Playlisty has the ability to import playlists FROM your own Music library, back into your Music library. Why on earth would we do this? The answer is that, in many cases, passing a playlist already in your Music library through Playlisty’s advanced track matching algorithm can make it better.
How is this possible? Well starting in July 2021 Apple Music started offering lossless & high-definition versions of most of its catalog. This means that if:
- your playlists contain references to hundreds of your own treasured music files, carefully ripped from CDs;
- you’ve got some random greyed-out Apple Music tracks;
- some of your Apple Music tracks were (unbeknownst to you) sourced from compilations;
- some of your Apple Music tracks were sourced from Radio shows (easily identifiable because you will hear a DJ talking over the start and/or end);
…then better quality versions of these tracks may now be available in the Apple Music catalog.
If you rely on your weekly New Music mix to find new tracks for your playlists, then the latter two issues can be particularly annoying. Apple’s algorithms tend to favour radio & compilation versions of songs, probably because they get played the most.
Unfortunately it’s not technically possible to search Apple’s catalog to specifically find versions of songs which offer the highest quality. However Playlisty uses advanced heuristics to scan the catalog for the versions most likely to have high definition versions. Often these will also offer the best quality artwork too.
So by opening an existing Music playlist in Playlisty and either playing it directly or by saving it to a new playlist, there’s a good chance you’ll end-up with improved versions of many of the tracks.
To enable this feature you need to add your Apple Music library to your list of sources. To do that:
- Head over to Settings and find the “Apple Music as a Source” section and “Enable your local library as a source on the ‘+’ menu”
- Enable “Re-match Apple Music tracks when importing”
- Head back to the Sources tab and add the new “Your Apple Music Library” source to your list of sources
You can then browse & “import” Apple Music playlists just as you would playlists from any other source.
If you give it a try, please let us know how you get on. We’re continually looking for ways to improve our catalog matching algorithms and your experiences will help us make further improvements.