Q: Transferring iTunes Playlist to USB While Maintaining Track Order
Hi there!
I've been searching around the Apple Support discussions and have not been able to find an answer to my question, so here I am. I'm trying to put a few of my playlists on a portable usb, but once I drag them into there, they lose the song order and are instead ordered by the original track number of the song on its album. I tried re-numbering the tracks to mimic the order in my playlist, but that didn't work.
Also, I noticed that iTunes has an Export Playlist option, but it looks like it just exports maybe the song information, not the actual music files. Do I need to add this to each of the playlists I transfer in order for them to played on another computer? And I'm not sure what the difference is between the four exporting options: Unicode Text, XML, M3U, and M3U8. If I need to add this to my playlist folders on my USB, which would be best?
Once I figure this out, should the playlist be able to be played on any other MAC in iTunes?
Thank you to anyone who might try to help! I can usually figure these things out on my own by searching the web, but I'm not able to this time.
MacBook
Posted on Sep 13, 2013 7:15 AM
Holy crap!! I think I just figured it out on my own (and by re-reading/piecing some things together in this thread).
1. Create a new Finder folder on your desktop. Title it with the name of your playlist.
2. Copy and paste the playlist from iTunes into the folder. No need to change anything in iTunes, just transfer as-is.
3. Prepend your tracks in the folder on your desktop (i.e. re-name them with the number of the track preceeding the track title). This will not change the title of the tracks in iTunes.
4. Drag and drop the folder of your playlist into your USB.
5. Voila! Tracks are transferred in order!
I figured out that the key is to prepend the tracks while still on your desktop so that the information will transfer over to the USB like that. I was trying to prepend in the USB, but the data from the songs must have still been ingrained from when they were transferred over.
Hope this helps someone else out, too! I noticed that there hasn't been a clear answer on any of the message boards yet (at least, that I was able to use).
Posted on Sep 13, 2013 9:04 AM


