Playlists

[Clow]

How do I transfer my Poweramp playlist from phone to phone?

[andrewilley]

Settings > Folders and Library > Export Poweramp Playlists. That will save any internal playlists that you may have created as M3U8 files in your device's Playlists folder. Then you can copy those files to your new device when you copy any other contents you want to move, and place them somewhere Poweramp can scan and as long as the music files are in the same location on your new device as they were on the old one (I'd just swap the SD Card over to my new phone) they should work fine.

You can also use Settings > Export Settings to save most of your PA general setup stuff, then copy that file over, and use Settings  > Import Settings on the new device.

You may also want to take a look at TheoKlink's "New Playlist Manager" app, as that can also save and restore things like Star Ratings etc which you would otherwise lose. 

Andre

[pthurmes]

I did exactly as you suggested above, and now I have 66 "file-based" playlists (".m3u8") showing in my playlist list.

Now I have exported them (because I added some songs to them). The application says it "will export non-file based playlists (/storage/emulated/0/Playlists) in M3U8 format."

The path specified above does not exist on my device. In the "internal storage" and "SD card" folders in Astro there is no Playlists folder. So I have no idea if Poweramp did in fact export playlists, or where it might have exported them to. Furthermore, when I imported the (Poweramp-created) export list from my old phone - and as I stated above - my new phone's Poweramp  has (only) "file-based" playlistsm - and Poweramp's instructions state it exports (only) "non-file based" playlists (which is not what Poweramp created when I imported Poweramps's own exported list.

So, how do I archive my modified playlists? When I added songs to the "file-based" playlists, they stayed file-based but I did see the added songs. Now I want to archive the new, longer playlists so if my phone crashes I have current playlists archived. Are they frozen forever i.e. I'll have to create new (Poweramp "system library playlists") from scratch if I want any new songs in any Poweramp playlists?

Why does Poweramp make such a basic function (data backup) so difficult?

 

P.S. The above refers to my attempt to migrate my Poweramp playlists from my old phone to my new phone - another very basic function that Poweramp just doesn't seem to understand should be simple and straightforward: when I follow the apps instructions for exporting and importing (e.g. to a new device), what I expect to end up with is a Poweramp list of playlists that looks and acts exactly the same as the playlists I had on my old phone. That is NOT what I get. Why?

[andrewilley]

The folder designation /storage/emulated/0/ merely means the top level of your regular internal device storage for a non-rooted device, that's the proper Android designation for it. So the Playlists folder will be on your device's internal storage, at the top level you can get to as a regular user. This is where the 66 ".M3U8" files that you mention will have been exported to.

If you add or modify songs within Poweramp to an existing file-based playlist, the 'locally stored' version of that playlist in PA's database will show the new songs, however the physical file on your SD Card or other storage will not get modified - so a full Rescan, or copying the file to a new device, would revert to the original file copy. There is a work-around method to re-export locally modified versions, but it's a bit convoluted - basically you long-press on a ".M3U8" playlist name in the Library, and select Add to Playlist to create a new internal playlist with the same contents, which can then be exported.

You might want to give a third-party app called New Playlist Manager (written by a user from this site) a try, as it provides a lot more flexibility for more complex playlist management tasks and other music-related features such as ratings, etc.

Andre