reading iTunes playlists directly...

[chesterdkat]

I personally rsync my iTunes music library from a Mac to an Atom powered Ubuntu Server Edition Linux computer where I have Subsonic installed. It would be terrific if Subsonic could directly read and serve the playlists that were created in iTunes and save a lot of BS using applications to convert these playlists first. Along with my music there are Podcasts so syncing hourly works best and you can see how doing a lot of manipulation can be time consuming and impractical.

It's interesting to note the the Firefly Media Server can directly read iTunes playlists. I'm using svn-1586 to share across our LAN but if these same iTunes created playlists were available in iSub on the iPhone as an example how awesome would that be!

[Eid]

I'm not sure how well this will help you, but I exported my playlists as m3u files (in iTunes, right click on a playlist, choose export and set the format to m3u) and then added them to my playlist director for Subsonic.

Eid

[chesterdkat]

I think that exporting the playlists only works properly if done on the same computer where your iTunes library is hosted in the first place. I'd like to be shown that I'm mistaken about this. I gave up after exporting the playlists after I synced my library from my Mac to my Linux box and they not showing up on the Subsonic server.

Thanks for keeping me in mind...

[Eid]

Aye, I'm doing this from my Mac. Is it possible for you to do the same? (and then I guess manipulate the exported file to the directory on your linux box)

I guess you need to look for some script that would parse the iTunes XML file for you. I've not looked for one, but it's just XML, so I guess it 'should' be do-able.

Alternatively I guess you could manually just make your playlists? M3u's a fairly simple format.

Best of luck

Eid

[chesterdkat]

You are right! I need to recreate them on my Subsonic server. I have too many in iTunes and I guess this has made me lazy about recreating them. I'll do a more "minimalist approach" to my recreation once I get around to it.

I love Open Source but I have to think that overwhelmingly people like to use this kind of Open Source software to work with their libraries built on proprietary apps like iTunes. I use the Firefly Media server at home to stream my iTunes library from a little Atom/Ubuntu box. My synced iTunes playlists work perfectly in Firefly and I wish this same functionality would work on Subsonic as well. It's so great to have a computer that cost me $125.00 new streaming my music and allowing me to sleep my expensive Mac.

[bozolino]

MyTunesRSS (http://www.codewave.de/products/mytunesrss/) is a media server project similar to subsonic that gathers its playlist from iTunes' XML database. It's written in Java, and the developer, Michael, is extremely nice and very supportive! Maybe it makes sense to join forces here? Developers: unite!