ok. If I understand the other posts correctly, I shouldn’t expect to be able to hit an mt-daapd imported xml playlist and see the corresponding files on my music server, because the server only has a copy of the files and the xml file was build against the remote master.
ah well.
The good news is that a manually created smart playlist inserted into the songs.db file does pick up the files.
The long term goal is to get the music files from all my users (i.e. family members) onto the server, where I know it is backed up and secure. In order to do this I have to have a way to tag the files by family member and build default playlists for each of them so that they don’t stumble onto songs they don’t like.
Because I intend to ruthlessly strip the files from the local machines on a regular basis I therefore need a way to build playlists on the server. Unless Apple start allowing playlist creation (and cd burning etc.) against a networked library (which I doubt), I’m going to have to do something on the server side to allow them to create their own server smart playlists.
I’m sure someone must have started to build an iTunes clone that works on the web. I’ll start looking…