Shazam is great for identifying music in the wild but what do you do with the songs you identify?
Peter Butler Managing Editor
Peter is a writer and editor for the CNET How-To team. He has been covering technology, software, finance, sports and video games since working for @Home Network and Excite in the 1990s. Peter managed reviews and listings for Download.com during the 2000s, and is passionate about software and no-nonsense advice for creators, consumers and investors.
Expertise 20 years of editorial experience with a focus on software and the internet
Aside from “Google,” no tech brand became a verb faster than “Shazam.”
“What’s that song?” … “I dunno. Shazam it.”
When you’re at a wedding, visiting your dentist or listening to the radio and you hear a new song you like, the trusty app Shazam (for iOS or Android) can usually help you out by analyzing the track and showing you the musical performer and song name.
But what happens to those songs you identify? Will you ever hear them again?
If you’re like me and Shazam thousands of songs, the “My Music” tab in the Shazam app isn’t the best place to keep track of all those new songs and artists that you want to learn more about.
That’s why I set up Shazam so that all of the songs it identifies are instantly added to a customizable Spotify playlist I can listen to at any time or in any order I prefer. And if I “hate Shazam” a song, I can always remove it from the playlist.
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It’s easy to start adding your Shazam songs to playlists on Spotify or Apple Music. I’ll show you how to do it in less than two minutes. For more, check out our favorite hacks for Spotify and see how Spotify stacks up against Apple Music.
How do I turn my Shazam songs into a Spotify playlist?
To create an automatic Shazam playlist, you’ll need to sync your Spotify account with your Shazam app on your iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone or tablet. To do that, you’ll first need to have Shazam and Spotify installed on the same device.
From the Shazam app, tap the My Music tab at the bottom of the main listening screen on either iOS or Android. Then tap the gear icon in the upper left.
Under the first section, Streaming, tap the gray Connect button to the right of the Spotify logo and name. Shazam will quickly open Spotify, authorize the connection with Shazam, then drop you back in the Shazam interface.
Connecting your Shazam and Spotify accounts will let you open songs from Shazam in Spotify, but to create an automatic playlist of all Shazam songs, you have to go one step further and turn the slider on next to Sync Shazam library to Spotify.
Creating an automatic Spotify playlist from Shazam is as simple as setting one slider.
Shazam/Screenshots by Peter Butler/CNETOnce that slider is turned on, all of your Shazam tracks, from that point forward, will be added to a Spotify playlist called “My Shazam Tracks.” You can then edit that playlist on Spotify however you like, removing songs you don’t like, adding other songs you do like, or reordering everything to make your perfect playlist. As you listen to new songs with Shazam, they’ll be added to the end of “My Shazam Tracks.”
How do I add Shazam tracks to an Apple Music playlist?
Shazam (acquired by Apple in 2018) offers two ways to connect songs from My Music to your Apple Music service.
First, you can set up an automatic playlist just like with Spotify. After Shazam and Apple Music are installed on the same device, tap My Music in Shazam, then the gear icon in the top left, and tap Connect next to the Apple Music icon and name under Streaming.
You’ll then have the option of turning on Sync Shazam library to Apple Music, which will create that automatic playlist in Apple Music called “My Shazam Tracks.”
Or, once you’ve connected the two services, you can tap the “Add to” button next to any Shazam song and select a specific Apple Music playlist to add each song to.
Important: At any one time, you can only automatically sync your Shazam songs to either Spotify or Apple Music, not both.
What other streaming music services work with Shazam?
Along with Spotify and Apple Music, Shazam also provides support for YouTube Music and Deezer. You can’t make automatic playlists in Deezer or YouTube Music from Shazam, but you can open tracks from Shazam in those other apps.
Once you connect Deezer or YouTube Music with Shazam, you can then open songs in those services via the three-dot “More” menu that shows up on all Shazam songs.
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