Blog - Importing M3U playlists in iTunes :'(

Added on Sunday, 2011-07-31 07:46 UTC in category Programming
A few days ago, after a laptop format, I had the pleasure of reinstalling iTunes (version 10.4.0.80). It had somehow remembered my apps, podcasts and playlists, except the playlists were all empty… I fortunately had a backup, but for one reason or another, iTunes decided upon importing the playlists (standard .m3u format), that they were in fact all empty.

Now this seems to be a common, problem for iTunes, with some solutions. None of them worked.

However, the thread on MacWorld did lead me to my solution: just replace all backslashes with forward slashes. I kid you not. So in the hopes it may help somebody else out, the accepted format was something like:
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:100,Song Title - Artist
C:/!home/mp3/Genre/Artist/Song Title.mp3
(Also, the format exported by iTunes uses backslashes, which it refuses to import. Go figure…)