Quick Start Guide

This document is a guide for people just encountering XSPF for the first time.

What is XSPF?

A playlist format like M3U
XML like RSS
Pronounced spiff
MIME type application/xspf+xml

What does XSPF look like?

A very simple document looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<playlist version="1" xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/">
    <trackList>
        <track><location>file:///mp3s/song_1.mp3</location></track>
        <track><location>file:///mp3s/song_2.mp3</location></track>
        <track><location>file:///mp3s/song_3.mp3</location></track>
    </trackList>
</playlist>

Notice that the file names are URIs, meaning that you could pass them to a web browser. Also notice that it's trackList, with an uppercase L, not tracklist, with a lowercase l.

The following playlist is just the same except that the files are out on the web:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<playlist version="1" xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/">
    <trackList>
        <track><location>http://example.com/song_1.mp3</location></track>
        <track><location>http://example.com/song_2.mp3</location></track>
        <track><location>http://example.com/song_3.mp3</location></track>
    </trackList>
</playlist>

MIME type

The MIME type for XSPF documents is application/xspf+xml. It is NOT text/plain, audio/xspf, or text/xml. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Metadata

In the following section I'm going to show how to do standard metadata by giving example playlists for each item. I'll show each item by making a change in the following sample code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<playlist version="1" xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/">
    <trackList>
        <track>
            <location>http://example.com/song_1.mp3</location>
        </track>
    </trackList>
</playlist>

How do I set metadata about the playlist, like the title, the name of the author, and the homepage of the author?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<playlist version="1" xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/">

    <!-- title of the playlist -->
    <title>80s Music</title>

    <!-- name of the author -->
    <creator>Jane Doe</creator>

    <!-- homepage of the author -->
    <info>http://example.com/~jane</info>

    <trackList>
        <track>
            <location>http://example.com/song_1.mp3</location>
        </track>
    </trackList>
</playlist>

For a song in a playlist, how do I set metadata like the name of the artist and title of the album?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<playlist version="1" xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/">
    <trackList>
        <track>
            <location>http://example.com/song_1.mp3</location>

            <!-- artist or band name -->
            <creator>Led Zeppelin</creator>

            <!-- album title -->
            <album>Houses of the Holy</album>

            <!-- name of the song -->
            <title>No Quarter</title>

            <!-- comment on the song -->
            <annotation>I love this song</annotation>

            <!-- song length, in milliseconds -->
            <duration>271066</duration>

            <!-- album art -->
            <image>http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002J0B.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg</image>

            <!-- if this is a deep link, URL of the original web page -->
            <info>http://example.com</info>

        </track>
    </trackList>
</playlist>