I have a LARGE number of audio playlists files created in an .m3u format.
They are simply a text file that links an mp3 file in a specific location.
I would REALLY like for the ability to be able to import, or have these .m3u files recognized, so I can select one of these playlists and have the audio player load up and play these song files.
Is it possible to be able to have a standard .m3u music playlist recocognized?
I would like to add my support to this. I would like to do the same.
For my understanding a Playlist is basically a list of Filenames/URL's.
Some players are capable of reading these lists and retrieve the streams by them self.
In Plex clients are addressing the Plex Media Server to retrieve media.
By the way Plex is designed you would have to add the playlist as an item to the database but AFAIK playlists are not supported items there.
A Plex playlists is something different: it's a list of "existing Plex-database-items" which is stored inside the PMS database itself.
These are quite different approaches.
Other way to play a playlist you would be using a music channel plugin, basically something like the Shoutcast Plug-in but addressing your playlists instead.
I don't know if a plug-in capable of this already exists or is eventually under development.
Has this question been answered? I see it has been a long time since last update & I am trying to find a way to import the *.m3u playlist files to Plex or at least convert them to iTunes Playlist. I do not use iTunes & would hope that I would not need to install just for this option. Anyway thanks in advance for any direction.
No, it seems that these requests are being ignored for some reason. I see many a question asking for the ability to do this. Not sure why it is so difficult or impossible to do. I wish there were a way to discuss these things with someone instead of this random hit and miss answers through blogs and comments.
I agree, this would be extremely helpful to me. I understand that Plex stores playlists using a different approach than *.m3u, but Plex obviously has access to the file location of each song (just look in the details view). SInce .m3u is just a list of the file locations, it seems simple to search the library for the files specified in the playlist.
Would love to know how to do this. The whole reason for me testing Plex is for the M3U formats. Several of my music stations and sites still use the M3U formats and I cant find anything that can stream them to my home stereo and HT. This looked promising but I hit a dead end.
Is there a simple file or folder that I can use as a template to create one playlist or channel and I can just edit or copy as many times as needed? Support for login\pswd to registered sites also if possible.
Major internet streaming apps dont play what I want as I listen to mostly live concerts and live music streams thats not available on the big corp sites. Dont want studio versions and I have plenty of apps that can play my home library without a dedicated server.
I can provide examples if it helps. Wish I had time to work on coding something myself.
I would also like this functionality. It is something I used to use in TVersity to stream audio files to an Xbox 360 for custom soundtracks while playing games. Don’t really want to have to re-install TVersity to get this capability back. An alternative would be to be able to share the playlists created within Plex over DLNA; although I know that wouldn’t help everyone here.
It would seem logical for PLEX to add this functionality since it should be simple to implement and very desirable to many users. Any progress on this?
Hello, world !
If I may add something to explain to Plex developpers (or its Product Manager) why it is important to include the M3U and other playlists format compatibility to Plex’ features, it is the use of very powerful clients to maintain their contents. Windows Media Player or MediaMonkey, for instance.
If the issue is that Plex uses IDs stored into a database and not an URL or UNC string to identify a track, I am sure that one of the database fields is the file path itself, which would be the right key to link Plex IDs to the M3U (or other) file.
I hope something will move the right way because this subject was first posted in August 2014 
Eric
@slipstreams said:
For my understanding a Playlist is basically a list of Filenames/URL’s.Some players are capable of reading these lists and retrieve the streams by them self.
In Plex clients are addressing the Plex Media Server to retrieve media.
By the way Plex is designed you would have to add the playlist as an item to the database but AFAIK playlists are not supported items there.
A Plex playlists is something different: it’s a list of “existing Plex-database-items” which is stored inside the PMS database itself.
These are quite different approaches.
Other way to play a playlist you would be using a music channel plugin, basically something like the Shoutcast Plug-in but addressing your playlists instead.
I don’t know if a plug-in capable of this already exists or is eventually under development.
Hello @slipstreams,
You talked about the Shoutcast plugin, but I could not find it into the list. Does it still exist ?
Thanks,
Eric
I guess it’s time for a near annual BUMP of this issue.
I wish I were a coder. I feel like a plugin to at least add an M3U playlist as a unique library or something could’ve been done by now - even if it’s inefficient and a bit of a waste of space, it’s better than a complete lack of support for the M3U playlist standard.
This might help. Doesn’t look like it’s a polished solution, but at least someone is attempting to make it work:
Back in May 2018 Elan Feingold (@elan), the CTO and Co-Founder of Plex, said in the thread below that they had this functionality working but hadn’t implemented the UI. I haven’t been able to find out anything further. Maybe if everybody in this thread jumps up and down and makes lots of noise they will give us access.
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