"I suppose a smarter incremental solution could be good, backing up only that which has changed."

Exactly.


"But best of all is still to just keep the music collection on the host system in the first place, and backup the playlists from Emplode (can it re-import CSV playlists?)."

I have this setup for the most part, but at the moment, the csv file is export only. I can rebuild all my album playlists simply by dragging and dropping, but all the mood and mix playlists would be lost.