Hello.
A few days ago, I was in need of an app that could copy some music files from one location to another given a playlist. It also happened that those playlists where managed by iTunes. And before you judge me, my music player on mac is iTunes (on Windows is Winamp, on Linux is RhythmBox).
However, I somewhat hit head-on with a problem. There was no such app that would simply copy files given a playlist. So I thought, I should do the noble thing and write my own iTunes Music Syncer. Then a friend of mine (Karl, here I mention you!), suggest that more and more people would find this useful as they have android phones and manage their music through iTunes.
So here we are. Just for the sake of clarity, let me give a set of bullet points as what this app does and does not (currently) do:
- It copies a set of files defined by a plain-text playlist.
- Given the information available in the playlist file, it will generate Artist/Album/Song structure for your music.
- You can define whatever folder you would like to copy music too.
- It will skip duplicates and find missing songs.
- It has a very minimalistic user interface which most probably won’t change in the future. I like things that do minimal stuff.
- You can either give it a true playlist, or a dummy playlist to copy all your iTunes music library.
- If you want syncing to happen, always point the output to the same folder.
- It does not rename the files themselves.
- It will not do a two-way sync. This function is not possible due to the nature of the application. Don’t ask for it!
Set of requirements:
- Mentioned playlist MUST be generated through iTunes export function.
- You need to have at least Java 1.6 Runtime Environment installed. Most sane people have this pre-installed anyways.
- Enough disk space
- Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X 10.6+ (No Linux support, sorry!)
- And most importantly, a little common sense.
How to use:
- Generate your playlist. This needs to be a ‘Plain Text’ playlist generated through the iTunes export function (right-click on the playlist in iTunes).
- Run the app.
- Upon running, you are prompted with a window to select the playlist. Select the playlist!
- Then another window to select your output folder. Recommended to use an empty folder.
- You shall see a progress window. Wait until it finishes. If you cannot wait, press Quit and relaunch the app at a later time to continue the syncing process (point to the same output folder).
- At the end, you shall see a summery window. Read it. Press OK to quit!
- That’s it!
Warnings:
- This app is tested on Mac OS X. Not yet tested on Windows. Please be wary of this fact.
- I am the sole developer of this app. However, I will not take any responsibility shall this app utterly mess up your computer, phone, both, or your life. You are responsible!
- I will give this app the GPL license, but this may change in the future without notice.
- Libraries used will have their very own licenses which I obviously accept, so should you!
- By you downloading or linking this app, you will automatically accept the above terms.
Download:
- Cross-platform JAR file: iTunesMusicSyncer-v1(.jar.zip)
- Source code (later on may go on to GitHub): iTunesMusicSyncer-v1-source (.java.zip)
If you found this application useful, just simply leave a comment!
Thanks,
Mo.
