Export a Traktor playlist to Rekordbox: what survives the move between DJ programs

Traktor can export a playlist. Rekordbox can import a playlist. The two facts do not join up, because the file Traktor writes is not a file Rekordbox reads, and most of the frustration in "export Traktor playlist to Rekordbox" comes from expecting them to. This is what each program actually does, taken from their own manuals, and the route between them that does not depend on a feature nobody shipped.

What Traktor exports

In Traktor, right-click the playlist in the Browser Tree and choose Export Playlist. You give it a name and a destination and Traktor creates a folder containing the tracks and the playlist file, an `*.nml`. That is the whole feature, and it is a good one: the audio and the list travel together, so the folder is self-contained.

The `.nml` is Traktor's own format. It holds the playlist order and, for each track, what Traktor knows about it: BPMBeats per minute: a track's tempo, and the first number any DJ looks at., keyThe note and mode a track is written in — what decides whether two tracks sit well together., its comment fields, and the path to the file. The order is the part worth noticing. A folder has no order — your file manager sorts it by name — and the `.nml` is the only thing in that folder that remembers which track came third.

What Rekordbox imports

Rekordbox's manual, all 266 pages of the current one, does not mention Traktor or NML once. Rekordbox imports three kinds of thing: music files and folders, an iTunes or Apple Music library, and its own rekordbox xml. There is no "Import from Traktor" and no official converter from Native Instruments or Pioneer.

Two of those three imports are useful here.

A folder becomes a playlist. The manual says it in one line: drag and dropThe moment a track releases all its energy, after the tension that built up to it. a folder from the Explorer node in the tree view onto Playlists, and a playlist is created with the folder's name. The folder Traktor exported is exactly that kind of folder. Drop it, and Rekordbox has a playlist with the same tracks — in whatever order it lists files, not in yours.

An XML becomes a playlist, order included. Rekordbox reads a playlist library in its own XML format: in Preferences, under Advanced and then Database, you point `rekordbox xml` at an XML file, and it appears as a node in the tree view. From there you double-click Playlists under it and drag a playlist under your own Playlists. This is the route that keeps order, and it needs a rekordbox XML — which Traktor does not write.

So what actually moves

Be precise about this, because the honest answer is more useful than the optimistic one.

Energy deserves its own line. If your energy value lives in the comment field, it is ordinary ID3 and Rekordbox shows it in Comments. If it lives in Traktor's `COMMENT2`, it is a Traktor fact and stays behind. Where each program keeps energy, field by field, is in where Rekordbox, Serato and Traktor store energy tags, and the exact frame names are on the energy tags reference.

The route, in order

1. In Traktor, right-click the playlist, Export Playlist, pick a destination. You get a folder with the tracks and an `.nml`.
2. In Rekordbox, drag that folder from Explorer onto Playlists. The tracks are in; the name is right; the order is the file manager's.
3. Put the order back by hand, using the `.nml` as the reference. It is a text file and any editor opens it, but reading a playlist out of XML by eye is slow.

Step three is where a tool that reads NML earns its keep. Drop the `.nml` into the free energy curve tool: it reads the order and the energy field Traktor wrote, no account needed, and shows the set as a list and a curve. That list is your checklist while you reorder in Rekordbox — and the curve tells you whether the order was worth keeping in the first place.

There is now a shorter route for step three. The free Traktor ↔ Rekordbox playlist converter turns the `.nml` into a `.m3u8` in your browser, order and file paths intact, and Rekordbox imports a `.m3u8` directly (File → Import → Import playlist). It used to live at apps.robertino.world as TraktorBox; it does the same conversion here, without uploading the file.

To be clear about what the converter is not: it moves the playlist — order, paths, titles, durations — and nothing else. Cue pointsA saved marker inside a track that lets you jump exactly there., beatgrids and analysis stay in each program's library, because neither file format has a place for them. Library managers built for that job exist — the comparison with Lexicon says where the line is, and Rekordbox vs Serato vs Traktor compares the two programs themselves — and this article does not pretend the conversion step away. It tells you which step has no tool and how to do it with the least pain. The full list of what each format carries is on the import formats page.

If you are moving for good

Two things are worth doing before the last export, because they decide whether years of tagging come with you.

Check which field your energy is in. A value in the comment field or in Grouping travels with the file. A value in `COMMENT2` does not. If yours is in the wrong one, the time to move it is while you still have Traktor open.

Let Rekordbox re-analyse, then compare. Its BPM and key detection are its own, and they will not always agree with Traktor's. A set that was harmonically clean in one program can look off by a step in the other purely because the two disagree on a key. Checking a few tracks you know well tells you which one to trust.