I’ve just recently purchased a 3TB mycloud device, and moved all my music on to it so that I can stream it. However, although I can play the music, neither iTunes nor Windows Media PLayer will allow me to create a playlist. I’d like a playlist that I can access via my Bose Wireless music player and my tablet and phone. Any ideas?
You can create playlist by using the My Cloud Desktop app. See images below. Click on, tap or activate images to enlarge them.
Drag and Drop songs onto playlist then save playlist.
You will need to read your device manuals and determine how and if you can play them on each device.
I will add this for Windows Media Player, don’t know why you can’t create Playlist with yours. See example images below for creating playlist and casting to a device.
cat0w
USA
I use playlists often to play music stored on My Cloud. Easy and versatile.
To begin with, I use the iTunes program to create them. I have iTunes store the iTunes Media folder (the folder that contains all the cataloged iTunes music/video files) on my PC.
Then, I use iTunes’ very useful playlist creator tool to make 100-track music playlists of random selected tracks from a selected Tunes folder. These playlists can play on my PC, of course, but they also play on and from, various devices and from apps.
I have put copies of my iTunes Media folder all over the place (e.g. My Cloud, wireless drives used for travel etc.). It’s the copy of music on the My Cloud that concerns this discussion. I also have a folder full of my many playlists, and that, too, is copied to the My Cloud music folder along with ITunes Media folder.
OK, we have music, have playlists set up, and now to play them. Since playlists use uPnP\DLNA media servers to play the playlists, I need an app on a device to do the job. Although I have an iPhone and iPad, I prefer using my Kindle Fire tablet for the task. I have used the free Avia app running on tablet for quite a while, so using app, I find the playlist folder on the My Cloud server, and start playing the playlist. Bingo, it is playing music on the Fire tablet.
But, I want to hear it on a Bluetooth speaker, or my Amazon Echo instead. So, I turn on the Fire’s BT signal, and voila, the BT speaker or Echo is now playing the playlist!
The Avia app is an Android app, another good Android app is BubbleUpnP. Since Apple doesn’t really embrace DLNA, I have found very few Apple apps that can deal with Media servers. One free one I have on iOS phone and tablet is called Belkin MediaPlay, and it has the additional feature of being able to “beam” media (music, video) to a Smart TV, (or in my case, a WDTV or Roku) so music can be heard on TV (or my stereo). Same goes for beaming mp4 videos, too!
That’s the basics; now go for it.
Hey Cat0w, in the early days of my making playlists, I found WMP useless, because it read and spelled special characters (foreign-spelled track titles mostly) incorrectly, and therefore, when played from 100-track playlist, WMP skipped over 30+ songs in a playlist! So, I tried iTunes, and it got all the foreign characters right, the titles spelled correctly, and m3u playlists played perfectly. So, I have been using iTunes to make perfect playlists since then for years…
You probably only need to tell WMP to use the UTF-8 extended character set when creating playlists. Probably an option somewhere, but I don’t use WMP or playlists…
I recall doing that; tried many things. The playlist creator of WMP is just junky, so I don’t use it – and apparently you don’t either. The player itself is pretty good, though, but even use VLC more often now.
Playlists are great, you ought to give it a try. My random playlists are like a “controlled shuffle” play for me.
62k tracks. Indecisive. I could never bring myself to choose. Thank heaven for MediaMonkey’s Auto-DJ…
Agree, I have lots of tracks, too, and I don’t choose tracks either. As I said, I have iTunes create 100-track random playlists from a specific iTunes Library of all tracks called a Smart Library that excludes anything I don’t want to hear, like all podcasts, certain genres I don’t want in a casual playlist (e.g. exclude Classical music), Artists,I don’t want to hear, and songs/tracks over 11 minutes long. So I don’t select for my playlist , iTunes does!
iTunes can create playlists like this in a flash, so when I have added enough new music I have iTunes make a few new playlists. I have accumulated quite a few no-brainer playlists this way. When I play my playlists it’s like having my own personal “radio station”.
Thank you very much. I had no idea the playlist folder was behind the favourites tab. I have managed to create a .m3u playlist which works on Mycloud, but doesn’t appear anywhere when I look for it via Bose Soundtouch system. It may be that Bose does not recognise this type of playlist.
I’ve also had a go at using iTunes. When I started, I had all my music on Mycloud. I tried “File, Add Folder” and after several hours, iTunes is seeing and playing most of my music and my Windows 10 music library includes the folders on the Mycloud drive. Another major step forward: iTunes will set up playlists from my music. Also: I can access the iTunes library AND the playlist I set up from my Bose Soundtouch. However it is obviously only seeing the playlists and music on the laptop, since the music stopped as soon as I shut down the laptop. Mike: whereabouts would I find the iTunes media folder and playlists so that I can copy them to the Mycloud?
Unless the user directs the iTunes program to keep iTunes Media folder somewhere other than the default location, it is still in the default location. Mine is not in the default location, it in on a second drive in my laptop PC.
