Roon is not importing my m3u playlists, which are stored in a separate folder from my music, but which is also set as a folder to watch in roon. my set up:
Music/Music
Music/Playlists
both folders are watched. running Yosemite, 10.10.3. m3u playlists were created with LMS.
tidal playlists are imported w/o a problem. I do not use iTunes.
Same problem with Windows PC. Folder with M3U playlists has been added to Watched folders but playlists do not appear in Roon playlists - Tidal playlists do.
My setup in Watched folders:
D:/Classical
D:/Folk
D:/Rock
D:/Jazz
D:/M3U Playlists
M3U playlists created with Foobar and open in WMP without issue.
Try moving your .m3u files to the same root folder as contains the tracks they point to.
I’ve had perfect.m3u functionality (wrt finding, anyway) on W7-64 platform, playlists made in mp3tag.
I just did a quick test:
My theory is that Roon (for whatever reason) won’t show playlists unless they are in the same root folder as the songs the playlist points to.
Could be wrong, of course, but you should try it out.
Good idea. Although I do have some playlists that sample from multiple folders. I guess I could add a copy of the playlist to each though. I think your theory is a good one. I’ll test it out when I get home tonight. Once again, thanks for responding.
Hey guys – this is the right answer.
If you have media files and playlists in a folder together, it will be imported successfully into Roon, but imported playlists will not be able to find content stored in a different storage location.
Won’t be long until we’ll want to sort, at least by name. 
Other criteria I’d like to sort on:
Would be really nice if # of tracks and (esp.) total time was displayed, either overlayed on the thumb, or big enough to see just underneath.
All my lists in iTunes were separate by folders. After importing, all of them seem ok, but all the lists are now on the same folder. A big mess. Difficult to find now witch is witch.
Just checked. All lists has musics that should’t be there. On Sabbaths list there’s also AC/DC, and go on etc… etc…
I’ve been able to import m3u playlists from playlist folder. And surprisingly, the playlists import in “realtime” on an smb volume while music does not. Very odd.
…and having a little gear icon in the corner of each playlist to change the global playlist default (probably shuffle?) to “in-order” for any individual playlist. Or vice versa, I suppose.
Hi @mike, thanks for the followup. the playlists are in the same root folder, albeit in a separate subfolder. do they need to be in the same subfolder? i could move them i suppose, but that has the potential to upset how LMS sees the playlists and maps the various tracks.
woodford, is your file structure still as you originally posted?
If so, it looks to me like Music and Playlists might be two separate root folders, on computer Music. If so, it’s the same exact scenario as this post. If I’m right, try making a new folder called playlists in Music/Music, then copy all your playlists from wherever they are on Music/Playlists into this new folder. Then exit & re-enter Roon.
music is a folder at the root of a drive called Music. so in reality, the paths are
Music (drive)/Music (root folder)/Music (actual music files)
Music (drive)/Music (root folder)/Playlists (actual m3u files)
Hey @woodford – how are the directories added to Roon?
It doesn’t actually matter whether they’re in the same folder – it matters that they are in the same watched folder, as we can’t import playlist content that spans two different watched folders.
So the real question is whether you’re watching the root of the drive, the root music folder, or two separate watched folders (one for music, one for the playlists)? I think you’ll be ok if you watch the Music folder.
i’m watching two folders, one for playlists, one for music. i’ll try moving up a directory to see if that works.
so, i moved up to the root of the drive, essentially just watching the whole drive, and it seems all is good now.
Can anyone tell me how to find & copy the m3u playlist file?
M3U files in your watched folders should import automatically.
Note that the m3u file can only reference files from the same watched folder, so you won’t be able to have an m3u file in one watched folder, referencing songs in another watched folder.
What about watched volumes?
Same deal – any M3U in your Roon storage should be picked up.
Note that if we detect an exact match to an album, the playlist is ignored.