Get your playlists into the Steam Music Player

[Hornet]

EDIT: It appears that, so far this only seems to work with iTunes, since that seems to be the only program I've found so far that exports .m3u8 files in a format steam agrees with. I'm doing a little bit of research into this, and so far I've come up with the following:

Playlists exported directly from iTunes work
Playlists exported from Foobar 2000 do not work
Playlists exported from Winamp do not work
Playlists that properly import from other players into itunes, then exported from iTunes work.

Okay, so there's no option anywhere to import a playlist into steam, but I've worked out a way to effectively do just that.

All the playlists in Steam do, is add music to the music player queue. The first time you do this, a file will be created called "queue.m3u8" For most people, this will be in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\music\_database"

This .m3u8 file acts as a temporary playlist for whatever music is in the queue at the time... I'm sure some of you know where this is going, so here's what you need to do:


Step 1: Close Steam if it's running. You don't have to do this right now, but you'll have to restart steam later if you don't close it now.

Step 2: Export your playlist. Make sure it's a .m3u8 playlist file, since that's what steam is going to be looking for, and make sure you name it "queue.m3u8"

Step 3: Place your newly created playlist file into the appropriate place in your steam folder
again, that's "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\music\_database" for most of you. If there's a queue.m3u8 file already there, you can overwrite it.

Step 4: Launch Steam, or restart Steam if you still have it running, and go to your music player. You should see all of the songs that you had in your playlist now in your music player.

Step 5: right click somewhere in the music list in the music player and click "create playlist"

This will create a playlist of whatever songs were in your queue, in this case, that's the contents of the playlist you wanted to import.

I hope this helps some of you... if you have any questions just ask.

[CabbyMouse]

Not working for me, Steam overwrites the file on startup.

[Hornet]

What OS are you using? I Someone in the other thread I made had the same issue and was on Windows 8. Try right clicking the file that you put in there, going to properties, and checking off the read-only box. That should prevent steam from overwriting the file I think. Just make sure that you go back and and undo the read-only, or it may mess up the playlists altogether.

[CabbyMouse]

I am using Windows 7. Read only keeps the file from being overwritten, still doesn't show up in Steam. Maybe its what I am using to create the playlists? Not sure what you used in your setup, I am using Foobar Media Player v 1.3.3.

[Hornet]

I used iTunes. Are you making it a .m3u8 file? I'll launch foobar and see if it works for me.

[CabbyMouse]

Yes, I am making a .m3u8 file. Sorry for late reply. Any luck with Foobar?

[Hornet]

Yeah I think I see what the problem is, and unfortunately, I don't know if you can do anything about it with just Foobar.

For some reason, when you export an m3u8 file from Foobar, it just ends up looking like this inside:

C:\Users\Joe\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\Portal 2_ Songs to Test By\1-01 Science is Fun.mp3
C:\Users\Joe\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\Portal 2_ Songs to Test By\1-02 Concentration Enhancing Menu In.mp3
C:\Users\Joe\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\Portal 2_ Songs to Test By\1-03 9999999.mp3
C:\Users\Joe\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\Portal 2_ Songs to Test By\1-04 The Courtesy Call.mp3

However, an m3u8 file should have special tags inside that are necessary for steam to read the plalist properly. That looks like this:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:153,Science is Fun - Aperture Science Psychoacoustics Laboratory
C:\Users\Joe\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\Portal 2_ Songs to Test By\1-01 Science is Fun.mp3
#EXTINF:136,Concentration Enhancing Menu Initialiser - Aperture Science Psychoacoustics Laboratory
C:\Users\Joe\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\Portal 2_ Songs to Test By\1-02 Concentration Enhancing Menu In.mp3
#EXTINF:191,9999999 - Aperture Science Psychoacoustics Laboratory
C:\Users\Joe\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\Portal 2_ Songs to Test By\1-03 9999999.mp3
#EXTINF:217,The Courtesy Call - Aperture Science Psychoacoustics Laboratory
C:\Users\Joe\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\Portal 2_ Songs to Test By\1-04 The Courtesy Call.mp3

From that, I'm thinking that it could be a formatting issue.

It's funny that, iTunes will read the foobar playlist file just fine. If you happen to have another program like iTunes that can export playlits, you could try importing your playlist to that and exporting again. So far I've only been able to get itunes to work properly, but I'll keep looking into it. I'll try winamp now.

