Spotify iTunes Playlist Import??

m021478 wrote:

I noticed from under the File menu that Spotify allows you to import your iTunes playlists, but when I do so it simply imports the playlist names, but all of them are empty (no tracks appear within any of the playlists)...

I know this can't be right, so what am I missing here?

Not sure if this is relevant, but my iTunes library & media is stored on an external hard drive and my primary Home>Music folder is empty... iTunes and my Mac OS are completely up-to-date; I've run Cocktail to repair permissions and perform all sorts of maintenance routines on my machine, and I've even uinstalled and reinstalled Spotify in an attempt to get this working. I've had no luck with everything I've tried.

Spotify is counter-intuitive in the way it handles your iTunes music. I've just launched mine (the Free version) and all my iTunes playlists are there. The tracks that Spotify has are in white, and if you Play those you presumably are hearing the Spotify track. However, tracks which Spotify doesn't have are in pale beige. I just tried highlighting a track and playing it and got this message :

"This track was added as a Local file. If you have the file on your computer you can import it"

It looks as if you have to physically import to Spotify any tracks you want it to play, which it doesn't already have. Which kind of begs the question : if you already have iTunes, what's the point?

Yeah, I'm having this exact same problem. The playlists come in just fine, but they're only populated with the few tracks that I had accidentally imported onto my primary drive (almost my entire library is on an external drive). Haven't found a fix yet...

I had the same issue. I have a free Spotify account and keep my iTunes library on an external hard drive. To fix this, I went to preferences, local files, and added the music folder on my external HD with my iTunes music files. I then deleted the original iTunes folder and playlists in Spotify, went to file, import playlists, iTunes, and all worked well. Perhaps this will help if you are using and external HD as well!

Good luck.

Rx

My "fix" is this. Create new playlist in Spotify named exactly the same as one in iTunes. Move it to your "iTunes" list in Spotify. Then open the playlist in iTunes and drag the files into Spotify. That seemed to work like a charm for me. I, too, have an external drive. Spotify needs to fix this but for me, with just a handful of playlist I care about, it worked and I was done in less than 5 minutes.

Control click on iTunes in spotify and select delete. Do not uncheck iTunes in the preferences window.

m021478... When I launched Spotify, it brought in my playlists, but the ones that were "Smart Playlists" were empty. All my manually created playlists translated fine into Spotify.

The problem I'm having is any of the tracks names that I've changed are not recognized/synched with the Spotify database... for example, "Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley I have labeled as "Hallelujah [Leonard Cohen cover]"... thus not recognized. Just keep that in mind, I suppose.

I have Spotify Premium as well, and I have encountered the grayed out menu for importing iTune playlists. Also, iTunes does not show up in the left hand list as it is shown in your snapshot. I have iTunes on an extended HD which I have added as a source, but I have not unchecked iTunes in Preferences.

My easy but not so perfect solution:

Well, because spotify only adds playlist the user created (NOT Smart Playlists), I just made another playlist & copied all the music from My Top Rated Songs (Which is a Smart Playlist) into my new created folder, that way Spotify will add it because it's 'usermade'.

The only problem is, Whenever a song goes into your Smart playlist automatically, you'll have to find that file & copy it to your user created folder so that it appears on Spotify. I know this can be a bother for some people but this is how we're going to have to do it until someone finds a better solution or iTunes & Spotify work out something.

Other People Might say "Whats the Point, You already have iTunes"

Well I see Spotify as the next step in listening & getting music. I love this service & i feel like its made perfectly for me because its legal, I use the Free version which is as good as Torrenting (I AM NOT SAYING I DO... im just saying...LOL). It's less risky & the Artists get paid. I get to listen to anything I want without buying it so I think it solves Pirating issues. Anyone who still pirates music must love to be an A**Hole or they can't find something they want with Spotify.

Also, if it wasn't for my iphone & me using the Free version of Spotify, I wouldn't even touch iTunes. I just use iTunes to put songs on my iphone, for podcasts, audiobooks & nothing else.

If iTunes don't do anything as good as Spotify, I'll just get the Paid version & almost never use Itunes for music (on my phone or not) since Paid Versions of Spotify will take care of music on my phone too.

P.S. I'm sorry if someone has already said this, I didn't bother reading everyones reply & Sorry if its too long.

Interesting POV. However I've been using iTunes too long to abandon it as my main music player, and where all my Smart Playlists are. I do use Spotify, but as we've been discussing, it's a pain to get your iTunes music there also (and why bother if it means duplicating GBs of files???)

No, I use Spotify mainly to 'audition' entire tracks before I decide if I want to buy them from iTunes, Amazon, or eMusic where I have a subscription. It's the ideal way - even with the '10 hours a month' limit on Free accounts - of getting around the horrendous 30 second previews that tell you very little. Sure, it would be great to have a single place where I could have all my music including smart PL's, and could listen to entire tracks and then purchase them, but until and unless iTunes introduces a streaming service, it's not going to happen.

The point is that you can combine your local tracks with their 12 million or whatever it is cloud library, and either listen to that combined uber-library on your Mac, or make combined playlists and sync them to your iDevice. So - if you want to make the ultimate classic rock playlist on most streaming services - you'd have to do it without including bands like Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. With Spotify - assuming you own tracks from those bands - you could add your local tracks to their cloud tracks and create such a playlist.

This is actually a really easy issue to fix.

If you're storing your music on an external harddrive, then it is safe to delete the default iTunes directory that reides in your user's home folder (~/Music).

Once you delete it, simply create an alias in your ~/Music folder pointing to the iTunes folder on your external harddrive. Make sense?

From the terminal, you could go into your user's music folder

cd Music

and then create the alias

ln -s /path/to/external/iTunes

voila! Spotify works.

I just bought an awesome new iMac...have an external 500G for time machine backups...but have still left all of my music on my iMac as well...is there a considerable advantage to moving everything to JUST the external.

also, i came here mainly amidst a search to find out how to UPDATE my imported itunes playlists that are now in spotify without having to delete the existing itunes folder in spotify (including all playlists) and reimport it. as i add songs to itunes and add them to playlists (manually created playlists, obv...even if they're copies of my Smart ones) i'd like to find out if there's a way to just update that playlist in Spotify.

Thanks!

I realise this is the 'iTunes for Mac' area, but in case any windows users are finding this same issue and stumble across this post as I did, here is the solution for spotify/iTunes on windows.

Working on Win7 I hold my iTunes on an external share which is mapped as a drive letter and set as such in iTunes. To make this work I needed to set up a symbolic link as suggested above but not for the iTunes folder itself (this removes the link to the library resulting in a default looking iTunes), but rather to the folder inside 'iTunes' called 'iTunes Music'.

Create the link with the following syntax in a command window in the iTunes directory:

mklink /D "iTunes Music" link_to_your_external_itunes_location

Then as soon as you start up spotify and re-import your playlists it all works.