Imported playlists / iTunes

[edmu]

Hi!

After moving around the digital music library due to moving from PC to Mac I now seem to have many imported playlists in my Sonos controller that are not available any longer and the playlists I have in iTunes are double in Sonos. Does anybody know how to remove imported playlists from Sonos?

Rgds
Edward

[DudeDad]

I know the problem! I had duplicate playlists and some were missing when I set up my Sonos 4 days ago. In the default iTunes directory, there is a file that ends in XML -- every time you close iTunes, that file is re-written. It contains all the info about playlists, etc. I have my iTunes library on a different drive, but the XML file stays on in the default directory. Once it is fixed, your Sonos will pull the music from its location, and the XML file from the default directory.

If I was in front of your computer, I could fix it...I'm afraid my instructions may mess things up. I suggest you call Sonos customer care...if there are calls ahead of you, you can choose to have them call you back. I did and they called within 10 minutes. They will have you visit a web page and enter a password that will allow the tech to see your screen. They will remove the multiple XML files and help iTunes write the most recent with all of your info. They will probably use an iTunes feature called "consolidate library" which makes sure all your songs are in the same place.

Give them a call....one of the best customer service experiences I have ever had....the guy said that the problem you have (and I had) is common, so they can fix it.

Good luck.

[Egholm]

Originally Posted by edmu

After moving around the digital music library due to moving from PC to Mac I now seem to have many imported playlists in my Sonos controller that are not available any longer and the playlists I have in iTunes are double in Sonos. Does anybody know how to remove imported playlists from Sonos?

It seems that iTunes has changed the filename of its "iTunes Music Library.xml" file somewhere along the road - the file storing info about your music and playlists. However, they left a copy of the old file when doing so. At least that was my problem.

So, locate your iTunes folder, and see how many xml files are present. I had two: An "iTunes Music Library.xml" and an "iTunes Library.xml" (I think it was called - now it's gone :-D).
One of them was ooooold (five month since last modification). Looking at it's content, I convinced myself that I could delete it.
Hence, if you have two xml's, try moving the old one to a safe location (outside the iTunes folder, I guess!), relaunch iTunes and make sure everything is working, and if so, force a library rescan of your Sonos system.

Hope that helps,
Egholm

[edmu]

Hi!

I still have many non-functional playlists in my imported playlist on my Sonos system. I was a previous PC user and it could be that these playlists were imported from a previous PC version. However, I have now scrapped all my PC's and are now running on a pure Apple solution. The original NAS disk is still here though, so it might be so that some playlist file is there, but I dont know what file to remove and the NAS is a 2 TB disk, so there are a lot of files to get through. Is there no possibility to get the address of the playlist from Sonos so I can delete it?

Unfortunately, I am not in the US so calling Sonos support is not ideal...

Anybody got any good ideas?

Thanks,
Edward

[CharlieATL]

Edward, I had a very similar situation, complicated somewhat by the fact that I have a hybrid PC/MAC setup, i.e. Apple Time Capsule to which I migrated my iTunes, a PC and a MacMini. I don't recommend this.
I was able to have the multiple playlist situation resolved with excellent support from Sonos; here is what I learned.
First, the .xml file, which for me is about a 6MB file in a 17GB iTunes environment, is updated wherever the main iTunes PROGRAM is located, for me in my hard drive. My iTunes LIBRARY is located in my Time Capsule, and there is also a version of an .xml file there - so that SONOS can 'see' it in the controller/iPhone. Now, when you change a playlist, it is changed wherever your iTunes program is located, which must be where there is an OS to run it, i.e. a PC or a MAC. It is not necessarily updated where SONOS can see it if you have told iTunes to access its music library from some other place other than where the program is, like a NAS. To do that, you simply go to the location where the updated .xml file is located, copy it, and then paste it where the iTunes library (and the old .xml file) is located. The SONOS program will see the new .xml file, and your play lists will be correctly represented in the controlling device, an iPhone, the SONOS controller or a computer.

Now, onto the issue of multiple .xml files. I'm not familiar with MAC file structure, but basically, you have to locate and delete all .xml files except the one you want to use. Then, open the SONOS program, go to MUSIC and at the drop down, click the last option, to reindex your playlists. This will take 5 or 10 minutes. If you have indeed removed all of the old .xml files, you should see your playlists listed only once in SONOS. Regrettably, there does not seem to be a way within the SONOS program to delete files.
I hope I got this right and it is helpful.

[jgatie]

You can easily change the default location of your iTunes library (.itl and .xml) files. Locate the current files (usually in the iTunes default directory) and copy them to a new location that is within the Sonos share.

Then start iTunes by holding down the 'Shift' key and double clicking the iTunes icon. You will be presented with a dialog box asking you to choose new library files. Browse to the directory on the Sonos share where you copied your library files. Choose the new file(s) as the default library files. From then on, all your playlists will be saved to the .itl and .xml files in the Sonos share.

After creating new playlists in iTunes, simply close iTunes and re-index Sonos. Since all changes went to the files that are in the Sonos share, all new playlists should be imported during the re-index.

[Egholm]

Hi Edward,

Originally Posted by edmu

I still have many non-functional playlists in my imported playlist on my Sonos system. I was a previous PC user and it could be that these playlists were imported from a previous PC version. However, I have now scrapped all my PC's and are now running on a pure Apple solution. The original NAS disk is still here though, so it might be so that some playlist file is there, but I dont know what file to remove and the NAS is a 2 TB disk, so there are a lot of files to get through. Is there no possibility to get the address of the playlist from Sonos so I can delete it?

Did you see my post above?
Did you look any redundant .xml files on your NAS? The xml-file on my system is "iTunes Music Library.xml". Search your NAS for such a file (*.xml), and see if there exists some stall-xml from your PC days in the same directory.

[edmu]

Hi!

Thanks for all the help. It seems as if the old playlists were from an old Microsoft Mediaplayer. I couldn't find them and I couldn't play them either. So... what I did was to tell iTunes to build a new library on my NAS and add my old music library. Then I deleted the old library and told Sonos to find the music in the new library. Very time consuming, but it did the job...


Rgds
E