diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 3459777c4..fc565d5e4 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 ver 0.18 (2012/??/??)
 * configuration:
   - allow tilde paths for socket
+  - default filesystem charset is UTF-8 instead of ISO-8859-1
 * protocol:
   - new command "toggleoutput"
   - search for album artist falls back to the artist tag
diff --git a/src/fs/Charset.cxx b/src/fs/Charset.cxx
index b75001043..3e324f470 100644
--- a/src/fs/Charset.cxx
+++ b/src/fs/Charset.cxx
@@ -81,6 +81,9 @@ PathToUTF8(const char *path_fs)
 {
 	assert(path_fs != nullptr);
 
+	if (fs_charset.empty())
+		return std::string(path_fs);
+
 	GIConv conv = g_iconv_open("utf-8", fs_charset.c_str());
 	if (conv == reinterpret_cast<GIConv>(-1))
 		return std::string();
@@ -108,6 +111,9 @@ PathFromUTF8(const char *path_utf8)
 {
 	assert(path_utf8 != nullptr);
 
+	if (fs_charset.empty())
+		return g_strdup(path_utf8);
+
 	return g_convert(path_utf8, -1,
 			 fs_charset.c_str(), "utf-8",
 			 nullptr, nullptr, nullptr);
diff --git a/src/fs/Config.cxx b/src/fs/Config.cxx
index e08e9f0bf..3d7e99b4a 100644
--- a/src/fs/Config.cxx
+++ b/src/fs/Config.cxx
@@ -60,11 +60,6 @@ ConfigureFS()
 #endif
 	}
 
-	if (charset) {
+	if (charset != nullptr)
 		SetFSCharset(charset);
-	} else {
-		LogDebug(path_domain,
-			 "setting filesystem charset to ISO-8859-1");
-		SetFSCharset("ISO-8859-1");
-	}
 }