Eureka! - How to Randomize Playlist on PSP

I love my PSP. I always have it with me so I have access to my movies, music, pictures, and more importantly my games. Unfortunately it has one flaw: there is no easy way to randomize your music playlist files...until now. Here is what you will need:

• Sony PSP
• Media Go to create a playlist and transfer it to your PSP
• USB Cable to connect PSP to computer
• Microsoft Excel (2007 or later)/Google Docs Spreadsheet/OpenOffice Spreadsheet*
• Notepad

*Excel 2003 and earlier does not have one of the necessary functions that you need to perform, so if that is all you have, I suggest using Google Docs Spreadsheet or OpenOffice Spreadsheet, both free.

The first thing to do is to connect your PSP to your computer, open Media Go, create a playlist using Media Go, and transfer said playlist to your PSP using said Media Go.

Then with you PSP still connected to your computer, go to the following directory: My Computer/E:/PSP/PLAYLIST/MUSIC

Find the playlist you created (it will have a .m3u8 extention). Right click, select "Open As", and select Notepad. This is what the file will look like:

All your songs are displayed by album, alphabetically. Select everything, (starting with the second line), hit Ctrl+C to copy everything, go over to Excel, select cell B1, and hit Ctrl+V to paste the information you just copied. Starting on cell A1 go down along with the file names and number all the cells (1,2,3,4...all the way to the last song). It should look like this:

Starting on cell H1, hold Shift and select all the cells down to where your list ends (similar to the step above). After all the cells are selected, type "=randbetween(1, 50)" without quotation marks ("1" represents the first number on column A and "50" is the last number on column A). Hold Ctrl and press Enter to fill all the cells you selected with random numbers between 1 and 50. You will use these random numbers to randomize your song list.

Repeat the same step on cell I1: select all the cells down the column until the end of your list. Type "=OFFSET($B$1,RANK(H1,$H$1:$H$50)-1,0); hold Ctrl and press Enter. Voila! Your songs are now shuffled and Excel will look like this:

Copy the newly-created, newly-shuffled list of songs and paste it back onto the original Notepad that has your playlist, starting on the second line. Save and close the playlist. Your playlist is now randomized when you access it from the Music menu on the PSP.