They Killed Your Playlists

Hello You

We ate our humble pie and a hat too; some of you had heard one or two artists from last week.

And, as we said we would be, we are delighted with that.

You know what we aren’t delighted with? Playlists moonlighting as Houdini, and doing a disappearing act.

Anyone not on Napster can breathe a sigh of relief… but for how long?

Let’s talk about it →

SongsBrew Editorial

You Don’t Own Ish.

On our travels around the music world this week, we stumbled upon a problem that Napster subscribers have been dealing with. And, unfortunately, not everyone got the memo before it happened (because there wasn’t one).

The devastating slew of answers discusses how, while they have been with Napster since its days of being called Rhapsody, creating playlists for 20 years or more, one day, more than half of their playlists were suddenly missing.

While there have been rumours about Napster not paying their licensing bills, some users reached out to them, and this was the reply:

"We understand how frustrating it is to lose playlists you’ve built over time. Those collections matter, and we’re sorry for the disruption. We've heard your feedback about songs disappearing from your playlists and finding that many of your carefully curated collections now have far fewer songs than before. We sincerely apologize for the disruption and for the lack of clear communication about these changes.

Napster is in the middle of a big transition. The traditional catalog of artists and albums will no longer be available in our catalog. This change allows us to build something new—an experience where music, AI-driven playlists, and interactive Companions evolve with your tastes in real time.”

A damning line, ‘lack of clear communication’.

Removing much of their current library, and instead you’ll find other…stuff. Perhaps it has been coming for a while; after changing hands multiple times over the years, another announcement was made at the start of 2025. Infinite Reality(iR) acquired Napster, with the intention to ‘become a social and interactive music platform centered on the metaverse’. (Word salad, what does this even mean for users?)

But nowhere did it say that current lifelong subscribers would be left songless.

Perhaps this is a healthy reminder that our beloved playlists aren’t ours; we don’t own a single note. We’re renting the music from our music streaming platforms, and at any given moment, we can lose it all.

A Hero Steps In

With all of the best horror stories (because losing your playlists is one), a hero must present themselves. For most readers, you’re already familiar with FreeYourMusic, and you probably used it to switch music platforms because you wanted to try something new. Love that for you.

But for people going through 20 years of playlist loss, they didn’t want to move; they wanted their playlists, and transferring quickly was the only way to keep them. They had no choice.

“FreeMyMusic and other apps, will transfer all your playlists (even the songs suddenly missing from Napster) to Amazon Music, Spotify, and other music streaming services. Take hope, friend! I was a Rhapsody user since 2009, and my thousands of songs are back at my fingertips.”

Another interesting development is that many people are recommending switching to Amazon Music. A refreshing change from Spotify and Apple Music being the main ones mentioned. Along with TIDAL, people are finding a new home to listen to what they love.

Be Your Own (Future) Hero

“If you would like to download a copy of all of your playlists and the songs that you had added in each of those playlists, you can get the list of those playlists and songs from your Napster account page. To get the list, open a web browser and go to the website account.napster.com and log in with your username and password, and then click on Data management. Here on this page, you will see a blue button to download your playlists. Just click on the playlist button and this will download all of your playlists data. It might take a few seconds to download depending on the number of playlist data that you had. So please wait until the spinning is completed and then the text file will be downloaded automatically. Once the file is downloaded, you can also use this file as a reference for all your songs that you had in each of your playlist and if required, you can also use this file to transfer your playlists to other music services.” - Napster

Nothing unites people in their time of need as much as a shared love for something. In this case, the years spent curating playlists. Users have been helping others where they can, recommending platforms, comparing audio quality, and sharing quick experiences on new platforms.

But what do we learn here? The ones lucky enough not to have lost 20 years of playlists. The obvious thing, the thing that we know but never really consider until it is staring us in the face, is that every playlist you have, on any platform, can all be gone overnight.

So while most of us will breathe a sigh of relief and tap play on our next song just because we’re glad it wasn’t us, it is time to take action.

If you don’t want to wake up without a playlist, back them up now. The fastest way is to export everything into an Excel/XLSX file. FreeYourMusic does it in a couple of clicks and works across Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, TIDAL, Deezer, Amazon, and more. Once you’ve got that Excel/XLSX. Keep it as insurance, or use it to rebuild your playlists anywhere else. Just remember to update it every now and then, ‘cause no doubt you’ll be adding songs thick and fast.

Or do it manually, make a day of it, and neaten up your playlists as you do it. Whatever makes you happy.

And since you indulged last week's new music playlist (packed with stuff that you probably hadn’t heard before), we added some new artists this week. Enjoy.