Through a new joint initiative, Google and Apple are making it possible to transfer playlists between Apple Music and YouTube Music in either direction using the “Data Transfer Project.”

This new option arrives via Google and Apple both using the “Data Transfer Project” stack which was developed by the two companies as a part of the Data Transfer Initiative, of which both Google and Apple are members. This same ongoing partnership has also previously delivered the photo-sharing tool used to transfer photos and videos from iCloud to Google Photos.

In a blog post, the Data Transfer Initiative (DTI) teases that other services may join in time, saying:

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

  • Jo Miran
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    2419 days ago

    To this day, no music streaming app has been as good as Google Play Music. I miss the professional human curated playlists too.

    • @manmachine
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      519 days ago

      professional human curated playlists too

      I believe Apple Music still has those. But overall feature-wise, I agree, GPM was the best. YTM was borderline unusable for everything that I wanted from streaming at the time they transitioned from one to the other, and it seems it didn’t get much better since.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 days ago

          I find the Samples (what I’m assuming you’re referring to by saying “shorts”) feature actually kinda useful for discovering new music. I flip through it every few months to hear snippets of recent hits or what YouTube might think I’d be interested in without committing to listening to an entire song.

      • pwnicholson
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        519 days ago

        Rhapsody back in the day beat that. You could use All Music Guide info to build amazing custom playlists. Custom options like “Music featuring electric guitar with no vocals made between 1950-1957 with a tempo between 90-120” and it would shoot out a whole playlist

        • @manmachine
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          119 days ago

          Sounds cool. I used to read allmusic a lot.

    • @[email protected]
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      219 days ago

      I miss the app they bought out and created Google play with. I can’t remember the name, but it was amazing

      • Jo Miran
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        218 days ago

        Same. I have been trying to remember the name for years. All I can remember is that some magazine called it “a warehouse in Brooklyn full of music obsessed hipsters”. Best curated music lists ever. I discovered so much new music with it.

        • @[email protected]
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          318 days ago

          I think it may have been songza. That’s a word bubbling to my brain.

          Still in agreement though. Google music was top tier. They’re the only streaming app that organized my library in a sane way. I just want the organization from the ipod touch, but Spotify wants their weird homogenous shit.

          • @linearchaos
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            218 days ago

            Yeah songs it was the one that they bought out and it was touted as being run by hipsters

    • nocturne
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      019 days ago

      Google play music was nothing compared to the old Yahoo music streaming service back in the early 00s.

  • @[email protected]
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    2119 days ago

    Finally implementing something pirates have taken for granted since the first digital cross-platform audio file format (1983?)

  • @[email protected]
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    318 days ago

    This would be a time saver if Spotify was a part of the initiative because currently I’m migrating from Spotify over to YouTube Music.

    • @[email protected]OPM
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      318 days ago

      Spotify has to support the DTI for it to work. Considering, Spotify’s business model. I doubt they would support.

    • @bokherif
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      018 days ago

      Don’t do it bro… YT has gotten increasingly shittier and although YTM stayed the same for a long time, you can now feel the enshittification coming to YTM too

  • Possibly linux
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    018 days ago

    What a unique and useful feature. That makes it totally worth it.

    To bad Google will kill it off in a month