iTunes 10.4.1 how do I export playlist music files to USB thumbdrive?

[OldCorpse]

I'm on Snow Leopard 10.6.8 with all the latest updates and the latest iTunes 10.4.1.

I want to do something extremely simple. I have a playlist on iTunes. I want to export the music files associated with that list to a USB thumbdrive and then give the USB drive to my friend so he can have the music.

If I select all the tracks in the playlist and copy them from the Edit Menu, I don't seem to be able to paste that anywhere at all... what's up?

Do I actually have to go into my library on the external drive where the actual physical music files live and manually select all the tracks I want to transfer to the USB drive? Or do I have to first burn a CD disc of all those files from the playlist and then transfer that CD to the USB thumbdrive? Either way is extremely awkward.

Surely there's a better way of doing this on the "most advanced operating system in the world" DIRECTLY FROM iTUNES, NO? TIA!

 

[Knoodles]

Create a new folder on the desktop and name it whatever. Open iTunes and select all the songs in the playlist you want to copy. Click and drag the highlighted songs to the new folder. Copy the new folder to the USB drive. That's it!

 

[OldCorpse]

Thank you Knoodles - that worked! I really wonder why dragging to a folder on the same computer works, but copy and paste doesn't. Oh well, mysteries of operating systems.

One caveat though: if you have your playlist in some kind of special order, this operation WILL NOT preserve that order, instead, all the tracks will be jumbled according to what the track number is arbitrarily... so if you have, say, 3 different albums, you'll get track one from each album next to each other, then track two etc. Gah! So you have to create separate folders for each album... not the most efficient, but OK.

Thanks again, Knoodles!