How do I turn a text file list of artist & song titles into an iTunes playlist?

June 8, 2009 4:22 PM

A friend just posted a list of well-nigh every song they played at the dance club we went to as teenagers, exported from his iTunes. I'd love to somehow be able to have that as a playlist in my iTunes, so I could listen to the collection (at least those in the list that I have on my computer). Already checked this AskMe response, but it doesn't really answer. If there's some better way (e.g. if iTunes has some kind of "send a playlist" option that I don't know about), please tell me that. Thanks!
posted by mabelstreet to computers & internet (2 comments total)

Possible solution: iTunes export.

If your friend can export the playlist as an m3u, you can read it in.
posted by zippy at 4:39 PM on June 8

Assuming you have the exact same artist, album and title tags as your friend's list, you could create a .m3u file. (You could use either a good text editor's search/replace and copy/past functions, or a perl/python/etc. script to write the playlist for you.) Here's a sample .m3u file.

#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:song title1
C:\path\to\library\artist1\album1\title1.mp3

#EXTINF:song title2
C:\path\to\library\artist2\album2\title2.mp3

I put "C:\" because you didn't specify which OS. If your on a mac, then it'd be something like "/Users/mabelstreet/Music/...".
posted by philomathoholic at 5:18 PM on June 8