Playlists in iTunes

Lt Major Burns

"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
for all the years i have used itunes, i have lost my playlists, on average, every 3 months or so, though one thing or another. so much so, that now i rarely use this integral feature in iTunes.

How can i either a) back them up, b) make it more stable or c) both.

i want to keep my playlists!
 
Got a .Mac account? Use Backup 3.

Otherwise, you can simply back up your iTunes Music folder, which contains the database of your playlists and songs (as well as the actual songs themselves).

I would recommend getting down to the root cause of your iTunes library disappearing so often -- I haven't lost a library since the original iTunes, and losing it every 3 months or so is definitely too often. What exactly are you doing with iTunes that's making it go wonky? You add songs, you remove songs, you play songs... what in God's name are you doing, man?! ;)
 
All your playlist data (along with just about everything else iTunes uses) is stored in "~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library" (not the *.xml file; that's only read by other apps to access iTunes' data). You can durplicate it and replace it any time you want (quit iTunes first, of course).

The problem with that is that if you move, rename or edit tracks, you might get dead/outdated data when you restore it. Blech.

I devised a quick & dirty 'solution' to this problem when iTunes 2 came out: Only use Smart Playlists. I started inserting labels into my tracks' comment fields. Anything with "[1]" contained in the comment goes into one smart playlist, anything with "[2]" goes into another, etc. I made a bunch of scripts to make adding/removing these labels quick & easy. So when I re-import my songs, all I need to do is recreate those smart playlists, and BAM! all my tracks are sorted properly.

The problem with that is that it will not remember play count or rating data. Doh!


I've been considering writing a program to store playlist/play count/rating data for every track and then intelligently apply it to new tracks later, so if you delete a track and re-import it, you can keep your old settings. I just haven't gotten around to it, and I'm not quite sure what the best way to make it "intelligent" would be.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
Got a .Mac account? Use Backup 3.

Otherwise, you can simply back up your iTunes Music folder, which contains the database of your playlists and songs (as well as the actual songs themselves).

I would recommend getting down to the root cause of your iTunes library disappearing so often -- I haven't lost a library since the original iTunes, and losing it every 3 months or so is definitely too often. What exactly are you doing with iTunes that's making it go wonky? You add songs, you remove songs, you play songs... what in God's name are you doing, man?! ;)

everytime i have to agree to the itunes discalimer, i am faced with an empty, reset itunes. this happened when i updated to 6, as well as a number of ther updates. it has also happened a number of ther times as well, but i can't rmemeber the reason.

Mikuro is in the same postion as me, using comments to filter into smart playlists, but i don't want to have to do this.
 
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