Playlists in iTunes 8
Here's a quick work around for working with playlists in iTunes 8 exported to text files.
In my last post , I demonstrated some tricks to manipulate iTunes playlists by exporting them to text files. It seems Apple has changed their text format in iTunes 8 just enough to break my system. I'm working on a real solution, but in the meantime, here's a work around to get the playlists back into the older format.
First, you'll need to download and install Notepad++, a free text editor available here:
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
Next, you'll need to open the new playlist format in Notepad++ and make some changes using the Find/Replace feature. What's great about Notepad++ is that you can insert special characters (like line returns) via Find/Replace.
The new playlist format is still tab-separated values, but now songs aren’t placed on their lines. Therefore, when you open the text file in Excel, you get one row with many, many columns of song information. However, this is easily fixed by replacing ".mp3" with ".mp3\n" (just go to Search | Replace... or press Ctrl+H to bring up the window). Make sure you change "Search mode" to "Extended" to make sure the special characters work. Then just repeat the Find/Replace for every filetype in your playlist. Personally, I only had to do this for .mp3 and .m4a. You'll have to figure out whether you have any additional formats.
In the end you'll be left with tab-separated values with one song per line. Simply save the file, and suddenly you’re back in business with the hacks from my previous post.
I'm going to put together a script that will automate some of these hacks. I also did some quick Googling and noticed there are number of tools out there that accomplish similar things. Let me know if you stumble on anything good.
