Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
I am importing an M3U playlist generated by another program. iTunes will do this, but it filters out any duplicate songs it encounters. I specifically need the duplicates in the playlist as originally generated. Is there a setting to allow duplicate songs when importing an M3U playlist?
Windows 7
Thank you turingtest2.
I had the same issue where I wanted to import a m3u playlist that intentionally has duplicates at regular intervals (sweepers, liners, etc), and I couldn't import the file as-is, as iTunes 12 is filtering duplicates and screws up the playlist.
After I searched today, I came across this message.
Your script worked like a champ!
Thanks a lot
I tested Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Reset Warnings just to see if there would be a prompt, but no. However my ImportM3U script will do what you want.
tt2
I am sorry, but I don't understand what you mean. I have created the playlist, all of the songs reside in the iTunes library, but using ImportM3U doesn't actually add the playlist to iTunes, but it seems to add the playlist songs to the library where I now have 2 and 3 duplicates of each song. What i need the M3U file to transfer as is through File>LIbrary>Import Playlist and preserve the song order and any duplicates that are being referenced. Is this what Import M3U is supposed to do? Thanks in advance for you reply.
The ImportM3U script will process the entries in the m3u file, adding to the library any files that are not already present in it, and then adding the tracks to a new playlist. I suspect the reason you are getting duplicate files created is that the paths listed in the generated m3u file are not matching up with the files that have already been imported to iTunes.
To make sure my script did what I think you want I created a test playlist of 6 tracks, exported this from iTunes as an m3u playlist, edited the list in text editor and duplicated the entries so 1,2,3,4,5,6 became 1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6. Using iTunes to import the list created a deduped playlist 1,2,3,4,5,6 whereas when I dropped the playlist on my script a new playlist was generated with the entries 1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6 as required. Since all the files were already in my library no duplicates were generated.
Compare the paths listed from a test export from iTunes with the paths generated by your "other program". I suspect the will be some kind of discrepancy in the format of the paths, e.g. a "Documents and Settings\<User>\My Documents\My Music" which should really be "Users\<User>\Music", or something similar.
tt2
tt2, thank you!
That totally worked. I had to edit the M3U file in Notepad with a find/replace based on the exported playlist I did from iTunes, voila, your importM3U script worked perfectly.
Thanks again.
mike
You're welcome. 🙂
tt2
That's great to hear! 🙂
tt2
How do I allow duplicate songs to be included when importing an m3u playlist?
