Solved WMP 12: Does every album have to be a playlist?

[David9J]

WMP 12 has automatically created a playlist for, it seems, every album in my library. It displays these in the central details pane when I highlight playlists in the navigation pane. This makes it difficult to find the playlists which I created myself (eg those containing a selection of tracks from different albums or a link to a radio station). The ones I really want to find get lost amongst all the albums. Is there a way to get rid of the 'album playlists' which WMP created, or to have them not show? The same issue occurs on both my main PC and my laptop.

I don't see the point of these 'album playlists'. When I want to play an album I can look at the albums view of the library and play the album from there. I tried deleting them but they were created again the next time I restarted WMP.

Thanks.

 

[alphanumeric]

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying? A screen shot may help.

 

[David9J]

Screenshot

Thanks for the suggestion, sorry if I am not explaining myself clearly. I am attaching a screenshot. In the navigation pane on the left you can see the five Playlists listed (Disco Party etc). These are ones that I created and saved within WMP. In the central panel you can see a long list of playlists, starting with 60s and 70s, Acoustic Rock. The list has about 150 playlists but I only created about 7 of these myself. The others have been magically created by WMP and are usually Albums in my music library. I have tried deleting the 'album' playlists but they were recreated by WMP the next time it started. I don't need or want these 'album' playlists because I have the albums already in WMP and will play them from the albums view. My question is how to get rid of them and stop them from coming back. I only want to see the ones I created myself and it is hard to find them when they are hidden in such a long list. Thanks for your reply, I hope you can help.

 

[alphanumeric]

Hm, I don't know? I only have the ones I created myself showing in that view. It may be a setting somewhere in MP but off hand I don't know why your getting all those auto extras.

 

[Wordsworth]

That does seem odd. How did you get the music into WMP, did you rip them into it from CDs, or import from an MP3 player, etc.? The only other thing I can think of off hand is somehow, even if you didn't set it up, the Create Auto Playlist feature has settings that are doing this. If you've never looked at this click the arrow next to Create Playlist then select Create Auto Playlist and see if there's anything selected or setup in the dialog box that opens.

 

[alphanumeric]

Some was ripped from CD's and some where MP3 files. I have my music folder on a separate drive. After a clean install I just change the location setting for the default music folder. Then the first time I open MP it scans for media files and adds them to its library. The only play lists that show up are the ones I created myself. One thing I do, do is to make sure MP is set to NOT update the media information. I spent a lot of time editing the tags on my MP3 files and don't want MP updating them because it "thinks" they are mislabeled. I took a quick look though some of the MP settings/options and didn't see anything that would account for your extra playlists. The fact that they keep coming back makes me think its a playlist in the folder that that music is in. I've had music given to me that was in MP3 format and along with all the music files there would be a playlist for those files. Sometimes its done so the files play in the original order they were on CD instead of alphabetically. If you don't delete that playlist MP will find it and add it to its list. Also there is a Delete from computer, or only delete from library option when deleting music from MP. If you only delete from the library, those files get found again on the next manual scan from MP. I'd have a look in your music folders for these playlists. It probably wouldn't hurt to set explorer to show hidden files while your looking for them. Another option is to just do a search for files with a wpl extension.

 

[Wordsworth]

Since your first sentence or so appears to address my question alphanumeric, I apologize to you and David9J as I should have quoted David9J's original post since that's what I was addressing. I do think as you say that there is a playlist setting or a playlist already in place from other files that is affecting his WMP playlists in this manner.

 

[alphanumeric]

No need to apologize, that's just me not paying attention to who originally started the thread.
I probably should have quoted yours so I guess that makes us even.

 

[David9J]

Problem solved!

Thanks to both of you for your input and between the two of you I got enough information to identify the cause. Many of the folders which contain mp3 albums also have a file with an .m3u extension. Only these albums have the automatic playlists in WMP. By deleting the file or renaming the file extension the playlist instantly disappears from WMP. It turns out that one of the software programs I was using way back to rip CDs (called pjbexploder) was also creating the m3u files. But now I know what was causing it I can get rid of the unwanted playlists. I am surprised that even after extensive searching on the internet I did not find any reference to this issue, so I hope this solution may assist others. The Wikipedia entry for m3u files is also helpful in explaining in more detail what they do. Many thanks.

 

[Wordsworth]

Glad you resolved it. Makes sense because WMP uses the .wpl extension for playlists, and I think Winamp and maybe others uses the .m3u extension so files made in other media programs might behave like this in WMP.

 

[alphanumeric]

Also glad you figured it out. I agree with Wordsworth, it sounds like some other program generated the m3u files. In any case once you nuke them all they shouldn't come back.