Over the past month and some change, Hotline TNT, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof, and Xiu Xiu all announced that they'd be removing their music from Spotify, with most of those artists citing CEO Daniel Ek's $700 million military AI investment as the straw that broke the camel's back. Apple Music -- arguably Spotify's top competitor -- has evidently caught on to the fact that a lot of Spotify users are looking for a slightly less nefarious source for their on-demand streaming, and some eagle-eyed listeners have noticed that Apple Music has expanded their music transferring tool.
According to the blog MacRumors, Apple Music is now allowing US customers to import their playlists and libraries from competing DSPs, after initially launching the feature in Australia and New Zealand last May. A few third-party platforms have popped up over the years offering similar services, but with Apple Music now in partnership with SongShift, there are fewer limitations (and it's free). After creating your Apple Music account, there's a "Transfer Music" option in Settings. Apple Music then matches as many songs as it can, and flagging the tracks that they can't.
The feature is available for current users of Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal, and YouTube. Meanwhile, Spotify is reintroducing their direct messaging feature; you can read about it in this post from Spotify's blog, which conveniently excludes the fact that they did used to offer DMs way-back-when (they removed the feature in 2017).
