How to Transfer Playlists from Google Play Music to YouTube Music

Google’s music streaming YouTube Music is set to compete with the likes of Spotify. While YouTube Music is a standalone app, it is part of YouTube Premium. So with YouTube Premium you get free unlimited audio and video streaming. It is an ad-free YouTube experience for an additional $2/month.

That makes a lot of sense but what about Play Store Music? It will soon be discontinued which means this is probably a good time to transfer your playlists from Google Play Music to YouTube Music.

Exporting playlists from Google Play Music is a little tricky when compared to other music streaming apps, and only two of the several music data movers I tested works.

Let’s begin.

1. Soundiiz

Soundiiz is a web app that works with many music streaming services including Google Play Music and YouTube Music. To begin, visit the site using the link below and click on the Start now button.

Visit Soundiiz

Sign in or create a new account using one of the social media accounts. There is no need to verify your account this way. That will save you some precious time.

Find the Transfer option in the left sidebar and select it.

In the free version of Soundiiz, you can only transfer playlists so select that.

Soundiiz will now ask you to choose a source, a music streaming service from where you want to transfer the playlists. Select Google Play Music here.

At this point, Google will ask you to Get An Access Code. To those who don’t know what this is, Google wants to protect your account, and this acts as a second verification system. Just click on the big blue link.

You will need to enter your Google login details again after which an access code will be auto-generated for you. Just copy and paste it there before clicking on the Connect button.

You can now choose any or all the playlists that you have saved in Google Play Music. There is no limit even in the free account. When done, click on Confirm and continue.

Soundiiz offers a couple of additional options that are missing in other music data movers. In step 4, you can choose a new title and description for the playlist and decide whether you want the playlist to be private or public. You can also delete duplicate songs from the list here. Click on Save configuration when done.

If you want, you can remove songs from the playlists in this step. You know, some house cleaning? Click on Confirm Tracklist when done.

Select your destination as YouTube Music where you want to transfer the curated playlists. Sign in using your Google account and allow Soundiiz access to your YouTube account here.

The transfer took less than a minute in my case, but I was transferring just one playlist. It may take longer depending on the number of playlists and songs within each playlist.

While transferring playlists between most music streaming apps is free, Google Play Music is not. You will need a premium account because Google has made it really difficult to do so and there are not many apps which have figured it out. It will cost you $3/month but offer additional features like keeping playlists in sync across music streaming apps, transfer playlists with up to 200 songs, and transfer other music data.

2. Stamp

Stamp is the only other app that has figured out how to move playlists and other music-related data to and from Google Play Music. It is available on both desktop and mobile. For this guide, I will be using the Android app. Launch the app and select Google Play Music as your source. Sign in with your Google account here.

Google will now ask you to get an App Password. Fret not. We got you!

Go to your Google’s My Accounts page and under the Security tab, look for App password option.

For security reasons, you will be asked to sign in again. You can now choose a ‘Custom name’ for an app and generate an app password easily.

This newly generated password is now your Google account password. Go back to Stamp and sign in to your Google account using this app password instead of your regular Google account password. Now select YouTube as your destination. Don’t worry. The playlists will still appear in your YouTube Music app since both are deeply integrated.

You know the drill now. Choose the playlists you want to transfer. Click on Begin when done.

Note that the free version of Stamp will let you transfer only ten songs from a single playlist. The pro version of Stamp will cost you $9.99 for any platform and $14.99 for all platforms.

Get Stamp

Play That List

I would suggest you jump the ships as soon as possible. While Google will make an announcement giving enough time to migrate, due to the restrictive nature of Google play Music and how it handles data, it is possible that the solutions mentioned above may not work in the future. Just saying, is all!

Next up: Want to learn some cool YouTube Music tricks? Here are 6 Youtube Music mixtape tricks.