Creating Playlists For External Drives

[DJ Gonzo]

Okay, first I'd like to say that for some odd reason....managing playlists are not my friend. Something that many of you see as being so very easy....I have had a terrible time with.

I am a mobile DJ who has spun vinyl and CDs for years. It was only last year that I added .mp3s to the mix. Now, I'm still getting educated on how to make my life easier. With that, I would like to learn how to build and manage playlists that I can use on my external drive via a USB controller.

I purchased a Numark D2 Director. I can plug in a USB external hard drive and control my .mp3s via the D2 Director. The director can read playlists in the format of PLS or M3U.

I would like to create .m3u playlists such as:

- Wedding First Dance Songs
- Wedding Bride and Father Dance Songs
- Wedding Groom and Mother Dance Songs

Yadda, yadda, yadda....

This way, as I work with my brides prior to the wedding taking place, I can pull from my individual playlists and build a crate to pull from in sequence of the wedding reception.

I purchased and registered the latest Media Monkey v3.0.1.1127.

Assistance with building a playlist off of songs on my external drive is appreciated.

I have attempted to use Windows Media Player and another program...but for some reason....I just wasn't grasping it.

Thank you.

[AussieCol]

Hi DJ Gonzo I am assuming that you have scanned your hard drive(s) for your mp3 trax. The steps are quite simple so here goes:
1. In the tree on the left side of the MM screenyou will see a heading "Playlists"
2. Right click on the header and click on "new playlist"
3. Name the new playlist
4. click on the "Accessible Tracks" folder under "Playlists"
5. This should show all the tracks available to you on MM
6. Then just drag and drop all the tiltes you want to add to your new playlist.
7. Create all the new playlists you want (as per your examples) in the same way and then drag and drop relevant titles into them
8. these playlists can then be saved (see help files) in case you need to load them again in the event of a PC issue.
Hope this helps and have fun.

[DJ Gonzo]

Thanks AussieCol.

Just for clarification... If I drag and drop a title on the playlist that I've created...will that duplicate the file? Another words...will dragging and dropping the title create a copy of the track I want in the playlist?

Thank you again for the write-up.

[AussieCol]

No it doesn't duplicate the file it just tells MM where to go to find it (disk location) so that you can play it on MM.

[DJ Gonzo]

Piece of cake.....

Thank you so much for your help.

Now I have a lot of work ahead of me, but it does seem that MediaMonkey makes it easy to search in many manners of what I'm looking for.

Thanks again mate.

[AussieCol]

Not at all - pleasure to help out if I can. I've been using it for a few years now and it's the only player that keeps my mp3 catalogue in good shape and is simple enough for an Old Fart like me to master.

Cheers, AussieCol