What is .m3u file?

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 2:18 pm

Can anybody tell me what is an m3u file and how I go about creating one and linking to one. I suspect it's nothing more than an mp3 in some form. Any advice appreciated.

a_real_mf · Post by **a_real_mf** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 3:03 pm

it is the itunes streaming format....podcast and internet streams. there is a quicktime "plug in" that you can encode with, check out the quicktime site

mf

taggart · Post by **taggart** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 5:17 pm

I've got an Archos Jukebox MP3 player. I got it before I thought I couldn't afford an iPod, but that's a different story and I've learned my lesson. ANYWHOOOO...
The Archos will show up in iTunes and you can drag files onto it, but it will put everything in alphabetical order according to artist. It doesn't "do" playlists. At least not iTunes playlists.
So, now your Archos is sitting there on your desktop chock full of songs all catty-wumpus (as my sister would say). You take this bit of software called M3u For You, or something like that. It's got M3u in the title. There are a couple of them out there. Anyway, you drag song titles from the Archos to the M3u app and arrange them anyway you like. You then save that list as an M3u file and drag it into your Archos and it will play the songs back in an orderly fashion.
So basically, I use M3u files as ad hoc playlist files for my crappy MP3 player. I guess I've never used it for streaming and stuff like that. The end.

kelldammit · Post by **kelldammit** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 6:25 pm

i thought originally, it was just an mp3 playlist file?

sdemott · Post by **sdemott** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:53 am

Yes an .m3u is a mp3 playlist file. It's a plain text file with an m3u extension listing the path to the mp3s. For example:

http://mymp3server.com/mymp3s/mp3number1.mp3
http://mymp3server.com/mymp3s/mp3number2.mp3
http://mymp3server.com/mymp3s/mp3number3.mp3
http://mymp3server.com/mymp3s/mp3number4.mp3
http://mymp3server.com/mymp3s/mp3number5.mp3

saved in a text file with a .m3u extension will play those mp3s in that order. This causes the MP3 to stream and not download.

I have an instructional doc I put together about making one & the server side requirements for streaming (just setting MIME types). PM me if you would like me to email you a copy of it.