Playlists

What is a playlist?
A playlist is a text file with a list of music files in it. Your media player uses lists like these to play multiple songs in a row, one after the other.

How are playlists made?
There's two types of playlists. Simple, and extended. I could just cut this whole thing short and say that your media player makes them for you, but that isn't any fun now is it?

I thought I asked you a question. How are they made!?
First off, we have the simple playlist. As its name implies, making one is rather simple.

Basically, all you do is put one file location on each line. You can use relative (music.mp3 or /some_folder/music.mp3), absolute (c:\My Music\some_folder\music.mp3), or you can even do URLs (http://www.mymusic.com/some_folder/music.mp3). You don't have to just do mp3's, you can put in other playlists, for say, a shoutcast. Or even an entry directly to a shoutcast. Here's an example showing all the different methods in one playlist.

C:\Documents and Settings\JoeMama\My Music\TehMusix.mp3
\subfolderthingy\anotherone\Music0rz.mp3
anothermusic.mp3
http://www.JoeMama.com/my_music/joesmusic.mp3
http://www.someguy.com:8000/listen.pls
http://www.someguy.com:8000/

I have my playlist! Now what?
First thing's first. You gotta save it. Choose "All File Types" in the save as dialogue, and save it as a .m3u file. Now that you have a playlist ready, there's three things you can do with it. One: Use it. Two: Send it to your friend so they can use it. (Their computer reads their files, not yours. Keep that in mind when sending a playlist that doesn't use URLs.) Three: Host your playlist on a website so people can click it and have their media player open the playlist. (You should probably only use URLs. Users can't open files on your C:\ drive any better than your friend can.)

More fun with Playlists
I know I know. You're feeling pretty excited right? I mean, YOU JUST MADE A FRICKIN PLAYLIST!! How awesome is that!? Pretty awesome right? Well you're gonna wet yourself when you see what else you can do with them.

Extended Playlists
Yup, you heard me correctly. More advanced than the Simple playlist, is the Extended playlist. Since we're working with m3u playlists, I'll go ahead and tell you how to use the extended features of the m3u playlist.

Essentially, you set up an extended playlist the same way you'd set up a normal one. But there's a few new things that you add.
Firstly, you have to put #EXTM3U as the first line of any extended m3u. This lets the media player know it's extended. Secondly, you put a line above each playlist entry with information in it like how long it is and what title you want it to have. That uses #EXTINF things, which lets the media player know there's extended information in that line. Here's how that works.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:152,The Song of Doom
c:\music\doomsong.mp3
#EXTINF:358,Oh My God What The Floob
http://www.huh.com/OMGWTF.mp3

The #EXTINF always has a colon (:) at the end of it. The number after it is how many seconds it is. If it's 2:32, then you'd put 152 like I did. If you want it to ignore the seconds (such as with another playlist file or a shoutcast), put -1 for the seconds. The seconds ends with a comma (,). After the comma, you put the title of the song. YES! You can choose the title!! On the next line, you put the song that goes with the stuff you just entered, just like you would in a simple playlist. Then the next line has more extended info, followed by another line with the location of the file, just like before. This can go on as long as you want. You don't need anything special at the end of the file. Just at the top and above every song. Keep in mind, the #EXT stuff is case sensitive.

What if I don't want m3u?
There is another file type. Pls. But pls files suck. Windows media player doesn't recognise them unless you have a certain codec, and even if you do it doesn't automatically recognise them. You might as well stop reading now because m3u is supported by most media players. If you use pls files, your site is gonna suck. People who use windows media player are gonna click your pls file's link and when it doesn't work, their gonna think your site is stupid because it won't work.

You still want a pls?
Fine fine. It's your choice if you still want to use it. Not only is it not supported right by windows media player, but it's also more of a pain to update one of them. If you want to do a simple pls, it's the exact same as a simple m3u. But if you want to do an extended pls, it goes like this.

[Playlist]
File1=c:\moosic\musicalness.mp3
Title1=The Musicalness
Length1=289
File2=http://www.whatever.com/tehmusix.mp3
Title2=The Music
Length2=159
NumberOfEntries=2
Version=2

Pretty easy eh? It's also pretty dumb. You have to have the number at the end of the File, Title, and Length of each song. And the NumberOfEntries has to equal the number of songs on your playlist. The Version has to be 2. It's always 2. Now do you see why m3u is better? Sure pls looks simpler, but it makes you do more work. Every time you want to change it, you have to mess with stupid File, Title, and Length numbers and change the NumberOfEntries. Oh, and that stuff is case sensitive as well.

Well, that's all the info I have on playlists. If you have anything you'd like to me to add about these playlists, if I've made any mistakes, or if you want me to add instructions for a whole new playlist type, email me at coolsteve64@yahoo.com.