Making a digital "mixed tape"


Hi All.  I am putting together a playist for a memorial ceremony for a friend and am using Jriver v 21.0.9 for music management on my laptop.  However, the intended "mixed tape" needs to be saved in a format that other machines can play without having JRiver installed. The "mixed tape" could be in any format (MP4, wave, flac, anything) - though I am assuming all songs should be saved in the same format. On JRiver, I see how one can save the contents (e.g. library) or a playlist to a file, and see that I can export a playlist to a burnable CD, but in this case, I want to export the music to a single file on my hard drive, and then share it with the guy doing the video for the memorial.  Any help would be most appreciated.  Can I do what I need in JRiver?  If not, what other (preferably free) software would do this. If I recall right, I think iTunes might do this, although I'm not psyched to install iTunes on my Dell laptop.

Thanks, Peter

peter_s

You can send a playlist to thumb drive via JRiver. I have done it numerous times. Ask the guy what format his softwares can decode and put that format on yor thumb drive.

Of course. But the OP wants to export the playlist as a single file, and I do not think JRiver does that. Acoustica can export as a single file to CD, thumb drive, or you can just save it (such as to HD) as one large file.

By exporting all the tunes as one file, the OP can save it in a single format. It sounds like the tunes @peter_s has are in different formats, so he’s trying to avoid having any incompatible formats in the playlist.

@cleeds is correct about my intention of having all files in a simple format that is compatible with most music playing programs.  I don't really care if it's a single file or multiple songs, but would like to ensure that the songs are all readable and are played in the designated order. 

@tpreaves When you send the playlist to the thumb drive, are you using the "export playlist" function. Then you specify the format for all the files saved on the thumb drive and JRiver does any necessary conversions?  Is this correct?  And the thumb drive can be played without the use of JRiver?  Thanks.

@peter_s when you export a playlist in JRiver, it will save as an M3U file. An M3U file does not contain the actual tracks themselves, but rather pointers to those tracks. For that reason, other computers or players won’t be able to execute the playlist unless they are connected to your network. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think JRiver can save a playlist and the files it contains to a thumb drive. It is limited to burning to CD.

If you want to be certain, you can ask your question on the JRiver forum. You'll get a definitive answer.