About

Building a coherent playlist from multiple artists requires more than concatenating random tracks. This tool queries the iTunes Search API for each artist you provide, retrieves their top-ranked songs by popularity, and assembles them into a unified playlist. You control how many tracks per artist (variable n, range 1 - 25), whether to shuffle the final order, and which individual tracks to include or exclude. The total playlist duration T is computed in real time as the sum of all selected track durations. Results are exportable as .m3u playlist files compatible with VLC, Winamp, and most modern players.

Limitations: song availability depends on the iTunes catalog for your region. Artists with very few digital releases may return incomplete results. Duplicate tracks across compilations are filtered by normalized title matching, but live versions or remasters may still appear as separate entries. Preview audio clips are 30-second samples provided by Apple and require an active internet connection.

Formulas

The total playlist duration T is computed as the sum of individual track durations returned by the API in milliseconds, then converted to a human-readable format:

T = k∑i=1 d_i

where d_i = duration of the i-th selected track in ms, and k = total number of selected tracks across all artists.

Conversion to minutes and seconds:

minutes = floor(T60000) seconds = floor(T mod 600001000)

The Fisher-Yates shuffle algorithm guarantees uniform random permutation of the playlist when shuffle mode is enabled:

for i = n − 1 down to 1: j = random(0, i); swap(arr[i], arr[j])

Deduplication uses normalized title comparison: norm(title) = lowercase(strip(title, parentheticals & features)). Two tracks are considered duplicates when norm(t₁) ≡ norm(t₂) ∧ artistId₁ = artistId₂.

Reference Data

Export Format	Extension	Compatible Players	Includes Metadata	Standard
M3U Playlist	.m3u	VLC, Winamp, iTunes, foobar2000	Title, Duration	Extended M3U (EXTM3U)
Plain Text	.txt	Any text editor	Artist, Title, Album, Duration	Custom formatted
CSV	.csv	Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice	All fields	RFC 4180
JSON	.json	Programmatic use	Full API response subset	ECMA-404

iTunes API Parameter	Value Used	Description
term	Artist name (URL-encoded)	Search query string
entity	musicTrack	Restricts to audio tracks only
limit	1 - 25	Max results per artist
media	music	Media type filter
sort	popular	Sorts by popularity ranking

Genre Code	Genre Name	Typical BPM Range	Avg Track Duration
20	Alternative	110 - 140 BPM	3:45
21	Rock	100 - 150 BPM	4:10
14	Pop	100 - 130 BPM	3:30
18	Hip-Hop/Rap	80 - 115 BPM	3:50
11	Jazz	60 - 180 BPM	5:20
6	Country	90 - 130 BPM	3:40
15	R&B/Soul	70 - 110 BPM	4:00
7	Electronic	120 - 150 BPM	5:30
9	Classical	Variable	8:00+
16	Reggae	60 - 90 BPM	4:15
12	Latin	90 - 130 BPM	3:55
10	Metal	100 - 200 BPM	5:00

Frequently Asked Questions

The iTunes Search API returns tracks available in your regional store. Artists with limited digital catalog presence, or those whose music is exclusively on competing platforms, may return fewer results. The API also deduplicates by ISRC code internally, so multiple versions of the same recording (e.g., remastered vs. original) may collapse into one entry.

The normalizer strips content inside parentheses and brackets (e.g., "(Live)", "[Remix]", '(feat. X)') before comparison. This means a studio version and a live version of the same song will be flagged as duplicates. If you want both, disable deduplication in the settings panel. Remixes with substantially different titles will pass through as unique tracks.

The exported file follows the Extended M3U standard (EXTM3U). Each entry contains an #EXTINF directive with the track duration in seconds and the display title (Artist - Track Name), followed by the 30-second preview URL from Apple. Open the file in VLC, Winamp, or any M3U-compatible player to hear the previews sequentially. For full-length playback, you would need to replace preview URLs with local file paths or streaming URIs.

The iTunes API sorts by a proprietary popularity metric that weights recent sales and streaming activity more heavily than historical totals. This means a classic artist's results may favor recently re-popularized tracks (e.g., from viral moments or movie soundtracks) over their objectively best-known catalog staples.

The tool supports up to 20 artists with up to 25 tracks each, yielding a theoretical maximum of 500 tracks. Performance remains stable at this scale since DOM rendering uses document fragments and batch insertion. However, API latency scales linearly with artist count due to sequential fetching with 300ms throttle delays.

Apple provides 30-second preview clips as part of their public API terms. These are standardized across all tracks and typically start at the most recognizable section of the song (usually the chorus). Full-length streaming requires authentication with Apple Music or a similar service, which is outside the scope of a keyless public API tool.