If you’ve established a lot of playlists in iTunes, you don’t need to re-create those playlists in Spotify. The first time Spotify scans your hard drive for iTunes tracks, it also knows to scan the playlists you’ve created in iTunes. A more recent Spotify release now lets you manually import playlists from iTunes.
Just choose File→Import Playlists→iTunes. These playlists should appear in Spotify’s left sidebar, where your Spotify playlists also reside.
Manually copy iTunes playlists to Spotify
However, iTunes and Spotify don’t always sync up; for example, iTunes has the ability to create automated playlists based on certain criteria (such as songs from 1992), but these playlists don’t copy over to Spotify. If you have iTunes playlists that don’t import to Spotify, you can manually copy them over to Spotify. Follow these steps:
Open both iTunes and Spotify on your computer.
Click and drag the title of your iTunes playlist into the New Playlist section of Spotify’s left sidebar.
All the tracks appear as a new playlist, but without its title.
Rename the playlist by clicking the untitled playlist and, when the mouse turns into a blinking cursor, typing the name of the playlist; then hit Enter.
Copy playlists from iTunes to Spotify with the Ivy converter
You can find loads of different and creative websites that can help you copy over your playlists from iTunes. One easy-to-use converter is Ivy. Follow these steps to use Ivy:
In iTunes, click your playlist and choose File→Library→Export Playlist.
In the dialog box that appears, browse to the location where you want to save the file and make sure XML is selected in the Format drop-down list.
Click Save.
Alternatively, you can save the playlist on a memory stick, if you don’t have immediate access to Spotify on the computer you’re using.
In your web browser, go to the Ivy website (www.ivyishere.org), and then click the Import Your Playlist Now button.
You get taken to a new upload page, from which you can add your play-list. The Playlist File tab is selected for you by default.
Click the Browse button in the Select a Playlist File from Your Computer section.
A File Upload dialog box appears.
Browse to the playlist you just saved, and then click Open to attach the file.
On the Ivy web page, click the Upload button at the bottom of the page.
Ivy analyzes the file you just uploaded and displays the number of tracks it finds.
Click the Spotify This Playlist button, located below the number of tracks.
Ivy looks for tracks that match the ones in your playlist on Spotify and displays the number it has found (for example, 9 Out of a Possible 12).
Click the music note image to copy the playlist tracks it’s found to your Clipboard.
All the found playlist tracks are copied as Spotify-friendly addresses.
In Spotify, paste the tracks into a Spotify playlist by opening the play-list in the main pane and pressing Ctrl+V (Command+V on the Mac).
You can paste tracks only into a playlist you created.