How To: Share Apple Music Songs, Albums, and Playlists

If you’ve found some great music on Apple Music, and want to tell your friends about it, you can send links to your friends so they can check it out to.

For any song, artist, album, or playlist on Apple Music, you’ll see a Share button. Click it and you’ll see five options:

Share button

You also see Share buttons for playlists you create in iTunes, or in the iOS Music app.

When you send a link to a friend, that person can click or tap the link to see what you’ve sent. If you send a link to a playlist, it will open in iTunes, or in the iOS Music app, and they’ll be able to listen to your playlist.

NOTE: I’ve been getting reports that this doesn’t work reliably on Macs, but does work on iOS. I think it has something to do with the domain redirection, but I’m not sure.

Shared playlists show up in iTunes in Playlists view under a separate grouping, Apple Music Playlists.

Apple music playlists

Click a playlist and you’ll see its name and contents, and you’ll also see the name of the person who created it:

Shared playlist

Click the … button to add it to Up Next, or to refresh it; the person who created the playlist may have made changes, and you may want to see what’s new in that playlist. You can also click the Play button to listen to the music, or click the cloud icon in the playlist header to download all the songs; or the cloud icons next to any track to download it.

Want to try? Here’s a Grateful Dead playlist I made. It contains the best songs from the Dead’s studio albums (along with one from Bob Weir’s Ace, which, while technically a solo album, featured the entire band). I’ll be adding some more of my favorite Grateful Dead tracks over time, so think about refreshing it every now and then.

48 thoughts on “How To: Share Apple Music Songs, Albums, and Playlists

  1. The link does’t open anything in iTunes for me, thought it might be due to chrome, so i tried safari and it was the same.

  2. The link does’t open anything in iTunes for me, thought it might be due to chrome, so i tried safari and it was the same.

  3. Yeah, I was experiencing the same problem. Went round and round with Apple support and they ended up noting it as a bug. Looks like any shared *anything* (album, artist, playlist, etc) shared from iOS to iTunes on the desktop (12.2) fails.

  4. Yeah, I was experiencing the same problem. Went round and round with Apple support and they ended up noting it as a bug. Looks like any shared *anything* (album, artist, playlist, etc) shared from iOS to iTunes on the desktop (12.2) fails.

  5. I am also unable to open the link on my Mac. iTunes opens to the “New” tab, but that’s as far as it goes.

    Kirk, do you know of a way to “Refresh” the playlist in iOS? I can’t figure that out.

  6. I am also unable to open the link on my Mac. iTunes opens to the “New” tab, but that’s as far as it goes.

    Kirk, do you know of a way to “Refresh” the playlist in iOS? I can’t figure that out.

  7. No, I’m in the States and the link doesn’t for me on OS X Yosemite, but works great on iOS.
    I am finding quite a few items that are missing, or don’t work on OS X, but work well on iOS.

    OS X items:
    *) Adding Streams to “Up Next” requires downloading album, song, “Add to My Music”, in order to get “Up Next” working, what a pain,
    *) The “For You” option “I Don’t Like This Suggestion”, I can’t find it?
    *) Playlist Sharing not working

    • Yes, I Don’t Like this Suggestion is missing on OS X. Also, it only works on the iPad for albums, not for playlists. Go figure.

  8. No, I’m in the States and the link doesn’t for me on OS X Yosemite, but works great on iOS.
    I am finding quite a few items that are missing, or don’t work on OS X, but work well on iOS.

    OS X items:
    *) Adding Streams to “Up Next” requires downloading album, song, “Add to My Music”, in order to get “Up Next” working, what a pain,
    *) The “For You” option “I Don’t Like This Suggestion”, I can’t find it?
    *) Playlist Sharing not working

    • Yes, I Don’t Like this Suggestion is missing on OS X. Also, it only works on the iPad for albums, not for playlists. Go figure.

  9. Yesterday I opened a shared playlist with the same iTunes/account that was used to create it to see how many tracks actually matched from Apple Music.

    The reopened playlist REPLACED the original playlist in place (not under the separate grouping), with some songs matching the original, others matching a different version of the same song, and some songs removed.

    This new playlist was no longer able to be synced and had the “slashed cloud” icon.

    Many songs from this playlist had their metadata damaged, with the track number value moving to the total tracks field. For instance, “3 of 7” becomes “[blank] of 3” and “5 of 12” becomes “[blank] of 5.” Also their disc number was changed from “1 of 1” to “1 of [blank].”

    Restoring “iTunes Library.itl” from a Time Machine backup had no effect, because the playlist was restored from the iCloud Music Library almost instantly upon relaunch of iTunes.

    Naturally, this was a 700+ track playlist that I had curated over the course of a year because I’m an idiot. : )

    • Ouch. You should be able to get the old playlist back from a Time Machine backup. Turn off iCloud Music Library, or just turn off wifi, and load an old library. Then export the playlist from the File menu.

