Free online AAC to PLS converter

What the AAC format is

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is a lossy audio codec used for music, podcasts, video soundtracks, and streaming. It commonly appears as .aac or inside an MPEG-4 container such as .m4a or .mp4.

Apple Music and iTunes, phones, cameras, media editors, streaming services, FFmpeg, and many recording applications can create AAC audio. AAC files store encoded sound; they do not normally contain a playlist of other files.

What the PLS format is

PLS is a plain-text playlist format used by Winamp-compatible players, VLC, foobar2000, broadcast software, and internet-radio applications. A PLS file stores references to local audio files or streaming URLs, plus optional titles and durations.

Because PLS is text-based, it is small, easy to edit, and suitable for grouping AAC tracks without re-encoding them. A PLS file does not contain the audio itself, so moving it to another computer may require preserving the referenced files and their relative paths.

How to actually convert AAC to PLS

Using VLC

1. Open VLC and select View → Playlist.
2. Drag the AAC files into the playlist, or choose Media → Open Multiple Files.
3. Arrange the tracks in the required order.
4. Choose Media → Save Playlist to File.
5. Enter a filename ending in .pls, select the PLS playlist type if VLC displays a format list, and save.

Open the resulting file in a text editor to check that each FileN entry points to the correct AAC or M4A file. VLC may write absolute paths, which can stop working when the playlist and audio files are moved together to another location.

Using a desktop playlist application

In foobar2000, add the AAC files to a playlist, right-click the playlist, choose Save playlist, select PLS if available, and save it with the .pls extension. Other players use similar commands such as Export playlist or Save playlist as; choose PLS rather than M3U, XSPF, or another playlist type.

Creating a PLS file manually

For a small playlist, create a UTF-8 plain-text file with this structure and save it as music.pls:

[playlist]
NumberOfEntries=2
File1=audio/track01.aac
Title1=Track 01
Length1=214
File2=audio/track02.m4a
Title2=Track 02
Length2=187
Version=2

NumberOfEntries must match the number of tracks. Numbering starts at 1; LengthN is the duration in seconds and may be set to -1 when unknown. Use URLs such as https://example.com/stream.aac for radio streams. Relative paths are usually more portable than absolute paths, provided the directory layout remains unchanged.

Using the built-in online converter

You can use the free converter on 101convert.com without installing software: upload the AAC file or files, choose PLS as the output format, start the conversion, and download the generated playlist. Since PLS contains references rather than audio data, verify that the generated entries point to files that the intended player can access.

Quality, compatibility, and limitations

Creating a PLS file causes no audio-quality loss because the AAC data is not decoded or re-encoded. If an application requires an actual audio conversion, PLS is the wrong target; convert AAC to a supported audio format such as MP3 or WAV instead, then create a playlist for those files.

PLS support varies by player, especially for AAC inside .m4a containers and for streaming URLs. Test the playlist in the target application. Keep the referenced files available, avoid changing their names, and use forward-slash relative paths where possible. Some players require URL encoding for spaces and non-ASCII characters in file paths.