Bottom line up front (bluf): to launch a playlist you can't click on it from the file listing and expect Meridian to know what to do with it (gives message unsupported file type). The key is to open Meridian, then click on playlists, and your M3U playlists will appear. Clicking on a playlist will begin to play your music.
Here's the step by step method to copy files and create a playlist on the SD card of your android phone:
On your computer (I'm using PC) create a folder called music, then sub folders for different artists, genres, etc. (if you already have it organized, great, just make sure you don't copy more files than you have disk space on the phone)
Next create a m3u playlist. Each line in an m3u is a reference to a song:
music/artist/song 1.mp3
music/artist/song 2.mp3
Here's how I automatically created a playlist for a large folder of songs:
Open command prompt, navigate to music folder then to the sub folder with the songs you want to add to your playlist. Type the following:
dir /OD /B > ../myplaylist.m3u
*dir command will list the contents of the directory,
**the > redirects the output into a file called myplaylist.m3u (in the parent directory). If the file does not exist, it will be created. *Caution* if the file does exist, it will be overwritten. To add to the end of an existing file use >> instead
*** the /B switch spits out just the file name (omitting file size, etc)
**** the /OD switch changes the sort order, to be (in this case) date which is just a personal preference, you can omit if you like.
At this point, you have a file with all the songs in it, but it is not yet a playlist which Meridian can handle because we also need to add the prefix of the path to each song.
So, I use MS Word at this point and open the playlist I just created. Use the Find and Replace option, and find ^p (new line) and replace it with ^p /sd/music/artist/ press "replace all." This should add the correct path in front of each song except the very first song in the file... change that one manually. Scroll to the bottom of the file and you will find one extra path on the very last line of the file... delete that one. Next, save as plain text (not as MS Word format)
Optional step, if you have any non-ascii characters, you will need to open the file in Notepad and save as type... all files, encoding UTF-8. Otherwise, Meridian will skip over any files with characters it can't understand.
Ok, almost done... now just copy the folder with your playlist and the subfolder(s) with your music to your SD card. Plug in USB cable, choose mount, and then when prompted by your PC, choose open with folder view. Note: the path in your playlist has to match the actual path on your sd card.
Now, unplug the USB cable, allow Android to complete the scan of the sd card, then in applications, open Meridian, select Playlists icon, then browse to the sd card, find the playlist you created and click on it. You cannot use the file browser to click on the playlsit and expect it to play. You also cannot click on the playlist from the library icon. It only works (on my phone) by going through the playlist option.
Hope this helps someone, spent all afternoon figuring this out, thought it was worth posting for others.
Here's the step by step method to copy files and create a playlist on the SD card of your android phone:
On your computer (I'm using PC) create a folder called music, then sub folders for different artists, genres, etc. (if you already have it organized, great, just make sure you don't copy more files than you have disk space on the phone)
Next create a m3u playlist. Each line in an m3u is a reference to a song:
music/artist/song 1.mp3
music/artist/song 2.mp3
Here's how I automatically created a playlist for a large folder of songs:
Open command prompt, navigate to music folder then to the sub folder with the songs you want to add to your playlist. Type the following:
dir /OD /B > ../myplaylist.m3u
*dir command will list the contents of the directory,
**the > redirects the output into a file called myplaylist.m3u (in the parent directory). If the file does not exist, it will be created. *Caution* if the file does exist, it will be overwritten. To add to the end of an existing file use >> instead
*** the /B switch spits out just the file name (omitting file size, etc)
**** the /OD switch changes the sort order, to be (in this case) date which is just a personal preference, you can omit if you like.
At this point, you have a file with all the songs in it, but it is not yet a playlist which Meridian can handle because we also need to add the prefix of the path to each song.
So, I use MS Word at this point and open the playlist I just created. Use the Find and Replace option, and find ^p (new line) and replace it with ^p /sd/music/artist/ press "replace all." This should add the correct path in front of each song except the very first song in the file... change that one manually. Scroll to the bottom of the file and you will find one extra path on the very last line of the file... delete that one. Next, save as plain text (not as MS Word format)
Optional step, if you have any non-ascii characters, you will need to open the file in Notepad and save as type... all files, encoding UTF-8. Otherwise, Meridian will skip over any files with characters it can't understand.
Ok, almost done... now just copy the folder with your playlist and the subfolder(s) with your music to your SD card. Plug in USB cable, choose mount, and then when prompted by your PC, choose open with folder view. Note: the path in your playlist has to match the actual path on your sd card.
Now, unplug the USB cable, allow Android to complete the scan of the sd card, then in applications, open Meridian, select Playlists icon, then browse to the sd card, find the playlist you created and click on it. You cannot use the file browser to click on the playlsit and expect it to play. You also cannot click on the playlist from the library icon. It only works (on my phone) by going through the playlist option.
Hope this helps someone, spent all afternoon figuring this out, thought it was worth posting for others.
