Summary
I would like to suggest adding support for an '#EXTIMG' tag in M3U playlists to allow artwork to be displayed for remote streams and podcast episodes.
Current behaviour
When playing remote audio streams or podcast episodes loaded via M3U playlist, LMS has no way to display artwork. For local files, artwork is read from ID3 tags. For remote streams, LMS relies on ICY metadata embedded in the stream itself - which podcast files typically do not provide.
Proposed behaviour
LMS should recognise the '#EXTIMG' tag in M3U playlists and use the URL it contains as the artwork source for the following track entry. This would allow clients like iPeng to display episode or channel artwork for podcast streams.
Example playlist structure:
#EXTM3U
#EXTURL:podcast://https://audio.example.com/episode.mp3
#EXTIMG:https://example.com/podcast-artwork.jpg
#EXTINF:3600,Episode Title
podcast://https://audio.example.com/episode.mp3
Why '#EXTIMG'?
LMS already uses its own extended M3U tags ('#EXTURL', '#CURTRACK') beyond the standard '#EXTINF'. '#EXTIMG' is a natural extension of this convention and is already used by some other players for the same purpose. Adopting it would be consistent with the existing LMS M3U dialect.
Use case
Users who manage podcast playlists externally - for example, aggregating episodes from multiple RSS feeds into a single chronological M3U playlist - currently have no way to pass artwork metadata to LMS. RSS feeds provide artwork URLs at both channel level (![]()
) and episode level (itunes:image). A tool generating such playlists could easily embed these URLs via '#EXTIMG', provided LMS reads and stores them.
On the LMS side, the implementation would be straightforward: when parsing an M3U file, if an '#EXTIMG' line is encountered, store its URL as the 'artwork_url' for the subsequent track entry in the internal database. Clients such as iPeng already retrieve artwork via the LMS API and would display it automatically without any client-side changes.
Environment
Summary
I would like to suggest adding support for an '#EXTIMG' tag in M3U playlists to allow artwork to be displayed for remote streams and podcast episodes.
Current behaviour
When playing remote audio streams or podcast episodes loaded via M3U playlist, LMS has no way to display artwork. For local files, artwork is read from ID3 tags. For remote streams, LMS relies on ICY metadata embedded in the stream itself - which podcast files typically do not provide.
Proposed behaviour
LMS should recognise the '#EXTIMG' tag in M3U playlists and use the URL it contains as the artwork source for the following track entry. This would allow clients like iPeng to display episode or channel artwork for podcast streams.
Example playlist structure:
Why '#EXTIMG'?
LMS already uses its own extended M3U tags ('#EXTURL', '#CURTRACK') beyond the standard '#EXTINF'. '#EXTIMG' is a natural extension of this convention and is already used by some other players for the same purpose. Adopting it would be consistent with the existing LMS M3U dialect.
Use case
Users who manage podcast playlists externally - for example, aggregating episodes from multiple RSS feeds into a single chronological M3U playlist - currently have no way to pass artwork metadata to LMS. RSS feeds provide artwork URLs at both channel level (![]()
) and episode level (itunes:image). A tool generating such playlists could easily embed these URLs via '#EXTIMG', provided LMS reads and stores them.
On the LMS side, the implementation would be straightforward: when parsing an M3U file, if an '#EXTIMG' line is encountered, store its URL as the 'artwork_url' for the subsequent track entry in the internal database. Clients such as iPeng already retrieve artwork via the LMS API and would display it automatically without any client-side changes.
Environment