Apple Music Library Exporter (Windows)

Get your Apple Music library out of the app — every track, playlist, love, play count, and cover image — as plain CSV files. One command, no dependencies.

The new Apple Music app for Windows (Microsoft Store / UWP) has no export feature, and Apple's Download your data (privacy.apple.com) only includes songs you purchased — not the songs you added from the catalog. So your real library, the thousands of tracks you've curated over years, is locked inside the app. If your subscription lapses or the app loses sync, that curation is gone.

This tool reads the library database that the app already keeps on your own machine and exports it to spreadsheet-friendly CSV. It's metadata only — song names, albums, artists, playlists, ratings, play counts, and the cover-art thumbnails already cached locally. No audio is ever touched, and no DRM is involved. You're saving the names of music you already pay to listen to.

What you get

File	What's in it
tracks.csv	Every track: title, artist, album, album_artist, genre, year, track #, duration, date added, last played, play count, star rating, favorite (love), compilation flag, cloud/local, file path, persistent ID, cover art file + hash
playlists.csv	Every playlist: name, type (normal / smart / folder / system), parent folder, track count, persistent ID
playlist_tracks.csv	The ordered contents of every playlist (playlist → position → track persistent ID)
albums.csv	Unique albums derived from your tracks: album, album_artist, year, track count, compilation flag, cover art
artwork/	Cover images (600×600 where available), de-duplicated by SHA-256 so shared covers are stored once

Providing the key (required, one-time)

The database is encrypted with a 16-character AES key, which you supply at runtime — it is not stored in this repository. Give it to the tool any one of these ways:

• create a file key.txt next to extract.py containing just the key, or
• set the MUSICDB_AES_KEY environment variable, or
• a .env file next to extract.py with MUSICDB_AES_KEY=... (copy .env.example), or
• pass --key <thekey> on the command line.

key.txt and .env are git-ignored, so your key never ends up committed. The same key works for every Apple Music library — it is not tied to your account.

Usage

No Python? Just double-click run.bat (Windows)

If you don't have Python installed, run run.bat. It uses Python if you have it, otherwise it downloads a small portable Python (~11 MB, no install, no admin rights) into a local .python folder and runs the export. Pass options after it, e.g. run.bat --cdn-fallback. Delete the .python folder afterward to remove every trace.

With Python (any OS)

Requires Python 3.7+ — and nothing else. No pip install, no .NET, no OpenSSL.

git clone <this-repo>
cd apple-music-library-exporter
python extract.py

That auto-detects your library and writes everything to ./output/. Options:

python extract.py --out my_export             # choose the output folder
python extract.py --library "D:\Music\Apple Music\Apple Music Library.musiclibrary"
python extract.py --no-artwork                # metadata only, skip covers
python extract.py --cdn-fallback              # fetch the few covers missing from the
                                              # local cache via Apple's public catalog

The tool never modifies your library — it works on a temporary copy of the database.

Where the library lives

It's auto-detected from the usual spots:

• %USERPROFILE%\Music\Apple Music\Apple Music Library.musiclibrary\ (default)
• %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\AppleInc.AppleMusicWin_*\LocalState\
• (WSL users: the same paths under /mnt/c/Users/...)

If you moved your media folder, pass --library with the path to your .musiclibrary bundle.

Verify nothing was dropped

Two checks confirm completeness:

1. Automatic — the tool reads the track/playlist counts the library declares about itself in its header and cross-checks them against what was extracted. You'll see OK (or a WARNING if they ever disagree). Verified to match across Apple Music for Windows and macOS Monterey/Sequoia library versions.
2. Manual — compare the printed track count to the Songs total in the Apple Music app. They should match (the Songs view can be slightly lower because it excludes music videos, which the database still stores as tracks).

How it works

Library.musicdb is Apple's proprietary hfma format: a small clear-text header, then an AES-128-ECB-encrypted, zlib-compressed payload of hsma/itma/boma/lpma sections. The tool decrypts it (using the key you supply), inflates it, and walks the section tree. See docs/FORMAT.md for the full byte layout. The AES implementation is pure-Python and checked against the FIPS-197 test vector (python tests/test_aes.py).

Credits

Format reverse-engineering builds on Gary Vollink's musicdb notes (https://home.vollink.com/gary/playlister/musicdb.html) and the pitetb/AppMusicLibParser project. This repo reimplements the read path in dependency-free Python and adds artwork export and the standardized CSV schema.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.