Playlists: imports that reuse what you already have

Aurral treats a static playlist as a list of references to library tracks, not as a separate pile of files. That distinction is why importing a 500-track playlist you already half own costs you nothing for the half you have.

Flows compared with static playlists

Flow and static playlist names must be unique across both kinds, so a Flow called Late Night cannot collide with a playlist called Late Night imported from somewhere else.

Five ways in

Spotify

Connect your account, pick a playlist, set a name and a sync schedule, then start the import. Spotify returns items in pages of up to 50 and Aurral reads every page, so a very large playlist simply takes longer. If Spotify reports more items than Aurral received, the sync fails and keeps your saved tracklist rather than silently truncating it.

Spotify only returns full item details for playlists you own or collaborate on. Each user stores one Spotify connection. If the connection expires or gets revoked, Aurral disconnects it, pauses your synced Spotify playlists and shows a reconnect message rather than quietly serving stale lists.

YouTube Music

Paste an HTTPS playlist URL from youtube.com or music.youtube.com. No Google account, no API key. Aurral loads every page before showing the preview or changing a synced playlist, so an incomplete or repeated page from YouTube leaves your tracks untouched. If YouTube rate-limits the requests, Aurral pauses for a short period and continues.

The preview tells you how many tracks can be imported and how many are skipped. Skipped entries are unavailable ones, podcasts, rows missing an artist or title, and duplicates. For a music video, Aurral uses the first author as the artist, and the track may have no album.

Last.fm

Three stations: Library, Mix and Recommended. Aurral saves your username with the playlist so future syncs do not need it again, and a synced station follows Last.fm as the station changes underneath it.

ListenBrainz

Link ListenBrainz once in playback settings and the import reuses the same user token. You see the playlists you own plus the two generated ones, Weekly Jams and Weekly Exploration. Aurral always resolves those two to the newest generated playlist rather than a dated snapshot.

A JSON file, with no account at all

The route that always works. Export the playlist with Exportify, convert the CSV with the converter on this site, then import the JSON. Aurral accepts several shapes:

• An exported Aurral playlist file
• One playlist object with a tracks array
• A bare array of tracks, read as one playlist
• An object with a playlists array, read as several playlists
• An object with a playlist property holding one playlist

Each track needs an artist and a track name. Accepted keys are forgiving, because they have to survive whatever a third-party exporter produced:

The smallest valid track needs two fields:

{
  "artistName": "Burial",
  "trackName": "Archangel"
}

Sync schedules and removed tracks

Every provider import has a sync schedule. Choose None for a fixed tracklist, change it later with Auto-sync, or force a read with Sync now. A sync re-reads the provider playlist, removes what is gone and queues what is new.

The default for a removed track is that it leaves your playlist while its file stays in the library, because you may have added it deliberately at some point. Turn off Keep removed tracks in library to have Aurral delete the file instead, provided no other playlist uses it. It never deletes Lidarr files or files it did not download.

Reusing files instead of re-downloading

On import, Aurral checks each track against the library first. Anything already present, whether Aurral downloaded it or Lidarr owns the file, is reused. Only genuinely missing tracks are searched. This is the single biggest reason an import of a familiar playlist is fast and quiet.

Retry logic follows the same principle. A file or release that already failed a check, or that failed to download, is not offered again on the next search.

Stopping plays from polluting recommendations

Both kinds of playlist have a Scrobble tracks setting. Turning it off stops plays from that playlist being recorded in your listening history, your recommendations or your scrobbling services. The setting is per playlist, and plays already recorded before the change remain.

Showing which tracks actually have files

Static playlists have a Show track availability setting, off by default. On, each track carries a coloured mark for available, downloading, queued, missing or waiting for review. Pointer or keyboard focus on the mark reads the state out loud, and the playlist header shows how many tracks are ready. Missing tracks can be re-searched from their own menu.

What deletion actually does

Removing a playlist or a track cancels its downloads first, then clears the job. The removal can stay queued while Aurral tidies up playback playlists and files.

• If a download client finishes a request after the removal, the result is not imported. The client may still show the work until it reports it as cancelled or finished.
• If a download client is no longer configured but still holds work for the playlist, the removal fails and both are kept. Configure the client again, then retry.
• Usenet or deemix files Aurral cannot prove it owns are never deleted.
• When Aurral cleans up on its own, such as a Flow rotating out or a synced playlist dropping a track, it first asks the connected playback servers which files their playlists still use, and keeps anything still referenced. If a server is unreachable it waits and retries later.

Where the files go

Permanent tracks live in Artist/Album folders inside the Downloads Folder. When Aurral knows a track's position on the album it names the file 07 - Title, so the folder lists in album order. Flow files are temporary and stay under _flows.

Playlist names differ per server, which matters if you run more than one. Navidrome defaults to username - playlist nameand you can turn that prefix off in settings. Plex uses the bare name inside the playlist owner's Plex account. Jellyfin uses the bare name as a private playlist under the Jellyfin user with the same name.