EDIT: It appears that, so far this only seems to work with iTunes, since that seems to be the only program I've found so far that exports .m3u8 files in a format steam agrees with. I'm doing a little bit of research into this, and so far I've come up with the following:

Playlists exported directly from iTunes work
Playlists exported from Foobar 2000 do not work
Playlists exported from Winamp
Playlists that properly import from other players into itunes, then exported from iTunes work.

So I guess iTunes isn't totally useless...

[CabbyMouse]

After doing a bit of research, I found a program called mp3tag that exported playlists with that formatting. Steam still isn't picking it up. Thought it might had to do something with file formats Steam couldnt read(had a few flac/wav files in the playlist), so I made a playlist with one mp3 file in it. Still no dice.

Playlist with single file in it below.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:125, - 
Z:\Music\A Bit Of\A-Bit of The Mountain King.mp3

I really don't want to install iTunes just to import a playlist in Steam lol. Honestly, importing playlists should be a feature of the Steam music player itself; this seems really convuluted just to get pre-existing playlists into steam.

[Hornet]

I tried using mp3tag as well, and despite making an identical playlist to that of iTunes, it still didn't work. I don't know what it is about itunes that makes makes it work.

There's one more thing you could do if you really want specific songs, and you have the space to do it:
- make a folder on your desktop or somewhere else easily accessible
- make a copy of the songs in your playlist (in foobar, you can highlight all the songs in a play list with ctrl+a, and then drag them to the folder. It will make a copy of the songs in the new folder, and keep the original songs in their proper location.)
- go to your steam settings, and under music, remove all locations from the music library list, and add the folder you made to it. Then reset the database, and click "start scanning"

That should make only the songs you had in the folder show up on steam. Then you can make a steam playlist from there. of course, you would have to keep them in that location in order for you to actually get them to keep playing... I'm trying to figure out where steam keeps playlist information. There has to be a file somewhere that tells steam what playlists users have made, and what songs are in them. I'm hoping they're not in these two database files, because that would complicate things. They most definitely are though.

[wuddih]

foobar does also work, you just have to change the filetype while saving the playlist file.

[Hornet]

Първоначално публикувано от ☔ wuddih SpNv ✔:

foobar does also work, you just have to change the filetype while saving the playlist file.

Really? Even saving it as an m3u8 file from foobar, I couldn't get it to work.... I'll give it another try I guess.

[MetalPowerFR]

hi folks.
I found how to make winamp playlist work.

Instead of saving your playlist in "m3u8" format, save it in "m3u" format.
Name your file "queue" as before, put it in folder as said before then copy it.
After just rename the file with other format , so "queue.m3u8" instead of "queue.m3e"
I've put the file in "only read" by going right click properties and check the box "read only" of the file to make sure steam won't clear it.

You're done, it takes 20 sec ^^

That's for the post anyway^^

[็็็็็็็็็็]

Първоначално публикувано от ♪ MetalPower FR ♫:

hi folks.
I found how to make winamp playlist work.

Instead of saving your playlist in "m3u8" format, save it in "m3u" format.
Name your file "queue" as before, put it in folder as said before then copy it.
After just rename the file with other format , so "queue.m3u8" instead of "queue.m3e"
I've put the file in "only read" by going right click properties and check the box "read only" of the file to make sure steam won't clear it.

You're done, it takes 20 sec ^^

That's for the post anyway^^

this didnt work. just because you put .m3u8 behind the file isnt going to change its format. steam wont even detect it regardless if its named "queue" or "bag of potatoes". having the same issue with winamp, its writing over the file directly after i start steam. also tried mp3 tag and no dice

[Craftplorer]

You can export your foobar2000 playlist as m3u8.
Open the playlist in VLC Media Player and save the playlist again with VLC as m3u8.
Copy and rename the m3u8 from VLC to "queue.m3u8" and enjoy.
Sorry for my english.
EDIT: Make sure that all audio files in the playlist are .mp3

[Accella]

Interesting

[Morbo]

As far as I know, the only difference between an M3U file, and an M3U8 file, is that the latter is saved in Unicode.
I haven't tried this, but I reckon you should be able to open an M3U file in Notepad - hit Save As, select Unicode in the dropdown - then import to Steam as your would from an iTunes exported list.
I could be barking up entirely the wrong tree of course.