Drag Music Folders to Create Playlists

M3U Dropper provides you an easy way to create playlists with media files stored both on your computer as well as the local network or online. It is portable and as the name suggests, creating such a file only requires you to drop the data in its application window.


Playlists are created with practically zero effort from the user. The procedure generally requires you to load your favorite player with the media you want in the playlist and head over the File menu (usually this is where the option is located) and save the entire list in a playlist format: M3U, PLS, M3U8, etc.

However, with M3U Dropper you can take advantage of a serious set of options that allow you to create the playlist just the way you want it. The application brings in the possibility to search inside a playlist, modify its content, the order of the media, group entries matching a specific text string, etc.

M3U Dropper does not cost a thing and it comes in portable form, allowing you to carry it on a removable device. No installation is required to use it, just unzip the folder and launch the executable file.

The program has a straightforward classic interface, equipped with a menu bar and a tool bar. You can start building up playlists by dragging and dropping files and even entire folders containing media items. Next it is up to you how all the items are ordered, and there are several ways to achieve a neat sequence or simply randomize them all for the player.

The best part is that the program supports a wide range of formats for both video and audio by default. But you can add your own types as well. Additionally, if you want only a specific type of file in a folder to be added to the playlist, it offers the possibility to achieve just this as there are three alternatives when dropping a folder: load only matching files available in the directory or present in subfolders as well or simply drop the entire folder in the application.

You can move selected items and paste them to other playlists, create a temporary playlist with selected items and launch it in default media player, randomize links, view playlist items statistics, clear defined selections, and finally save items in M3U playlist. Under Select menu, there’re more options to deal with checked items. Selection can be changed into reversed order and focus can be moved back & forth between checked items. You can also enter keywords to check only specific items in a playlist. It’s worth mentioning here that the playlist is created from only checked items/links.

If you decide to change the filenames of the audio items or even their storage location you don’t have to recreate the playlists. M3U Dropper provides the possibility to search and replace the string of text either in the path section or the name of the files.

You can spawn multiple instances of the program and combine the items in several playlists into a new one by simply dragging them to the new window. This way you no longer work with the actual audio files but with their entries in the list.

M3U Dropper provides a wide array of sorting options for the loaded items and lets you move them up and down the list any way you like it.

As you get more proficient with using the application you can move in the interface faster with the use of the keyboard shortcuts. The program has a key combination assigned for every function it makes available. For the complete list of hotkeys check the application’s folder for an HTML document called “M3U Dropper Hot Keys”.

The configuration file in M3U Dropper can be saved to a location of your own in no time. This way you can toggle between different setups. This means that you can start the program with a predefined playlist and continue working from there.

Besides offering an easy way to create and edit playlists M3U Dropper can also launch them for you in the default media player on your system. You can define a different player if the default one does not support all the file types you added in the playlist.

The Good

There is no need to install the application. All you need to create a playlist is drag and drop the desired folder into its interface. It supports both audio and video files and it can launch the resulting playlist in the default player, or a specific one you define.

It comes with flexible sorting options and lets you work with multiple playlists at once as it supports drag and drop from one app instance to another.

The Bad

We were unable to drop links from the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Chrome.

The Truth

Despite the glitch with the web browsers M3U Dropper makes for an awesome playlist creator and manager. It is easy to use and extremely flexible. The set of options it brings to the table range from sorting the items in the list to editing their path and name if their location changed on the disk.


http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/M3U-Dropper-Review-190439.shtml