      • I had tried turning off “Show Apple Music” and “iCloud Music Library” before restoring the library, but iCloud switches itself back on (I’m also a Match subscriber, and I don’t want to temp fate turning *that* off. : )

        I copied the track list off the altered playlist and pasted into Numbers to rebuild the playlist by hand. I have to go through each song anyway to see which ones have had their track data mangled.

      • That being said… how *would* you go about “proofing” your shared playlist to see if Apple Music contains all the tracks from the original?

        After I’ve repaired my library, I want to do some tests with new, *shorter* playlists, though I’m hesitant to go poking the hornet’s nest again (it takes 10 seconds of beachball for iTunes to update a track’s metadata).

  10. Yesterday I opened a shared playlist with the same iTunes/account that was used to create it to see how many tracks actually matched from Apple Music.

    The reopened playlist REPLACED the original playlist in place (not under the separate grouping), with some songs matching the original, others matching a different version of the same song, and some songs removed.

    This new playlist was no longer able to be synced and had the “slashed cloud” icon.

    Many songs from this playlist had their metadata damaged, with the track number value moving to the total tracks field. For instance, “3 of 7” becomes “[blank] of 3” and “5 of 12” becomes “[blank] of 5.” Also their disc number was changed from “1 of 1” to “1 of [blank].”

    Restoring “iTunes Library.itl” from a Time Machine backup had no effect, because the playlist was restored from the iCloud Music Library almost instantly upon relaunch of iTunes.

    Naturally, this was a 700+ track playlist that I had curated over the course of a year because I’m an idiot. : )

    • Ouch. You should be able to get the old playlist back from a Time Machine backup. Turn off iCloud Music Library, or just turn off wifi, and load an old library. Then export the playlist from the File menu.

      • I had tried turning off “Show Apple Music” and “iCloud Music Library” before restoring the library, but iCloud switches itself back on (I’m also a Match subscriber, and I don’t want to temp fate turning *that* off. : )

        I copied the track list off the altered playlist and pasted into Numbers to rebuild the playlist by hand. I have to go through each song anyway to see which ones have had their track data mangled.

      • That being said… how *would* you go about “proofing” your shared playlist to see if Apple Music contains all the tracks from the original?

        After I’ve repaired my library, I want to do some tests with new, *shorter* playlists, though I’m hesitant to go poking the hornet’s nest again (it takes 10 seconds of beachball for iTunes to update a track’s metadata).

  11. I find this works quite well, however the album art at the other end, say Facebook, is just horrible. About as low res as it gets.

  12. I find this works quite well, however the album art at the other end, say Facebook, is just horrible. About as low res as it gets.

  13. I’m able to open your playlist on my iPhone 6s Plus running iOS 9.2, but when I attempt to subscribe to the playlist by clicking the “plus” sign to add to “my music” it will confirm and then the download cloud that replaced the plus sign disappears and reverts back to the plus sign as if I never added the playlist.

    Is there any other way to subscribe to this or any other playlist for that matter while maintaining the original playlists ownership so that it can be updated by them in the future?

  14. I’m able to open your playlist on my iPhone 6s Plus running iOS 9.2, but when I attempt to subscribe to the playlist by clicking the “plus” sign to add to “my music” it will confirm and then the download cloud that replaced the plus sign disappears and reverts back to the plus sign as if I never added the playlist.

    Is there any other way to subscribe to this or any other playlist for that matter while maintaining the original playlists ownership so that it can be updated by them in the future?

  15. I know this is an old thread.. But this is not working for me. I “share” the song from iOS 9.2.1 and it sends a text message but when clicking the link, my husband cannot open from his phone and visa Versa, I cannot open from my phone either ? Any thoughts?

  16. I know this is an old thread.. But this is not working for me. I “share” the song from iOS 9.2.1 and it sends a text message but when clicking the link, my husband cannot open from his phone and visa Versa, I cannot open from my phone either ? Any thoughts?

    • Well, a smart playlist is dynamic; its contents depend on what’s in your library, and the conditions you’ve set. If you want, you can select all the tracks in the smart playlist, then choose File > New > Playlist from Selection. This will create a “dumb” playlist, which you can then share.

    • Well, a smart playlist is dynamic; its contents depend on what’s in your library, and the conditions you’ve set. If you want, you can select all the tracks in the smart playlist, then choose File > New > Playlist from Selection. This will create a “dumb” playlist, which you can then share.

  17. I shared the link to a playlist I made through Apple Music with a friend. Can they still listen to playlist if they don’t subscribe to Apple Music?

  18. I shared the link to a playlist I made through Apple Music with a friend. Can they still listen to playlist if they don’t subscribe to Apple Music?

  19. OSX 10.12. Share link > Twitter no longer creates a nice “listen to [band name] on Apple Music [link to album with preview clip]”. Now just tweets a tiny album thumbnail and crummpy itun.es link to an itunes preview page. That sucks…

  20. OSX 10.12. Share link > Twitter no longer creates a nice “listen to [band name] on Apple Music [link to album with preview clip]”. Now just tweets a tiny album thumbnail and crummpy itun.es link to an itunes preview page. That sucks…

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