The short version.

You export one playlist from YouTube Music as a file, hand that file to Zene, and Zene finds each song in its own catalogue. About a minute per playlist.

Your Google password never goes anywhere near Zene. There's no Google account connection to approve inside Zene, because the import works through a file you choose on your own phone.

It's one extra step compared to a direct account transfer, but it keeps the process simple: export, choose the file, and review the matches.

The uploads problem, handled honestly.

If you uploaded your own files to YouTube Music — old rips, rare tracks, a friend's demo — remember that a CSV is not an audio backup. It carries track information, not the original music files.

Zene can only match a song if it can find an available version in its own catalogue. A personal recording that exists only in your uploads may therefore have no match.

What “closest match” means here

YouTube Music can contain plenty of near-duplicates: sped-up versions, extended edits, live uploads, and tracks with slightly different artist names. So this part is worth checking carefully.

When Zene can't find an exact match, it adds the closest version it can find and tells you which ones those were, by name, under Closest matches.

Fixing two entries by hand is nothing. Not knowing they were swapped is what makes a library feel subtly off for months.

How many songs can you bring?

A free Zene account imports 250 songs every 30 days. That's several real playlists, and for many people it covers the move in one sitting.

It's a rolling window from your first import rather than a calendar month, so it refills thirty days after you began. If a file goes past the limit, Zene saves what fits and tells you how much allowance is left rather than throwing the batch away.

Premium removes the import limit if you're moving something very large in one go.

What you're not actually losing

The usual worry about leaving YouTube Music isn't only the playlists. It's everything else that was bundled into the experience.

Zene isn't just a place to play the songs you imported. It also has video, podcasts, and live radio, so you can keep exploring beyond your music library.

• Music videos. Zene has video alongside music, so there's still a place to watch as well as listen.
• Podcasts. There's a dedicated podcast section with episode progress that remembers where you stopped.
• Live radio. You can discover live stations alongside your usual music.
• Play counts and watch history. The CSV import doesn't recreate your old listening or viewing history in Zene.

The idea isn't to make your music world smaller. It's to bring the parts you actually want into a fresh library, without carrying every accidental save along with them.

If the file won't read

Two problems account for most of the common failures.

If Zene says the file doesn't look like an exported playlist, it may be missing its first line — the row of headings that tells the importer what each column contains. Export again and keep the whole file intact.

If Zene reports no track names, the export may have been made without titles. Redo it with track names and artists included; a file containing only links may not provide enough information to match against.

And if a large playlist behaves strangely, try one playlist at a time. Smaller files make it easier to identify which row is causing trouble.