Files with the .M3U8 extension contain song playlists used by various types of audio and video players and they are not assigned to any specific software. The principle behind the formatting is the same as in M3U files, with a potential distinction in terms of coding of text, which allows for the use of a wide range of special UTF-8 characters.

M3U files can be identical to M3U8 files, as both can contain text coded in UTF-8, however the latter also support other types of character encoding.