iTunes Export M3U Playist Exporter

iTunes Export

Introduction - Download - Using iTunes Export - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - License - Change Log

This version of iTunes Export is depricated. This .Net version has been replaced by the current versions, developed in Adobe AIR and Java (Scala). You should only use this version if you have a problem with the new version.

iTunes Export exports playlists defined in your iTunes Music Library to standard .m3u, .wpl (Windows Media), .zpl (Zune), or .mpl (Centrafuse) playlists. iTunes Export is open source and freely available for use.

iTunes Export provides a simple command line application that can be used to generate playlists, a Graphical UI that provides a wizard interface to exporting playlists, or a DLL that can be used by other developers to add the ability to read iTunes Music Library XML files to other applications.

Both versions, and the source code are available for download from the Download section.

International Support - iTunes Export is now available in multiple language. English and French are available today. If you are willing and able to translate other languages please let me know!

This application is built using .Net and only runs on Windows. If you are on Mac OS X try iTunes Export Scala.

Have a questions, please review the FAQ. If it does not answer your question please email me at eric@ericdaugherty.com

iTunes Export is available as a Console (command line) or GUI application that can be used to generate m3u playlists, or as a DLL that can be used by developers to create new applications that access the iTunes Music Library XML file. The source distribution contains the source for all binary distributions.

Version 1.6
UI Application - iTunesExport.UI-1.6.zip
Console Application - iTunesExport.Console-1.6.zip
Library Parser DLL - iTunesExport.LibraryParser-1.6.zip
Source - iTunesExport-1.6-src.zip

iTunes Export is written using C# on the .NET runtime. It should work on all versions of Windows that support .NET 2.0 or later. The iTunesExport Console (command line) application also works on Linux using Mono.

iTunes Export UI

iTunes Export UI is a WinForms (Graphical) application that provides a wizard based interface to exporting your iTunes playlists to m3u files.

To use iTunes Export UI, simply launch iTunesExportUI.exe and follow the instructions.

iTunes Export Command Line

iTunes Export is a command line application. To use it, copy iTunesExport.exe to a directory and open a command window in that directory. If iTunes Export is run without any parameters, it will attempt to locate your iTunes Music Library and will write a .m3u playlist file for each playlist defined in the iTunes Music Library.

The location of the iTunes Music Library can be overridden using a command line parameter. Example:

iTunesExport.exe -library="C:\My Music\iTunes Music Library.xml"

iTunes Export will use the absolute location of your music library. iTunes Export accepts a command line parameter that will override the default location. Example:

iTunesExport.exe -prefix=m:\

iTunes Export will only apply the prefix to tracks stored in the directory configured in iTunes as the iTunes Music Folder location. Files stored in a different directory will not have the prefix applied.

If the prefix path has spaces in it, it must be surrounded with quotation marks. If the last character is a \, you must use a \\ instead.

iTunesExport.exe -prefix="c:\my directory\\"

You can specify the output directory for the playlists with the -dir command line argument:

iTunesExport.exe -dir="c:\my playlists"

If you wish to exclude some playlists from the export, you can specify them using the -exclude command line parameter. This takes a single or list of playlists that will not be exported.

iTunesExport.exe -exclude="Playlist 1,Playlist 2,Etc"

If you wish to include only a subset of your playlists in the export, you can specify them using the -include command line parameter. This takes a single or list of playlists that will be exported.

iTunesExport.exe -include="Playlist 1,Playlist 2,Etc"

All AAC files (m4p, m4a) are excluded from the exported playlists since it is unlikely that the external device will be able to play them. To include unprotected (m4a) and or copy protected AAC files (m4p) in your exported playlists, specify the following argument(s):

iTunesExport.exe -includeAAC

iTunesExport.exe -includeProtectedAAC

The Library playlist, which corresponds to your entire iTunes Library is often very large and not useful as a playlist. iTunes Export will skip this playlist unless you specify that it should be included. You can indicate that it should be included with the following command argument:

iTunesExport.exe -includeLibraryPlaylist

You can choose to have iTunes Export copy your music files to an output directory. iTunes Export will create a subdirectory for each playlist and copy the music files into that subdirectory. You may also have iTunes Export prefix the music files with an index (001 - , 002 - , etc if you want to maintain the order of your playlist.

iTunesExport.exe -copy

iTunesExport.exe -copyWithIndex

iTunes allows you to create folders to organize your playlists. By default these folders are excluded from the export (but the playlists in the folders are included). If you want to export the actual folders as a playlist you can use the following argument:

-includeFolderPlaylists

iTunes Export allows you to export playlists using a variety of formats. By default, playlists are exported at M3U playlists, but you can use the following parameter to change to EXT, WPL, ZPL, or MPL:

-playlistType=WPL

In some cases, media players don't treat the contents of M3U files (standard or extended) as Unicode. This causes problems when those files contain international characters. For those media players, changing the playlist file extension to M3U8 prompts the player to treat the contents as Unicode. During testing, this seemed to be the case for playlist files that contained special characters and were being run on a non-English version of Windows. If your playlists contain any special characters () and you're running on an international version of Windows, you may wish to use the -useIntlExtension parameter.

iTunesExport.exe -useIntlExtension

iTunes Export provides a DLL that allows other developers to make use of the iTunes Export functionality in their applications. The following applications are know to utilize iTunes Export:

PlasticPlaylists utilizes code from this project to generate an HTML export of your iTunes Playlists.