VLC is a versatile M3U player that works on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and other operating systems. However, to play the songs it containing, you need a media player. Instead, M3U is a playlist format and M3U files can be easily opened with text editors. The file created can be easily accessed to the stream and is usually used for downloading from websites, for sending emails, and for listening to Internet radio.Īlthough originally designed for audio files, it is often used to point media players to audio and video sources, including online sources.Īlso read: What Is H264 & How to Play/Convert H264 Files How to Play M3U Files? One common use of the M3U file format is to create a single-entry playlist file that points to a stream on the Internet. It is the most popular format among all premium IPTV devices.

M3U is the abbreviation of MP3 URL or Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer 3 Uniform Resource Locator, and it is a computer file format for multimedia playlists. Need a professional media converter? MiniTool Video Converter is recommended here. See media player and MPV.Have you ever heard of M3U? If you don’t have an explicit understanding of M3U and have no idea how to play M3U files, don’t miss this post. Windows Media provides several playlist formats (see Windows Media formats). The PLS playlist defines its song titles as key-value pairs in the Windows INI format (see INI file). Some formats are simple text files with a song on each line for example, M3U files (MP3 playlists) contain a list of URLs or local file names, while RAM files contain a list of URLs to RealAudio files. For example, iTunes defines playlists in its XML-based library file, which also holds song information.

There are several file formats used for playlists. For example, iTunes has a Smart Playlist feature that will automatically create a playlist with a selected maximum number of titles based on any number of criteria such as genre, artist and year. The software may be able to create a playlist automatically. Using media player software such as iTunes and Winamp, playlists are created by the user by dragging and dropping titles from a master index. (2) A file that contains an index to a selected group of music files on the computer.

What is the m3u file format