Export/Import Playlists by Artist/Album/Track info and NOT by file name

[Mauser69]

The problem: I want to export a playlist from a machine where the music is all in .mp3 format, and import that playlist on a machine where all the music is maintained in FLAC format. 

When sharing playlists with other software or devices, often the underlying file structure cannot be used at all (such as if I send you a playlist as an email attachment); when sharing a playlist, the only viable information is that which is needed to identify the MUSIC OBJECT, and not the original source file. 

The XSPF playlist format was specifically developed just to solve this need, and in that format, any reference to file names is completely optional.  MusicBee already has support for exporting and importing XSPF, but there seems to be no way to stop it from including the file information.

Please provide support for the XSPF playlist format where the playlist can be shared between devices with completely different file name for the same music.

[frankz]

+1

What would be excellent is if MB would enhance this rather than just adapting it.  

I'd love to be able to set a selector when playing or syncing a playlist that was something like  Lossless / Lossy / Hybrid (lossy when lossless is not available).  

In other words
Option :Play only what I have in Lossless from this list
Option: Play / sync only the lossy versions of what's in this list
Option: Play this list in Lossless, falling back to lossy if lossless is not available for the track.

This is something I've wanted to do for a long time.  My lossless library is archival at this point, but I'd love to be able to utilize it in a convenient way.  I didn't realize that a playlist format that got somewhere close was out there until Mauser69 educated me.

[frankz]

Hey Mauser69, out of curiosity, what happens if you import a XSPF playlist that is formatted as you desire (without file names)? 

[Mauser69]

Hey Mauser69, out of curiosity, what happens if you import a XSPF playlist that is formatted as you desire (without file names)?  

I do not know - I have spent all my time testing only with playlist exports from MB.  I guess I'll have to start searching the Internet for an "outside" XSPF playlist and see how MB imports it.

There is lots of great information on the XSPF.org web site, so maybe I'll find a sample there to test with . . .  Perhaps I'll even have to find and install some other XSPF compliant software to compare against MusicBee's behavior with this format.  I am still flummoxed by the fact that MusicBee supposedly supports XSPF playlists, but cannot seem to handle the very thing for which the format was invented!

The good news is that I have run one of MB's exported XSPF playlists through an XSPF validator, and it confirms that Steven is using valid XSPF format, but he is including the optional file information.  So apparently a simple solution would be to just provide an option on import to NOT USE file information.  But I still have not tested how MB will respond to an XSPF playlist that does not contain files info at all.

[Mauser69]

No Joy.  The problem seems to be the import.

I edited one of the MB Exported playlists and removed the file information, so that the location elements looked like this: <location></location>

I made no other changes at all, so that I could be sure MB import would see EXACTLY the playlist information that it had exported with the only exception being no file name.

After I imported that edited playlist to MusicBee on another computer, the playlist was empty.  So it seems as if MB might be incorrectly using an XSPF playlist as a simple file catalog.  If this is the case, creating the code for a proper "content resolver" on import may be more effort than Steven wants to do.  On the other hand, a content resolver for just a playlist import would only need to query the player's own library, not go all out and search for files.  All of the information for "Fuzzy name" queries is already there in the playlist to automatically re-build the playlist the same way a human built it in the first place.

(I also tried importing a playlist with no location elements at all, based on this line from the XSPF Specification:  "xspf:track elements MAY contain zero or more location elements, but a user-agent MUST NOT render more than one of the named resources."  The results were the same - an empty playlist after import.)