google Play Music, or an old backup, you can't just feed it in. This trips up a lot of people who go looking for a native option that was never built.

What actually works is a third-party bridge that reads your CSV, searches YouTube Music for each track, and builds a fresh playlist from the matches. The two people land on most are TuneMyMusic and Soundiiz, and both do the CSV-to-YouTube-Music job. This guide covers the CSV route in detail, the faster direct-from-Spotify route, the free-tier limits that catch people out, and the part most articles skip: how to keep an actual copy of the songs so a playlist can never vanish on you again.

If you specifically want the Spotify-to-YouTube-Music migration without a spreadsheet in the middle, we have a dedicated walkthrough for that in transfer a Spotify playlist to YouTube Music. This page is the CSV-focused companion: what to do when the source is a file, not a live account.

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When the CSV route is the right one

Direct account-to-account transfer is smoother when both services are connected and online. But the CSV route is the one you want in a few real situations.

You're working from a backup, not a live account. Maybe you exported a Spotify playlist to CSV months ago, or you're finally migrating an old Google Play Music library that Google shut down back in 2020. Google Takeout gave Play Music users their library as CSV files, and those still work as an import source today.

The playlist is private or the source service is gone. If you can't connect the origin account live, a file you already have is the only handle you've got.

You want a clean, editable list first. A CSV lets you dedupe, fix artist names, or drop tracks in a spreadsheet before anything touches YouTube Music. For a messy 600-song export, that pre-clean is worth it.

What the CSV actually needs to contain

Both tools match songs from text, so your CSV needs the fields that identify a track: song title and artist at minimum, with album and ISRC code helping accuracy. TuneMyMusic reads files containing track titles, artists, albums, and ISRC codes. Soundiiz provides a downloadable sample CSV so you can match its expected layout exactly, which is the safest way to avoid a file it can't parse.

The ISRC code is the quiet MVP here. It's a unique ID for a specific recording, so when your CSV includes it, the matcher can find the exact track instead of guessing between fifteen versions of the same song title. If you exported your CSV with a tool like Exportify from Spotify, ISRC codes usually come along for the ride. If your CSV is just "title, artist" typed by hand, expect more mismatches. Our guide to exporting a Spotify playlist to CSV covers getting a clean file with the right columns.

One formatting note that saves headaches: save as a plain UTF-8 .csv. Song and artist names with accented characters or non-Latin scripts can garble if the encoding is wrong, and garbled text matches nothing.

The CSV route, step by step (TuneMyMusic)

Here's the actual flow using TuneMyMusic, which keeps the CSV step front and center.

  1. Go to the CSV to YouTube Music transfer page and choose CSV / text file as the source.
  2. Upload your file. The tool parses it and shows you the playlists and songs it found. Review that list. This is your chance to catch a bad parse before you commit.
  3. Sign in to YouTube Music as the destination and grant access.
  4. Select everything, or just the playlists you want to move.
  5. Start the transfer. TuneMyMusic searches YouTube Music for each song and adds the matches to a new playlist.

Soundiiz is nearly identical: pick Import Playlist, choose From File, upload the CSV, name the playlist, review the matched songs, then select YouTube Music as the destination. Soundiiz's own tutorial spells out that playlist import from a file is available on the free plan.

Both tools will show you which songs didn't match. Do not skip that report. On a large CSV, a handful of tracks always fail, usually the same troublemakers as any matching system: live versions, remixes, regional releases, and titles shared by many covers. Fix those by searching YouTube Music by hand and adding them to the playlist yourself.

The direct route: Spotify straight to YouTube Music

If your songs are still in a live Spotify account, you can skip the spreadsheet entirely. This is the smoother path and it's what most people actually want when they search "spotify to youtube music" or "transfer spotify playlist to youtube music."

In TuneMyMusic or Soundiiz, choose Spotify as the source instead of a file, connect your Spotify account, pick the playlists, connect YouTube Music as the destination, and run it. The tool reads your Spotify playlists directly and rebuilds them on YouTube Music. No export, no CSV, no encoding to worry about. Same matching caveats apply, and you still get a failure report to clean up.

Which to use? Live account to live account, go direct. It's faster and the ISRC data flows automatically. Use the CSV route when the source is a file, a dead service, or a playlist you want to clean up in a spreadsheet first. We break down the direct Spotify migration in more depth, including the reverse direction, in transfer a Spotify playlist to YouTube Music.

The free-tier limits nobody mentions up front

Here's where the "free" in these tools gets asterisks, and it's the single most common complaint in Reddit threads about them.

TuneMyMusic's free tier caps you at 500 songs. Per their own plans page, free transfers are limited to 500 songs total and the results carry a watermark, with auto-sync and cloud backup locked behind the roughly $2/month premium plan. If your library is under 500 tracks, free is genuinely fine. Over that, you either pay or split the job.

