How to Export a YouTube Music Playlist
Exporting is step one. Whether you then import it yourself or use a transfer service depends on what you're actually optimising for.
Updated 28 August 2026 · 6 min readMost people exporting a music playlist are really trying to move it somewhere, or keep a copy before it changes. Those two goals point at slightly different approaches.
This guide covers the export itself, an honest comparison against direct transfer services, and the matching rules that decide how many tracks survive a migration.
The fastest way to export
Copy the playlist link
Open the Music Playlist Export tool
Paste and export
Download CSV or JSON
Export and import, or a direct transfer tool?
If your goal is moving to another platform, the export is step one either way. The real question is who does the matching:
| Export then import | Direct transfer service | |
|---|---|---|
| Data ownership | Full — you keep a CSV or JSON file. | Limited — it happens inside their app. |
| Playlist order | Preserved in the position column. | Usually preserved. |
| Song matching | Yours to do, manually or with a script. | Automatic, though it can miss variants. |
| Setup | Paste a link, download a file. | Connect accounts on both platforms. |
| Best for | Backups, audits, custom workflows. | One-time migrations you don't want to think about. |
They're not exclusive
Matching tracks accurately across platforms
Whichever route you take, matching is where playlists lose tracks. A few rules make it much more reliable:
- Match on title plus primary artist plus duration, not title alone — duration is what separates the album cut from the live version.
- Add qualifiers when variants exist: live, remaster, radio edit, extended.
- Expect region-locked and rights-restricted tracks to fail, and check those by hand.
- Rebuild order using the position column rather than trusting the destination to preserve it.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
| Playlist is private or won't load | Switch it to Unlisted in YouTube Music, copy the fresh link, export, then set it back. |
| Export is empty or incomplete | Check the URL points at the playlist page rather than an album or mix, and let a long playlist load fully before copying the link. |
| Order lost on import | Use the position column to rebuild it, or import into a tool that respects an index column. |
| Tracks didn't match on the other platform | Match on title, artist and duration together, and handle live or remastered variants manually. |
How MyFreshTools helps
What the tool does
The YouTube Music Playlist Export reads a playlist through the YouTube API, detects automatically whether it's a music playlist or a regular video one, and returns the tracks with artists, durations, view counts and links — in playlist order, as a file you can open anywhere.
Who it's for
- Anyone migrating between streaming services.
- Listeners keeping a backup of a library they've built up.
- People auditing what a transfer tool actually moved.
Requirements and limits
- A free MyFreshTools account. No card, free credits on signup.
- Free exports return part of a playlist; a paid plan returns every track.
- Metadata only — track titles, artists, durations and links. It never downloads audio files.
- Private playlists need to be switched to Unlisted for the export, then switched back.
- Auto-generated radio mixes and album pages aren't playlists and can't be exported.
Frequently asked questions
Set it to Unlisted temporarily so the exporter can fetch the items, then revert it to private once you have the file.
The exporter is free to use and returns up to half of a playlist (max 1,000 tracks) on a free account. Exporting a complete large playlist needs a paid plan.
The same approach works — paste the playlist link into the standard Playlist Export tool. It's useful for study lists and watch-later clones as well as music.
Many transfer tools accept CSV input or let you paste a track list. You can also script it yourself by mapping title, artist and duration against their search APIs.
No transfer is complete in practice. Rights differ by platform and region, and variants complicate matching — which is exactly why exporting first is worth the minute it costs.
No. It exports metadata — titles, artists, durations and links — not audio.
The takeaway
Export first regardless of which route you take. A transfer service is faster, but it leaves you with nothing to check its work against — and a CSV of what the playlist actually contained is what turns a failed migration into a fixable one.