play: Configuration option to include a UTF-8-BOM (and possibly use .m3u8 extension)

[mz2212]

Problem

Currently, the play plugin's generated m3u files don't behave with foobar2000 if they have special characters (i.e. en dash "–"). If I modify the m3u file to have an m3u8 extension and add the appropriate BOM, it works just fine.

Running this command in verbose (-vv) mode:

λ beet -vv play -a 009                                                                         
user configuration: C:\Users\mikey\AppData\Roaming\beets\config.yaml                           
data directory: C:\Users\mikey\AppData\Roaming\beets                                           
plugin paths:                                                                                  
Sending event: pluginload                                                                      
library database: D:\beets.db                                                                  
library directory: D:\Music                                                                    
Sending event: library_opened                                                                  
Playing 1 album.                                                                               
play: executing command: foobar2000 ['C:\\Users\\mikey\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\tmp911i_r7f.m3u']
                                                                                               

Led to this problem:

Foobar can't find the files specified in the m3u file.

The file path attempting to be played is "D:\Music\Compilations\Monstercat 009 – Reunion"

Setup

• OS: Windows 10 Pro 1803
• Python version: 3.6.4
• beets version: 1.4.6
• Turning off plugins made problem go away (yes/no): N/A

My configuration (output of beet config) is:

directory: D:\\Music
library: D:\\beets.db

plugins: chroma fetchart mbsync fromfilename web play

import:
    move: yes
    write: yes

replace:
    '[\\/]': _
    ^\.: _
    '[\x00-\x1f]': _
    '[<>:"\?\*\|]': _
    \.$: _
    \s+$: ''
    ^\s+: ''
    ^-: _
play:
    command: foobar2000
    use_folders: no
    relative_to:
    raw: no
    warning_threshold: 100
sort_item: album+ disc+ track+ artist+
fetchart:
    auto: yes
    minwidth: 0
    maxwidth: 0
    enforce_ratio: no
    cautious: no
    cover_names:
    - cover
    - front
    - art
    - album
    - folder
    sources:
    - filesystem
    - coverart
    - itunes
    - amazon
    - albumart
    google_key: REDACTED
    google_engine: 001442825323518660753:hrh5ch1gjzm
    fanarttv_key: REDACTED
    store_source: no
web:
    host: 127.0.0.1
    port: 8337
    cors: ''
    reverse_proxy: no
    include_paths: no
chroma:
    auto: yes

[sampsyo]

Interesting! Yes, we do write non-ASCII filenames to these files. Do you know whether it’s a Foobar-specific quirk that it doesn’t support Unicode for ordinary .m3u files, or is this some manner of pseudo-standard we can read about somewhere? If it’s the former, maybe we should make it a configuration option. If it’s more universal, maybe the .m3u8 behavior should be the default.

[mz2212]

It seems to be a Foobar and Winamp problem. The default m3u files work in mpv, VLC, and MPC-BE.
It doesn't seem to be a super common problem, and file extension doesn't seem to matter (if the BOM is present the files work in Winamp and Foobar).

Having it as a configuration option would probably be the way to go, with a warning about foobar/winamp in the wiki.

[sampsyo]

Cool; thanks for investigating. Let’s turn this into a feature request for such a flag.