Soundiiz gates by content type. Playlist import is free, which is exactly the CSV-to-YouTube-Music job in this guide. But importing albums, artists, or your liked-tracks library requires a premium plan, and Soundiiz limits the number of tracks per playlist depending on the destination service. On the free plan you also transfer one playlist at a time rather than your whole library in one shot. For a single CSV playlist, free covers it. For migrating dozens of playlists and your saved library, the limits add up fast.

The pattern across every migration tool is the same: one modest playlist is free and painless, a full library migration nudges you toward paying. That's a fair trade for a lot of people. Just know it going in so you're not surprised when a 900-song transfer stops at 500.

Matching is good, not perfect

Because these tools search YouTube Music by song title, artist, and ISRC, they're rebuilding your playlist from matches, not copying exact files. On a well-tagged CSV with ISRC codes, match rates are high, often well above 90 percent. But "high" isn't "perfect," and the misses cluster in predictable places: obscure or regional tracks, live and acoustic versions, remixes, anything with a title that a hundred other songs share, and songs simply not in YouTube Music's catalog. There's nothing any tool can do about a track that isn't there to match.

So budget ten minutes after any transfer to read the failure report and patch the gaps by hand. It's tedious but it's the difference between a playlist that's actually complete and one that's quietly missing your fifteen favorite deep cuts.

The part everyone forgets: keep your own copy

Migrating a playlist between streaming services moves a list of pointers, not the music. You still don't own a single file. If YouTube Music loses the licensing rights to a song, or the track gets pulled, it disappears from your imported playlist exactly like it would on Spotify. Streaming catalogs shrink and shuffle constantly. A playlist you spent an hour rebuilding is only as permanent as the licenses behind it.

This is where keeping real files pays off. Once a playlist lives in YouTube Music, or even before you migrate, you can save the tracks as standalone MP3s you actually own with our YouTube Music playlist downloader. Those files play whether or not you're paying for Premium, whether or not the song stays in the catalog, on any device that reads a folder.

Be straight about what that download is, though. YouTube Music streams top out around 256 kbps AAC, so an MP3 saved from that source is a 256 kbps-equivalent lossy file, not a lossless master. It sounds great and it's yours forever, but exporting it to FLAC or WAV won't add quality that was never there. And do the smart thing before any migration: back the original playlist up to a CSV first with our export a Spotify playlist to CSV guide. A CSV of the track list plus your own MP3s means a bad transfer or a delisted song never costs you the playlist.

Quick recap

YouTube Music has no native CSV import, so you use TuneMyMusic or Soundiiz as a bridge. Feed it a CSV with title, artist, and ideally ISRC codes; review the parse; connect YouTube Music; run the transfer; then clean up the songs that didn't match. If your source is a live Spotify account, skip the CSV and go direct. Watch the free limits, 500 songs on TuneMyMusic, content-type gates on Soundiiz. And keep your own MP3 copies plus a CSV backup so the playlist is genuinely yours, not a list that lives and dies with a licensing deal.

Own the songs, not just the list. Save a YouTube Music playlist as MP3 files you keep for good.

Download a YouTube Music Playlist →

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I import a CSV directly into YouTube Music?

No. YouTube Music has no built-in CSV import. You use a third-party bridge like TuneMyMusic or Soundiiz that reads your CSV, searches YouTube Music for each track, and builds a new playlist from the matches. There is no native "upload playlist" option in the app or on the web.

What columns does my CSV need?

Song title and artist at minimum. Adding the album and, most importantly, the ISRC code sharply improves matching accuracy, because ISRC identifies the exact recording. Save the file as plain UTF-8 so accented characters and non-Latin text don't garble.

Is it really free?

Partly. TuneMyMusic's free tier caps transfers at 500 songs and adds a watermark. Soundiiz makes playlist import free but gates albums, artists, and your saved-tracks library behind premium, and limits tracks per playlist. One modest playlist is free either way; a full library migration usually pushes you to pay.

Do all my songs transfer?

Most do, often over 90 percent with a clean CSV, but not all. Live versions, remixes, regional releases, songs sharing a common title, and tracks simply missing from YouTube Music's catalog fail to match. Both tools show you a failure report, so patch those by hand after the transfer.

Should I transfer from Spotify directly or export a CSV first?

If your Spotify account is live and connected, go direct. It's faster and ISRC data flows automatically. Use the CSV route when your source is a file, a dead service like Google Play Music, or a playlist you want to clean up in a spreadsheet first.

How do I keep the songs permanently?

Migrating between services only moves a list, not the music, and a song can still be pulled from the catalog. To actually own the tracks, save them as MP3s with our playlist downloader, and back the track list up to a CSV. Just know that a file saved from YouTube Music is a 256 kbps-equivalent lossy MP3, not a lossless copy.

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