I wanted to export all tracks of an iTunes playlist into a folder, but iTunes’ export feature only exports the track list (as XML or plain text file), not the actual music files.

Drag-and-drop from the iTunes window to the Finder folder window works but doesn’t preserve the playlist order, and the filenames are messy because of the leading track numbers.

I wrote this AppleScript that reads the XML export track list file and copies the tracks to a folder on the desktop. It strips leading numbers from the filenames and adds new ones corresponding to the playlist order.

on open (theFiles)
  set theFile to item 1 of theFiles
  set myUrls to {}
  tell application "System Events"
    set myContents to contents of property list file (theFile as string)
    tell myContents
      tell property list item "Playlists"
        tell property list item 1
          tell property list item "Playlist Items"
            repeat with aPlaylistEntry in property list items
              set aTrackId to |Track ID| of (value of aPlaylistEntry as record)
              tell property list item "Tracks" of myContents
                tell property list item (aTrackId as string)
                  set myUrl to |Location| of (value as record)
                  set end of myUrls to myUrl
                end tell
              end tell
            end repeat
          end tell
        end tell
      end tell
    end tell
  end tell
  
  set myIndex to 1
  do shell script "mkdir -p ~/Desktop/itunes-playlist-export"
  repeat with myUrl in myUrls
    if myIndex < 10 then
      set myIndex to "0" & myIndex
    end if
    
    set myUrl to myUrl as URL
    set myPath to POSIX path of POSIX file myUrl
    set myBasename to do shell script "basename " & quoted form of myPath & " | sed -e 's/^[ 0-9-]*//'"
    
    set myDestination to (myIndex as string) & " " & myBasename
    
    set cmd to "cp " & quoted form of myPath & " ~/Desktop/itunes-playlist-export/" & quoted form of myDestination
    do shell script cmd
    
    set myIndex to myIndex + 1
  end repeat
  
end open