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My windows client will not import windows media player playlists. Nothing happens when I click.

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My windows client will not import windows media player playlists. Nothing happens when I click.

Does WMP need to be installed in order to import playlists?

 

If so, given my windows 8 does not include WMP (it cannot be installed), how can I get my playlists into spotify.  I have imported my music library already, but the massive missing link for me is simply getting spotify to know what I like.  I've spent a long long time collecting my music in to genres - if I can tell spotify what it all is (or 90% of it) then I'm happy to delete it all and stay purely with Spotify.

 

If I create playlists from within Spotify of my local library, will most of it work away from my local machine?  Or none of it?

 

DavePies

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Does it not work if you try to imort your playlists using File/Import Playlists/Windows Media Player? If there's a way to export the playlist as CSV or m3u files, you could then try running them through Ivy to create spotify playlists from them.

 

Playlists based on your local files should stream from spotify if the local files aren't available locally as long as they match tracks in the spotify catalogue. Inceorrect metadata can cause hiccups though.

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Gave up on Ivy - but found a really simple way to do this within Spotify.  Simply import your whole collection and then drag the tracks into new playlists. This is okay for groups that have a lot of tunes, but odd ones are quite hard to pick up and put in the right playlist.  Although there is no genre displayed for some reason, there is an "added" column, and if you list by this column, it shows which tracks have been added to a playlist and which tracks haven't.  Rebuilding your playlists might take a while if you have a big collection, but nowhere near as long as trying to track everything down manually - since all the tracks you are interested in are right in front of you.

 

When you make the playlists available offline, I suppose I can delete the originals right?  Anybody?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

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Does it not work if you try to imort your playlists using File/Import Playlists/Windows Media Player? If there's a way to export the playlist as CSV or m3u files, you could then try running them through Ivy to create spotify playlists from them.

 

Playlists based on your local files should stream from spotify if the local files aren't available locally as long as they match tracks in the spotify catalogue. Inceorrect metadata can cause hiccups though.

Fabulous answer.  I've been trying to find Ivy for 3 weeks, surprised it's not more popular.  If it does what it says on the tin then I'm a happy chappie. Thanks for your solution.

"your playlist is served", the software says, showing 0/109 'hits'.  The tracks are 1980s/90s e.g Erasure, Beautiful South, Queen, and George Michael.  Has anyone made this work?

It worked fine for me when I've used it. Did you watch the video tutorial to make sure you haven't missed anything as the written guide is a bit sparse.

Marked as solution

Gave up on Ivy - but found a really simple way to do this within Spotify.  Simply import your whole collection and then drag the tracks into new playlists. This is okay for groups that have a lot of tunes, but odd ones are quite hard to pick up and put in the right playlist.  Although there is no genre displayed for some reason, there is an "added" column, and if you list by this column, it shows which tracks have been added to a playlist and which tracks haven't.  Rebuilding your playlists might take a while if you have a big collection, but nowhere near as long as trying to track everything down manually - since all the tracks you are interested in are right in front of you.

 

When you make the playlists available offline, I suppose I can delete the originals right?  Anybody?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Sounds like a lot of work. Sorry that Ivy didn't work out.

 

Yes any tracks which are also in the spotify catalogue can be safely deleted. Probably the best way to check, once you're done with recreating the playlists is to drag your local files to another folder so spotify won't see them then move back any greyed-out tracks.

 

If you have a large collection, it might be worth backing it up in case something changes.

What worked for me was clearing the WMP database cache. I tried over and over to get Spotify to import my WMP playlists but nothing happened when I clicked the import option in File menu. To delete the WMP database cache, FIRST CLOSE WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER, and then navigate to:

 

c:\users\<username>\appdata\local\microsoft\media player

 

Next, delete all files with the .wpl or .wmdb extension in this directory. Then open the folder that starts with "Cache" and ends with some random numbers, mine was Cache163293656. Delete everything inside this folder but leave the folder there.

 

Fire up WMP and be prepared to wait a long time (seriously, I have about 4500 songs and i had to let it run overnight). It still remembers where you put your music, even if it isn't in My Music. It wil.soon begin to rescan your library, reimport your music and rebuild all those databases you just deleted. Additionally, if your playlist files are inside the same folder as one of your music library folders, WMP will find them as it is scanning and resync all your playlists.

 

Note - it make take a couple of minutes for WMP to realize it has to rescan your library, so when you first fire it up it will be completely blank for a few minutes. DON'T PANIC, just be patient.

 

After it is done rescanning your library (you should see a message indicating it is rescanning just to the right of all the music control buttons, when it disappears it is finished scanning) - you can then restart WMP. Then restart Spotify as well. When Spotify comes back up, try the File menu -> import WMP playlists and you should see all your WMP playlists pop up momentarily in Spotify.

 

Hope this helps!

Did you have a lot of playlists when you used this method? I currently have 55 WMP playlists, some 10+ hours long with hundreds of songs in them and I was begnning to thing the Spotify "Import Playlists" button was just not working because of the sheer volume of my playlists. But if you had a tonne too and deleting the WMP cache worked for you, then I'm willing to give it a go.

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