How to make playlists of MP3 files in a folder automatically

Services like Spotify and Google Play Music make people less reliant on locally stored music files, but if you're like most people, you still have some music stored and played from hard drives.

Unfortunately, organizing music on hard drives can be difficult and messy, especially if you have thousands of tracks that need to be properly tagged with the correct metadata. Making playlists of those tracks can also be a pain.

Let's say you have a mix of MP3 files stored in a random folder somewhere deep inside your computer. How to create a playlist of those tracks as quickly and efficiently as possible?

How to make playlists from MP3 files in a folder

You must use a music manager with an auto playlist feature, and we recommend using MediaMonkey. While iTunes offers the same functionality, we all know it's a bloated mess that's hard to use again.

Here's how to automatically create a playlist of MP3 files in a folder:

1. Open the MediaMonkey app.
2. Go Edit> New autoplaylist .
3. Set up a rule with the desired folder as the music source.
4. Save the playlist.

Every time you add a new MP3 file to the source folder, the playlist will automatically update to reflect the changes. You can export your playlist to another music app, but it will no longer be “smart” (ie it won't update itself when you add new MP3 files to the source folder).

This feature is only available in MediaMonkey Gold. If you'd rather not pay for MediaMonkey Gold, you can achieve similar results with one of these free music players, but MediaMonkey is definitely the easiest and most convenient way to go.