Is it possible or does anyone know the playlist format for Roon?
I’d like to create playlists myself by querying my local library info (not Tidal, Spotify, Qobuz, Apple or anything like that) independent of Roon and later import them into Roon in mass.
I got the idea by looking at a lot of old MoJo Presents CDs online. I’ve got a few of the CDs and always liked them.
I thought it would be cool to make a playlist based on the CD that I don’t have but have all/most of the songs elsewhere in my library. That go me to thinking that it would be handy for more than just the MoJo use case. With ~170,000 local songs I think I’d be able to make many.
Unless I’m just doing it the hard way, I find playlist creation via Roon PC or Phone tedious. So my goal would be to sit down with a text editor and some directory manipulation via scripts and somewhat automate the process.
Roon can import standard .m3u playlists. You create them per the standard - I recommend a top-level folder for them in the same location as your music files - and Roon scans them when scanning your music collection.
Here’s a recent thread where I helped another fellow Roonie:
@DDPS Thanks for the quick reply, man! That seems like a great place to start. I figured there had to be a common format. I must have been finding old posts in my searches because I was reading about no import or export support in Roon for playlists.
At any rate I figured exporting a current Roon playlist might give me a kickstart on the file format. When I try to export as an MU3 I get the error below. Roon seems happy to export as a CSV or Excel file. Any idea what I’m doing wrong trying to export a Roon file to my Win 11 Desktop?
Roon has no way of simply exporting an .m3u file by itself. If you want an .m3u file, you have to use the “Folder” option and export the media as well:
So…However, If you just want an .m3u playlist, you can use Column M from the “Excel” export as a basis for the body of the .m3u playlist format, but you will have to munge the path using a text editor’s search & replace function to match the correct relative path for your music files.
Okay, this is very strange. Maybe I can help others looking for this info or maybe you all can tell me where my logic/thinking is wrong.
I started off with a basic (I thought) file but could not get it to work. Here is what I think I figured out. All you really need is this:
A file with .m3u extension and the path relative to your music files
Some other useful findings
You don’t need to start it with #EXTM3U
The direction of slash/backslash doesn’t matter
For me, at least, you can’t use the …\ or … to get the path correct, preface it with nothing
You can use the # for comments
You can have blank lines
The file can or cannot end with a single CRLF
You can have blank spaces at the start of a line
The file name becomes the name of the playlist in Roon
Below you can see my commented file ZZTest13 and a screen capture of my results. Look at the left of screen capture some files worked others did not. This is what I base my above findings on.
#Comment here is a comment it starts with the pound character (I don't like the phrase hash tag) ;-)
# Look at the first line you don't actually need to start the file with #EXTM3U like online searching suggests, probabl just a Roon thing and best to keep it
# Below uses all forward slashes
ZZ Top/Afterburner (1985) - FLAC 16-44 CD [1985 Warner Bros. Records CD 25342]/01 - Sleeping Bag.flac
Various Artists/Mojo Cash Covered (2004 FLAC 16-44 CD) [Mojo ]/01 - One Piece at a Time (Michelle Shocked).flac
# Below uses all forward slashes
The Church/Starfish (1988) - FLAC 16-44 CD [1988 Arista ARCD-8521]/02 - Under the Milky Way.flac
# Below uses a backward slash and forward slashes
The Clash\Combat Rock + The People's Hall (2022) - FLAC 24-44 CD [2022 Columbia 19439968552]/02-19 - Long Time Jerk.flac
# Below uses all back slashes
Ramones\Weird Tales of the Ramones (2005) - FLAC 16-44 CD [2005 Rhino R2 74662]\01-18 - I Don't Care (single version).flac
#Testing a blank line above and below another with both types of slashes
The Clash\Super Black Market Clash (1993) - FLAC 16-44 CD [1993 Epic EK 53191]/17 - Radio Clash.flac
#This was a tough one...Roon exports a .m3u file with the wrong path. This is exactly how Roon does The Church for export Under the Milky above works but not below
../The Church/Starfish (1988 Arista ARCD-8521)/1-02 Under the Milky Way.flac
# Above is skipped below works as it does on the 3rd track above
The Church/Starfish (1988) - FLAC 16-44 CD [1988 Arista ARCD-8521]/02 - Under the Milky Way.flac
#more blank lines above and the working Ramones from above repeated with double dots (..\) before it then just double dots no back slash (..) then again without nothing Seems like double dots does not actually work like other have suggested
..\Ramones\Weird Tales of the Ramones (2005) - FLAC 16-44 CD [2005 Rhino R2 74662]\01-18 - I Don't Care (single version).flac
..Ramones\Weird Tales of the Ramones (2005) - FLAC 16-44 CD [2005 Rhino R2 74662]\01-18 - I Don't Care (single version).flac
Ramones\Weird Tales of the Ramones (2005) - FLAC 16-44 CD [2005 Rhino R2 74662]\01-18 - I Don't Care (single version).flac
#And here is the working Ramones above with a bunch of spaces
Ramones\Weird Tales of the Ramones (2005) - FLAC 16-44 CD [2005 Rhino R2 74662]\01-18 - I Don't Care (single version).flac
In case it is not painfully obvious based on my finding above that …\ is not to be included in your path. Here is the issue with Roon’s export of my (its) original, Roon generate playlist containing The Church song Under the Milkyway.
Imagine this was the path on my network including NAS and some directories before my Storage location in Roon:
//MyNAS/StartOfPath/Another Directory/Another Dir/SharedRoonMusic/The Church/Starfish (1988) - FLAC 16-44 CD [1988 Arista ARCD-8521]/02 - Under the Milky Way.flac
To work in a playlist import file the path needs to be:
The Church/Starfish (1988) - FLAC 16-44 CD [1988 Arista ARCD-8521]/02 - Under the Milky Way.flac
Upon exporting a Roon created playlist that contained that song Roon gave me this:
…/The Church/Starfish (1988 Arista ARCD-8521)/1-02 Under the Milky Way.flac
To try and make it work I tried for about 20 minutes this (just removing …\ because that is what made the other tracks work):
The Church/Starfish (1988 Arista ARCD-8521)/1-02 Under the Milky Way.flac
Ultimately realizing the correct path for the song is this:
The Church/Starfish (1988) - FLAC 16-44 CD [1988 Arista ARCD-8521]/02 - Under the Milky Way.flac
I guess the take away is that if you have complex directory naming Roon might change it around quite a bit for its own purposes. Or maybe there is some other datababse mapping between internal storage and “renamed” directories. I really can’t recall if I’ve changed that particular directory over the years.
Just noticed above that the forum software appears to take my double dots “…” and make them triple for an ellipsis “…”. Rest assured in all my previous posts and attempts to include the correct path they were DotDotSlash not …. Crazy times we live in with auto correct and forum software “helping” me out with my typing. How did I ever survive typing class in 1983 with an IBM Selectric?