To find where it is kept on your computer, open Tunes, then click tabs for Edit/Preferences/Advanced and you will see it listed in there. (At least it is on my much older version of iTunes. I have not updated in a few years, because I did not like the newer version!)
When you find the location, go there and COPY (not cut) and PASTE the file to the second location you want it. Do not disturb the original in any way.
The second copy will not get updated unless you do it manually, or you periodically delete the copy and do the copy process over again to get the latest folder. I usually update manually (ya gotta know how) and every six months or so I delete my copy and just put on a fresh copy of current one in case I missed something when I manually updated. Any questions, let me know.
I have been thinking of changing my location of original to the My Cloud NAS, but there are issues doing that (it’s too far from my iTunes program, accessing the folder with other programs than iTunes, sort of scares me, etc) and these thoughts give me pause. I know of people who have done this, though.
I’ve found my iTunes media folder and have copied it to my Mycloud NAS Drive. I’ve also exported my library to the NAS drive as well.I can see via Windows File Explporer that they are all present and correct on the NAS drive, and I can find them via my Bose Soundtouch App. However, I still can’t see any trace of the playlists unless I direct the Soundtouch to my iTunes library. Unfortunately it will only do this if my laptop is running, and I really want to be able to see and use the playlists without firing up the laptop. I guess it must be a Bose issue so I’ll open up a query on the Bose user forum. Thanks very much for your help. I’ve certainly learnt a lot more about iTunes
Hmmm, a little knowledge can be dangerous. 
Richard you did not need to export the library files to the NAS. UNLESS, like me, who wants a complete copy of iTunes saved in case something happens to the database, and I need to recopy it back, or my PC crashes, or I want to move iTunes and data to a new computer which I have done a few times when I get a new PC.
Otherwise, the library must be kept on same drive as the iTunes program. In this case, I copy the complete iTunes user folder (with iTunes Media folder inside) to an external drive, and periodically update it by copying over the backup fi folder every so often; usually every six months.
So, to clarify, you only need the iTunes Media folder (with playable tracks inside) it on your NAS, If you want to also have a backup like me, then just copy the entire iTunes user folder (including iTunes Media folder inside) to NAS for backup.
OK, playlists. My playlists are created by iTunes and they are m3u files. I keep them on PC where they were created. I copy them to the music folder of my NAS in same folder where the copy of iTunes Media folder is (and not IN the iTunes Media folder; along side of it)… My apps can find them, but only an app that locates DLNA media servers (which the NAS is; actually it is both a server and a share.) So, I need to use an app on phone or tablet that accesses servers, not shares, to use playlists, since only DLNA servers can actually play music from a playlist. Shares can’t.
I presume your Bose app is a DLNA receiving app. You can tell if, when you look in the app for music from NAS the first folders you see are for Music, Photos, and Videos, as this how they are arranged for DLNA use. If instead, you see folders arranged as they are on the PC, this is looking at them as shares, and playlists will not work this way (the My Cloud app only sees them this way),. You are stuck unless you use a different app ,and there are not many for an iDevice except for one I know of, but there are plenty for Android devices. (Apple doesn’t fully embrace the DLNA standard like the rest of the world does.)
If you need more info, let me know.
Thank you Mike, that is really useful information. It certainly sounds as though the Bose app is a DLNA receiving app, as the first folders that come up are indeed for Music, Photos and Videos. However, if I drill down through the Music folder, it shows all the folders and subfolders where my music resides. Is this still the characteristic of a DLNA server?
Yes, and did you notice tracks in folders are in alpha order and not in the actual track order as they are when you view them in iTunes Media on PC? Another trait of DLNA.
Hi cat,
could you please explain how the drag and drop will work in the app? I’m able to create a new list but not able to drop any title into it.
thanks and kind regards
stephan
@Stephan_Best First create your playlist and save it. See image below.
Second choose the playlist you just created and Rename it. See image below.
See Example of Renaming playlist below. Name I gave matches first song.
cat0w
USA
I renamed it, but then how can I put songs into the playlist? If I drag a song from my cloud shared folder music, I can’t drop it into the renamed list. 
Or did understand something wrong?
thanks a lot for your help
Stephan
@Stephan_Best To add songs to one of my current playlist all I do is open the playlist and then find the album or songs I want to add and drag and drop them onto the list then save it again. See image below of where I saved more songs to the playlist I Got You Babe.m3u.
Click on, tap or activate image to enlarge it.
My songs come from my share, Horace>Music.
Hi cat0w,
Thanks for the advice on this post. I followed the instructions fine…until the “drop” part of “drag and drop”. The “drag” goes fine, and when I hover over the newly created playlist I can see a nice cursor and blue line that makes me think everything is working ready for the “drop”. Then I release the file…and nothing happens.
I may be missing something blindingly obvious here but any thoughts you have will be most welcome. Could it be the file type? I note your example is with mp3’s, my files are m4a’s…
This is driving me mad. The software is clearly supposed to work, and probably does for most people, so I’m guessing I must be the village ■■■■■ who can’t make it work!
Many thanks for your help,
R
