Create Itunes Playlist

[Jude Petkus]

Buthaving done that, what I'd like to be able to do is point iTunes at each of those directories and have it turn them into their own playlists, so I end up with a Doctor Who Music and a Star Wars Music playlist based on the MP3s locations on the hard drive.

Its really simple with iTunes 9. iTunes 9 has a Playlist Folder in itself. All you have to do is drag a particular folder in a particular location onto the playlist pane. It will create an entire playlist based on files only in that particular folder. CHEERS!

I had the same problem and didn't find a way to solve it in internet. So I decided to write a simple app that help us to re-create our folder lists 'mp3s' into iTunes.It's a simple program written in delphi, here is the link on how to use it and here the link directly to the (not installing) app.

There is one catch - save the M3U in the same folder as the music files - otherwise WinAMP will put relative paths in the M3U rather than just the file names, and this will cause iTunes to think these are new files, even if you've already imported them. If the M3U doesn't have paths, just the file names, iTunes will recognize which files it already has imported and will act accordingly.

I exported my itunes playlists to a text file (a plain text file, not a library backup) before deleting everything from itunes and start up itunes match. I'd like to re-create my itunes playlists, but find myself with text files.

Thought this might be of benefit to others searching for a similar solution. I was disappointed to discover that Media Manager does not exist for Mac, so went about looking for a substitute playlist creator. I saw the post linking to the iTunes Applescript; however, my music sits on a separate server and I do not use iTunes to access it, so that was a non-starter.

I downloaded a number of applications that claimed to be able to create M3U playlist files with mixed success. I then realized that an application I already had installed on my Mac would do the trick: VLC. ( )

Plug your Sansa Clip into the computer and open VLC. Open Finder and navigate to the Sansa Clip drive. Now you can drag and drop items from the Finder into the VLC media window. If you drag folders, you will need to double-click on them to populate the list with items within the folder. You can add and delete items at will. When you have the playlist as you like it, go to File, Save Playlist and save to the main MUSIC folder on the Sansa Clip.

Then, one last step because the Sansa uses backslashes and the Mac uses forward slashses to separate folders: in the Finder, find the M3U file you just created. Right-click and choose Open With -> TextEdit.app. Now do a Find and Replace (Command-Option F) and replace all / characters with \ characters.

I should add one other thing: when you edit the file in TextEdit, you not only need to replace the forward slashes with back slashes, but you will also need to find and replace (with nothing) the introductory path information. For example:

So I moved all my music and dumped it into the Music folder on android. It can be read by Poweramp just fine, but they are not in playlists anymore. I am wondering if it is possible to rearrange them into playlists based on the playlists I have them set up in iTunes.

That depends on whether iTunes (or another third-party app) can export your iTunes Playlists in regular M3U format. I'm afraid I don't allow iTunes on any of my equipment, so I don't know whether it offers that facility or not.

The other factor is that playlists don't know anything about the music being referenced, all they use to match entries in the list to the linked audio files are the exact folder name and filename. ITunes decides on the folder names and filenames within its music storage location (which is one of the reasons I don't use it) so you need to ensure that your Android device is using the exactly same folder names to store the files.

So I can use a text editor and mass change the file directory from my PC file path to my android device file path, and then add that playlist file to my device. Then Poweramp should be able to pick it up?

EDIT 2: Actually I figured out the issue. The file names within the playlist are different than the file names on my phone for some reason. For example in the exported .m3u playlist, one song is listed like this:

I can fix the formatting and file locations, but for some reason even the title of the .mp3 is different. I tested it out and changed the .m3u file to match my phone, and then it works. So it ended up looking like this:

I wouldn't worry too much about changing the full paths. Previous issues with playlists copied between different devices mean that PA's file-matching algorithm only looks at the full filename and the one folder level that contains it. The higher level C:\Users\OWNER\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\ and /storage/emulated/0/Music/ bits are simply ignored.

However it is obviously vital that the actual filenames completely match with the entries in the playlist. What software are you using to copy between your PC and your phone, as presumably that is what is causing the reformatting. Or is is all down to iTunes, making storage naming decisions of its own?

The only issue left is some songs are missing from the playlist. For example, my playlist with 1178 songs only has 853 on Poweramp. I believe this to be the exact same issue mentioned above where the file name was changed by iTunes for some reason, so I probably will have to manually update the .m3u file with the correct file name.

I'm a primarily a Android and Linux user and I prefer to stay faaar away from all "i" products, I have a Gen 1 iPhone SE and the only reason for it's the size of it, I use the old SE as a phone as it fits in my pocket and they are fairly inexpensive with 128GB of memory. All of this means that I'm stuck with one iTunes instance, and I can tell you that this beast is never ever gonna touch my files... it has read-only access to a network share so it can't do any damage to it. So I have had my share of fun trying to keep iTunes happy and playlists in sync between Poweramp and iTunes.

The following is from a test playlist created on my iPhone, synchronized through iTunes to my PC and exported. Actually the result is the same if the playlist is created directly in iTunes. The path is correct.

I just dragged them from my PC music folder to the Music folder on my device. I was able to access the .m3u file and change the music file names to match what their "real name" (from the music folder on my PC and music folder on Android), and then resync the playlist and it works. However that was my small playlist of 42 songs. I got a bigger one missing like 200 and another missing 300, so I will have to fix that eventually.

So my guess is that you have dragged the downloaded file with the original file name to your phone, while the iTunes Media folder is organized with directories with artist names and renamed files. If this is the case then the easiest would be to:

I'm not sure if I have 2 sets of files, I think I only have 1. So what I've done in the past is download the music file and place it in a directory. Then I click and drag that file into iTunes and arrange it into a playlist.

EDIT: okay so I looked at the file path that iTunes says its storing my music and I see the copies (or at least I think they are). I'm assuming I can just move these copies of music over to my device since the file path will match the same file path as the exported playlist file?

I just use the drag & drop method for transferring file from my PC's folders to my phone. I do use a wireless FTP Server on my phone though, so I don't have to attach cables when doing it and can see the phone's SD Card contents on my Windows desktop.

PA understands both "\" and "/" as directory separators in playlists, they can be used interchangeably. Note that PA only looks for matches to one containing folder level though, which works well in 99.9% of cases - although it can have issues with very specific cases such where the track "Music/Back to the Future/FLACs/Main Title.flac" won't be differentiated from "Music/Star Wars/FLACs/Main Title.flac".

Do you have iTunes (still hate it by the way) on both your phone and your PC? If so, is your phone downloading physical local copies of your music independently from your master PC copies, which iTunes might be naming differently? It so it's up to you whether you allow Poweramp to scan the local iTunes cache on your phone by ticking it in Settings > Library > Music Folders.

@6b6561 So I think your method works, except that it appears some of the songs were not "backed up" by my iTunes. In other words when I look in that iTunes folder with the copies of my music, I do not see some songs. Even when I export the playlist, it reflects to the main folder that has my music. So it's like the playlist is pulling half my music from my main library folder and half from the iTunes copy folder.

I have been using iTunes for a very long time. In the beginning I had struggles it fought it's own file system, versus WMP, and others. What I found early on was to only let one player manage the file locations (which I choose to be iTunes since I had multiple other iDevices and AppleTV units all talking to the main library) and have all others only have read access. Since then I have not had an issue, going on 10+ years.

As mentioned by others already, you can export any playlist from iTunes, even the "Smart" ones. The links.willmpoint to the files in the library, and assuming iTunes is in control they will all be in the right place for copying and pasting to your phone media.

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