Playlists: I must be an idiot....

[Busterbunny]

Hi there!

I have a Squeezebox Radio at home, and I love it. The setup was easy enough, and I haven't met any problem configuring it up to now.

However, there is ONE detail which prevents me from blessing this little piece of marvel. Playlists.

My setup is fairly easy. I have a few computers at home, but all my music is on my Acer Easystore server, running Windows Home Server. I use iTunes mostly for music. Squeezebox Server is installed.

Music displays properly on the Squeezebox. But I have yet to find a way to create and use playlists on my Squeezebox Radio. I have create a "Playlist" subdirectory in my Music folder. But the Squeezebox can't see .txt or .xml based playlits (the two kind that you can create from iTunes exporte).

Which software do you use to create your playlists? I don't mind using a third party software, if needs be. But I cannot find a clear answer as to how to proceed.

Thank you in advance for your answers.

[Siduhe]

Are you using iTunes integration with the Squeezebox server software? If so, it should automatically import playlists created in iTunes into your Squeezebox media library. There are sometimes issues - particularly if the squeezebox software is on a different machine from itunes, but these can normally be resolved.

If you don't want to use itunes integration for some reason, you need use a .m3u or .pls format, not .xml or .txt. However, I would guess it should be fairly easy to turn a .txt file into a .m3u file - probably just a matter of changing the extension of the file (assuming the .txt file produced by itunes is just a link to the music file). However, and this is important, the squeezebox server software needs to follow the same path to your music - so if the playlist has the music path as d:/music/song.mp3 and your squeezebox software music library setting to the same song is //WHS/music/song.mp3, the playlist won't work.

You need to create a playlist folder (which you've done) and then enter that folder reference into Settings/Basic Settings/Playlist Folder. Save the converted playlist in that folder and do a playlist only rescan.

[aubuti]

Squeezebox Server (SBS) can read playlists in the standard m3u format. I think iTunes can export playlists in that format, but I'm not sure because I haven't used iTunes in a long time. I mostly use MusicIP for making playlists -- it works like iTunes' "Genius" and integrates very well with SBS, although setting it up can be difficult. But any program that can save m3u format playslists will do, and there are many of them, so pick one you like. Other examples are Windows Media Player (which I can't stand), foobar2000, winamp.

[Busterbunny]

I wasn't too sure about using iTunes integration, because it seemed to have a client side on the PCs, and the server side itself. And I always fear some screwup that I don't fully understand when you get that structure.

To illustrate, as aubuti mentionned, I thought about using Windows Media Player. When I opened it, it took all my files from my server, and downloaded them again on my PC... Silly Windows Media Player.

So, I'm worried the same will happen with iTunes client and all.

I'll take a look at that integration more closely, as well as foobar and winamp. FYI, m3u are not an iTunes export type for playlist, alast.

Thank you both!

[garym]

google around on exporting itunes playlists. There are several programs that can convert an itunes playlist to .m3u. You can then import this into SbS.

[santi410]

Hi there,

I've got a problem with any kind of imported playlist. My configuration: I'm running squeezebox server 7.5.3 on a synology DS107+. Latest released for a synology NAS. Formally I had a device running with UPnP that could read the M3U playlist format perfectly. I made them with Winamp. Since this device is down, I bought a Squeezebox radio, but it seems not to be able to read that format. Does anybody know what the difference is between the m3u format from Winamp/WMP and the squeezebox variant and how I can re-use these files. I also tried to a generate WPL file by WPM, but no luck so far. The squeezebox had scanned al files and also playlist, so i can select them, buth when I try to play them, squeezebox server indicates that there are empty.

Anybody?

Kind regards
Santi

[rolski]

Until 7.6.0 & 7.6.1 the iTunes integration read the iTunes playlists without any other intervention. But it's busted now.... I'm going back to 7.5.5 as that worked without problems.

[bobcaygeon]

Just had this same problem. As another poster mentioned it used to just work and get them all.

1. From itunes just right click on the playlist and select export.
2. Point at the folder you have set up as the Playlist folder on the Library tab of the squeezebox server
3. I exported them as m3u files
4. on the status tab of the squeezebox server use the Only Rescan Playlists option.

It was an extra step, but not a problem as I don't do a lot of playlist editing.