Rekordbox and Itunes playlist issue

@Mathy > It used to work and then Apple changed their XML.

Weill, then we know. Can you also please give us an update on the work on the intelligent playlists in Rekordbox? They are, as been discussed in several other threads, not smart enough to replace the iTunes smart playlists. From my point of view is the cap of 128 smart playlists and the lack of "in playlist" option what keeps me in iTunes. If the smart playlists in Rekordbox gets a much needed bump I will happily leave the iTunes mess behind.

I *ONLY* use intelligent playlists. They are filled based on the "Comments" field.  I write the "My Tag" to the Comments field (automatically done with a setting in the RB configuration). Simple: songs without a Comments value are not in a playlist.  This intelligent playlist in RB are the best and most flexible I've seen in all DJ software. And you can easily "My Tag" a track to be in 1 or more playlists, or move songs between playlist. Try it, it's awesome!

@Henrik > They are aware of the demand for playlists larger than 1000 songs and the limitations in the smart playlist criteria. We hope that they will include expanded functionality in future updates but we don't have any timeline on when that will be introduced, sorry.

@Pulse> This is really disappointing news. Me and a lot of other people that have been using the smart playlists in iTunes then have no time line for when we can return to our normal workflow. It has been half a year since Apple messed things up and since then we have not been able to do a proper export to USB! Put yourself in this situation and then you understand how urgent this is for us. The intelligent playlists have very limited usability due to the limitations but with just a few additions they will be as good as the iTunes smart playlists. Please try to communicate the urgency in this matter, with just a few tweaks there will be no need to include iTunes in any workflow.

I understand that, the engineers are aware of our desire to have more functional smart playlist criteria, but they have a list of features and fixes to tackle and I'm not sure this is an urgent priority.

So I spent a few days migrating to the Rekordbox intelligent playlists and accidentally found a "fix" for this problem. It only works on relatively small collections, under very special circumstances and involves some tedious work but it will make your playlists sort again. I also found a way to go around the lack of "in playlist" option in Rekordbox intelligent playlists but that's another story...

Introduce a global variable to all your tunes, store it in a CDJ-sortable field (if you export to USB), turn on sort for that field on the unit and viola, it's all sorted perfectly again! See it as a second sort order, working on a global level.

For example, if you have two main playlists, let's called them "Drinking" and "Dancing". Let's use the "Comments" field since it's a sortable field on the CDJ. Go from top to bottom on the "Drinking" playlist and number all tunes in in the comment field. Do leave a bit of space between so that you don't have to re-number all of them next time you buy a tune.

For example: 1000, 1010, 1020, 1030, 140 etc.

Do the same thing with "Dancing" but start on a way higher number, for example: 5010, 5020 etc.

All tunes now have a relationship based on how high the number in the comments are. Just turn on sorting for comments on the CDJ and you're good to go!

I know it sounds complicated and only solves the sort problem for very special cases, but give it a try, it might be the solution for you.

I write a Windows software to fix iTunes playlist random order:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kj7amum16586leb/Fixer.rar?dl=0

1 - Decomprime it

2 - Run and select your XML itunes (the same as Rekordbox settings)

3 - Select order for each playlist (Artist/Title/Date added but in future i will expand sort options) - Default is ARTIST (A-Z)

4 - Hit "Save", a new XML ... "_fixed.XML" file will be created on the same path (original XML will never be changed)

5 - In Rekordbox, go in settings and select this brand new file

6 - Finish! Et voilà, playlist has now right order!

For future, when you change something in iTunes (add song, modify playlist, add playlist etc...) when you finish iTunes, before open Rekordbox, just open my software and hit "SAVE". New file XML will be udpated.

Try this, it is free!

if you like it, make me a donation

Thanks!

I found if you drag the iTunes playlist from the left hand column into a blank palette, it will display there in the correct iTunes order. Then you can can create a duplicate playlist in the next palette and drag all the tracks from the iTunes playlist into the new Rekordbox playlist. Not ideal, but it's quick.