In iTunes Windows, is there any way to create a smart playlist of only all .m4a files in the library?

Well, I gave you a solution. Perhaps you should give it a try. It would take 10 minutes in total including installation. It is literally drag and drop. The program is worth the perhaps 10 additional minutes in learning to include the codec column, if it is not there by default, as it will really help you manipulate and work with your library. You can lead a horse to water....

File/New/Smart Playlist (which I guess you already know)

Change the playlist fields from the one shown below:

to this:

In other words:

• • change the Artist drop-down to Kind
  • leave the contains as it is
  • in the empty text box, type in AAC (in apitals)

That's it.

The trick is two-fold; the "contains" looks for anything in the Kind field that has Apple's name for m4a files. Note that the file extension m4a is AAC in the kind field. Confusing perhaps, but that's all you need. In my second screenshot, all the files in the resulting playlist are AAC (or m4a songs)

Use MP3Tag. Import songs from iTunes into MP3Tag, sort them by codec type. Highlight and drag files from MP3Tag into an iTunes playlist. There you go! MP3Tag is an awesome tool!

JohnMGunther wrote:

Thank you but the reason for my question is in my iTunes library (perhaps it's a unique problem), I have .mp3 extensions of Kind "AAC" and .m4a files of Kind "MPEG"

Well, I've never seen that before!

Since neither the kind field nor the file extension can be edited in iTunes, I can only think that a third party application has changed the file incorrectly. Have you used a tag editor?

I'll see if I can get a very experienced iTunes user to have a look at your post to see if he has any ideas.

Okay, I'm hoping that user tt2 will take an experienced look.

In the meantime, can you tell us what are you using to actually play these songs? Is it an Apple device (iPod, iPhone etc.) that is connected to your car's player, or are the song's files on a memory stick (perhaps plugged into the car's USB port) or a non-Apple device (such as an Android phone)?

Yep, like the one I suggested.