How to send a playlist to a friend with similar music?

December 9, 2006 2:11 AM

A friend of mine on a different continent has a similar music collection to mine. Since we have many of the same MP3s, I would like to send an iTunes playlist that she can just place into her iTunes.

Is there a way to do this? Obviously, I can't plug my iPod into her computer, so I can't transfer the playlist that way -- it has to be Internet-based.

If there is no way to send just the playlist, I can send the MP3 files, too -- but the order of the songs would be lacking. What is the best way to do this?

posted by jeffmshaw to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Best answer: iTunes supports the ability export a playlist and import it on a different computer so that you can have the same playlist in both places. Do the following:

1. Select the playlist in your copy of iTunes.
2. Choose the Export menu item from the File menu.
3. In the export dialog box, choose XML from the Format pop-up menu.
4. Click the Save button to save your play list to disk.
5. E-mail the file to your friend as an attached file.
6. After your friend receives the e-mail, ask her to save the attached playlist to a convenient location (perhaps the Desktop).
7. Your friend then selects the Import menu item from the File menu in her copy of iTunes and selects your playlist.
8. Your playlist will appear in her copy of iTunes.

I should note that on your friend's computer the imported playlist will only include songs and videos already in her iTunes library. Unavailable items will be silently removed from the list.
posted by RichardP at 4:58 AM on December 9, 2006

If the playlist is already on the iPod (and she's using a Mac), then you can use Senuti - - and with minimal muss and fuss, copy the playlist songs over to her computer. You can then easily copy those into a new playlist. There's other options for Windows machines, but I forget exactly what they are... Yamipod ) is the only one that immediately comes to mind.
This is slightly more work-intensive, and it's not internet-based. But I think it should work fairly well.
posted by cybertaur1 at 8:38 AM on December 31, 2006