XML Shareable Playlist Format

XML Shareable Playlist Format (XSPF), pronounced spiff^[1], is an XML-based playlist format for digital media, sponsored by the Xiph.Org Foundation.

XSPF is a data format for sharing the kind of playlist that can be played on a personal computer or portable device. In the same way that any user on any computer can open any web page, XSPF is intended to provide portability for playlists.

Features

• A playlist format like M3U or ASX
• MIME content-type of application/xspf+xml
• Patent-free (no patents by the primary authors)
• Specification under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 license
• XML, like Atom
• Unicode support
• Cross-platform support

History

XSPF was created by an ad-hoc working group which kicked off in February 2004, achieved rough consensus on version 0 in April 2004, worked on implementations and fine tuning throughout summer and fall 2004, and declared the tuned version to be version 1 in January 2005.

XSPF is not a recommendation of any standards body besides Xiph.Org Foundation.

Specification

For detailed documentation, see the XSPF Version 1 specification.

Example of an XSPF 1.0 Playlist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<playlist version="1" xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/">
  <trackList>
    <track>
      <title>Internal Example</title>
      <location>file:///C:/music/foo.mp3</location>
    </track>
    <track>
      <title>External Example</title>
      <location>http://www.example.com/music/bar.ogg</location>
    </track>
  </trackList>
</playlist>

Content Resolution

Traditionally playlists have been composed of file paths that pointed to individual titles. This allowed a playlist to be played locally on one machine or shared if the listed file paths were URLs accessible to more than one machine (i.e. on the web). XSPF's meta-data rich open format has permitted a new kind of playlist sharing called content resolution.

A simple form of content resolution is the localisation of a playlist based on metadata. A content resolver will open XSPF playlists and search a catalog for every title with <creator>, <album> and <title> tags, then localise the playlist to reference the available matching tracks. A catalog may reference be a collection of media files on a local disk, a music subscription service like Yahoo! Music Unlimited or some other searchable archive. The end result is shareable playlists that are not tied to a specific collection or service.

Software

• Amarok
• Audacious
• ZiK an audio player
• Herrie - reading/writing XSPF playlists. XSPF is also used to autosave the playlist on shutdown.
• Serpentine - GNOME application for writing audio CDs
• Vanadium A flash based application for playing music (and videos) in web pages. Including JavaScript library to remote control the player. Open source under the LGPL license.
• VLC (stand-alone player, available on every major platform)
• XMMS2 has a plugin to parse XSPF
• Visonair Stream Directory (uses XSPF for server list download)
• libxspf (C++ XSPF library)
• Visonair.tv Player (supports XSPF files)
• Clipland Playlists (onDemand video-playlists also in XSPF)
• PHP4XSPF - a set of PHP classes that aims to make it as simple as possible to create XSPF files using PHP.
• XSPF for Ruby - a pure-Ruby parser and generator library
• JointRadio - takes RSS feeds of MP3 files and creates XSPF files
• XSPF Web Music Player - Open Source XSPF player (in the web browser, using Flash)
• foo_softplaylists - A plugin for foobar2000 to open an XSPF playlist and match the track meta-data with foobar2000's internal database

Many more applications are listed on the XSPF site below.

References

External links

• XSPF home page
• Online XSPF Validator