I use YouTube for music discovery because YouTube really knows what I like. Then I will add the music videos I like to a playlist and transfer the discovered items to Apple Music for regular music listening.
In this article, I will show you 3 methods to convert a YouTube playlist to Apple Music. One of them was created by me and you can customize it yourself. If you prefer Spotify over Apple Music, you can refer to my previous post for importing YouTube playlist to Spotify.
YouTube Playlist to Apple Music Shortcut for iOS
If you don’t trust any third-party service for your YouTube and Apple Music account, then you can use my shortcut to do it. Shortcuts is an automation app for iOS, which has become a stock app since iOS 13.
Within the Shortcuts app, you can create custom shortcuts to do your automation tasks. I have made one for transferring a YouTube playlist to Apple Music with the YouTube API. The API quota is limited, so I highly recommend you get your own YouTube API referring to this post.
You can watch the video below to see how it works. You can get this shortcut from Routinehub.
Once you have the shortcut, you can copy the YouTube playlist and run this shortcut. This shortcut will fetch your playlist and allow you to select items in the playlist to add to your Apple Music playlist. Then you can create a new playlist with all the tracks from YouTube videos.
If you want to add them to your existing playlist, you can find the action “Add Target Song to Provided Input” and Delete the Provided Input. Then it will become “My Music Library” and you can tap on it to change to any of your playlists.
Since iOS 14, the Time of Day Automation trigger works as it should. You can also create an automation task to run shortcuts. The Shortcuts app is also available in macOS 12 or newer versions, so you can use this shortcut to convert YouTube playlist to Apple Music on your Mac.
Move YouTube Playlist to Apple Music Online
Another method for transferring playlists would be an online tool, TuneMyMusic. It allows you to transfer a playlist from one music streaming service to another for free. You can transfer 500 tracks without creating an account.
Step 1. Go to the TuneMyMusic website and click Let’s Start.
Step 2. Select YouTube as the source and paste the YouTube playlist URL into the search bar. Select ‘Load Playlist’.
Step 3. Now, you can uncheck any of the videos from the playlist if needed. Then click Next: Select Destination.
Step 4. Select Apple Music, and log into your account to start the transfer. It will show you the videos that failed to transfer if any.
As you can see, this website supports many music platforms including Deezer, Spotify, KKbox, SoundCloud, Qobuz, Tidal, etc. You can also get a subscription to sync YouTube playlists with Apple Music.
Playlist Transfer App for iOS and Android
If you need a dedicated app for this, I recommend SongShift for iOS users. It allows you to transfer unlimited songs between 2 music services for free. It allows you to connect Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, Tidal, Deezer, Pandora, Discogs, Napster, etc.
The free version only allows you to connect 2 music services. If you want to connect more music services, you need to pay the subscription fee.
The free version is good for me. I can transfer as many YouTube playlists to Apple Music. If I ever need to connect to another service, I can disconnect one.
For Android users, there is a similar tool called FreeYourMusic, which is available for both Android and iOS. However, this free version only allows you to convert 10 songs from a playlist.
If you don’t want to pay for it, I suggest you use the free web application, TuneMyMusic. You can create a bookmark and it to your Home Screen for quick access, which looks like an app.
What If You Don’t Have Apple Music Subscription?
The above methods will get the YouTube video title and search iTunes Store for it. If you don’t have an Apple Music subscription, none of the above would work. Instead, you can download music from YouTube to iPhone music library.
There are 5 methods to download YouTube to MP3 on iPhone or iPad. However, you can add your downloaded music to your iPhone music library without jailbreaking. For most people, you should use iTunes to add music files to the Music library.
Conclusion
With these methods, you can easily move your YouTube playlist to Apple Music. If you don’t like to share your Apple Music login info to other apps, the Shortcuts method is your thing. I have made other playlist converter shortcuts and you can check them in my shortcuts collection.
The other two methods also work fine in 2023. With such services, you may listen to your favorite music on many platforms besides YouTube and Apple Music with ease.