Sorry for the off-topic, but I thought this community would be the best place to find people interested in plain text file formats and their specs.
M3U is old and there is no formal specification for it. Many extensions have been added by different vendors. It would be nice to rewrite it as a community-driven spec. And no, m3u is not dead, and there are still uses for it.
Here are some suggestions I can think of:
-
Default Player Settings: Include options to specify default player
settings such as shuffle, loop, position, playback speed, and volume. -
Track Ratings: Add an option to rate individual tracks, which could be
used by the player to create custom playlists or suggestions. -
Conditional Play: Implement conditional play commands, such as playing
certain tracks only if certain conditions are met (e.g., user preference,
disable/enable some tracks). -
Segmented Tracks: Allow for the definition of track segments, enabling
the player to skip or repeat specific parts of a track. -
Playback Notifications: Add hooks for playback notifications, enabling
the player to trigger events or actions (e.g., visualizations, external
scripts) at certain points in the playlist. -
Custom Tags: Introduce support for user-defined custom tags to allow for
more flexible playlist management and integration with other software. -
Chapter Markers (#EXTM3A?): Enable chapter markers within tracks to allow users to
navigate to specific sections of longer audio files, such as podcasts or
audiobooks.