XSPF

XML Shareable Playlist Format (XSPF), pronounced spiff, 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 a Creative Commons 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 yet an Internet standard, and is not a recommendation of any standards body.

Specification

For detailed documentation, see the XSPF Version 1 specification.

Content Resolution

Traditionally playlists have been composed of file paths that pointed to individual songs. This allowed a playlist to be played locally on one machine or shared if the song 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.

In the simplest terms, content resolution is the local recreation of a playlist based on song meta-data. A content resolver will open XSPF playlists and search a music catalog for every song with and