Need a playlist creator for linux that will do relative paths

Question

Under Windows I use "Playlist Creator 3.6.2" This just about the ideal program for what I want, but under wine, you cannot access it's setup to set the feature I want the most, and that is relative paths in the playlist. Without this, playlists are not as portable across devices.

I am looking for a small standalone app that I can just drag'n'drop files onto to create playlists, but I also tried, but cannot see how, to get rhythmbox or amarok to do this.

Edit: What I want to do is to be able to sit at my computer and create (fairly long) playlists that the small linux based music player attached to my hifi system can play. Both the player, and my desktop can see the same network drive that holds the music, but see it mounted/shared differently - hence the playlists, placed in the root of the network storage, should use relative paths, then will work, no matter how it is mounted or accessed.

Solution 1

I am looking for a small standalone app that I can just drag'n'drop files onto to create playlists, but I also tried, but cannot see how, to get rhythmbox or amarok to do this.

Clementine Music Player is your software. "Dragging and dropping files to create playlists" is precisely the base of its user experience. You can also listen to your playlists with it.

As for your playlists with relative paths, you can do this :

1. Making and saving the playlist with Clementine.
2. Replacing all the occurences of the root directory (without the final slash) by .. For example, if the root directory of your playlist is /home/ubnewbie2/Music/Playlist_Root/, replace /home/ubnewbie2/Music/Playlist_Root by ..

You can also feel free to make a custom script (or a little program) to automate the second step.

Solution 2

Open terminal

cd /your/folder/
find . -name '*.mp3' > playlist.m3u

Might need to tweak regarding other file extensions than mp3. The quotation marks are needed to escape the results

Solution 3

I like VLC media player for making m3u playlists in Ubuntu. Drag and drop audio files to playlist section, under "Media" click "save playlist to file", select what type of playlist you want to create beside "Files of Type", name it and then save.

Comments

[Admin]

Pardon me if I sound dumb, is there a player/playlist format that supports relative path?

[Admin]

Sure. I made playlists with relative paths from the Windows app I mentioned. It's one of it's configuration options, and Totem and Audacious, for just two examples, are more than happy to use the lists.

[Jazz]

I can't see how to set it to use relative paths. Did you find a way to make it do that?

[Jazz]

Looks nice AND it seems to be using relative paths in the playlists I have made (even though I found no config item to control this). If that remains so, this may be my answer !!

[Jazz]

Looks like it is now a feature (v1.0) "Save the m3u playlists with relative paths when stored in the same directory that the audio files."

[air-dex]

Thanks for the bounty. Have fun with Clementine :) PS : you can also use it on Windows and MAC.

[Paul Rougieux]

See also this super user question on turning a list of music files into a playlist.