Spotify Tries to Hold Your Playlists Hostage - But You Can Still Transfer

October 13, 2020

The best way to avoid the risk of being locked-in with a music streaming platform is to ensure that data can be moved easily. This is why we created FreeYourMusic - to let users freely migrate their playlists to other platforms. Apparently, such services are not to Spotify's liking as the most popular music platform is reaching out to our competition, threatening to revoke their API addresses.

SPOTIFY SHUTTING DOWN THE ABILITY TO TRANSFER PLAYLISTS

Spotify is shutting down 3rd party apps that use the Spotify API to migrate playlists to competing services like Apple Music. SongShift has already announced on their blog that they will no longer be supporting music transfers from Spotify. Other services such as Soundizz and Tune My Music have also been notified that their access to the Spotify SDK will be revoked.

Will FreeYourMusic soon become the only music transfer service that supports migrating out of Spotify? As we don’t use the official Spotify SDK, we’re not bound to their Terms of Service. Our app continues to work as usual and you can transfer from Spotify to any music platform.

SPOTIFY’S ANTI-USER & ANTI-COMPETITIVE BEHAVIOUR

It’s understandable that Spotify doesn't want its customers to move to other music streaming platforms like Apple Music. However, the company took the worst path to retain its users. Instead of providing better value and improving the product, Spotify wants to hold your playlists hostage - therefore blocking you from moving to the competing platforms.

We believe that your playlist data fully belongs to you - the user, and if you wish to migrate from Spotify, you should have total control of your music library. Music transfer services only read the users’ playlists and match their metadata (title, artist, album) with another platform. You’ve created the data, it’s yours, move wherever you want.

Spotify doesn’t like this idea and therefore looks for ways to deprive you of the possibility to take your data elsewhere. As users want to keep their music library (often collected over the span of years), they essentially become trapped with the original service. While they could technically leave Spotify for another platform, the cost of doing so is often too high to bear. Who in the right mind would want to start all over again when they’ve got thousands of songs organized into dozens of playlists?

By disallowing to transfer your data, Spotify is basically forcing you to stick with their service. This vendor lock-in leads us to several issues:

  • If Spotify’s quality is not satisfactory and there are better products on the market, you’re stuck.

  • If Spotify changes their platform in a way that no longer serves your needs and expectations, you’re stuck.

  • If Spotify increases its pricing, guess what - yes, you’re stuck!

Is there anything worse than being held hostage to a service that doesn’t make things easy for its users? It’s not only anti-user behavior, it’s anti-competitive too. This is not a good look from Spotify which has been advocating for freedom of choice and fair competition across the app ecosystem. Not so long ago Daniel Ek, CEO and founder of Spotify, criticized Apple for not being “an open and fair platform”. It appears that Spotify is going against the same principles they so strongly stand for when it comes to their rivals.

MOVE FROM SPOTIFY TO OTHER PLATFORMS

For anyone who wishes to move from Spotify, we’ve got your back. The FreeYourMusic app continues to support music transfers from Spotify to 19 other platforms even if Spotify doesn’t like it.

How is this possible, you ask? Spotify tried blocking us months ago, but we didn’t agree. The thing is: it's not “you can't do it” but “you can't do it using our API”. They said we had to stop using their official SDKs for integrating Spotify with competing services, so we did. We switched to a different method of integration, not to be legally bound via SDK agreements. Thanks to this, we’re in the clear and our users can transfer music from Spotify. For over five years, we have helped thousands of people move from Spotify to other music services, and we’ll continue to do so.

If you wish to migrate out of Spotify, you can move to the following music services:

And if you’re still deciding which music provider to choose, take a look at our comparison of the best streaming platforms in 2020.

HOW TO TRANSFER FROM SPOTIFY TO OTHER PLATFORMS

You don’t have to be tied to one music streaming service that you’ve chosen before. You can migrate out of Spotify with the FreeYourMusic app in a few simple steps:

  1. Download the FreeYourMusic app from Google Play, App Store, or get the Desktop version.
  2. Once you install the FreeYourMusic app, choose Spotify as your source platform.
  3. Now choose your destination platform. There are 19 platforms you can move to!
  4. Find the playlists or albums you want to move. Select all the music libraries you want to transfer from Spotify.
  5. Tap “BEGIN” and sit back as your libraries move from Spotify to the new service.

Streaming services don’t make it simple to transport playlists and now Spotify tries to make it impossible. Thankfully, you can still migrate out of Spotify with FreeYourMusic. We don’t expect any platforms to be limited on FYM.FM in the near future.

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