How to import your old MP3 music collection into your Spotify library, and stream it anywhere

I spent far too long trying to work out how to do this, including trying to make a song matcher using the Spotify API. Hopefully this guide will save you some time. It involves using Apple Music to match your tracks to their library, before importing those into Spotify.

There may be some songs you have in your music collection that aren't available in the Spotify or Apple Music catalogue; these songs can't be imported.

Requirements

• Mac or PC.
• $5 for some paid software.
• Willingness to sign up to a free trial.

Step 1 - Set up Apple Music

Even if you don't intend on using Apple Music in the long-term, you'll need it for this step. We're going to make use of Apple Music's matching tool, which matches the music file metadata to songs in the Apple Music catalogue.

Open Apple Music. You'll need a subscription to it, but normally you can get a free trial for one month. This will work on either Windows or MacOS.

Create a new playlist, and drag in the folder of music you wish to import. Once the music has imported, go to File -> Library -> Update Cloud Library. On Windows, instead of File, click on the ... menu at the top left of the screen.

The Cloud Library will now update, this might take a long time if you have lot of songs.

This creates a local playlist, with all your songs.

Next, head to the songs tab of your library, and right-click at the top to add the 'Cloud Status' column. The desired status is 'Matched' - this means that the music file you imported has been matched to a song.

Create a second playlist, and drag all the matched songs into it. This should automatically be a Cloud Music Library playlist, meaning the source of the songs is Apple's catalogue, and it can be played anywhere.

Step 2 - Set up Soundiiz

Soundiiz is a service that syncs music between cloud streaming services. Sign up and connect your Apple Music and Spotify (or destination of choice) accounts. If you intend on transferring >200 songs, you'll need to pay for one month of their premium service. This is around $5.

Step 3 - Import songs

Once you've signed up, find the second Apple Music playlist you created in step 1 in Soundiiz, and hit the 'transfer' button. From here, you'll be prompted to choose a destination playlist. Once you've begun the transfer, this may take some time.

Obviously at this point you can choose a destination provider other than Spotify, if you wish.

I found that the first time I got an error, but when I ran again, it worked fine.

And that's it! You should now have a playlist in Spotify made up of the songs that were in your music file collection, without having to stream the music files themselves.