diff --git a/test/rsrc/convert_stub.py b/test/rsrc/convert_stub.py
index 1c4b7200c..0f4a20f30 100755
--- a/test/rsrc/convert_stub.py
+++ b/test/rsrc/convert_stub.py
@@ -6,9 +6,16 @@ a specified text tag.
 """
 
 from __future__ import division, absolute_import, print_function
+from os.path import dirname, abspath
+import six
 import sys
 import platform
 
+beets_src = dirname(dirname(dirname(abspath(__file__))))
+sys.path.insert(0, beets_src)
+
+from beets.util import arg_encoding  # noqa: E402
+
 
 def convert(in_file, out_file, tag):
     """Copy `in_file` to `out_file` and append the string `tag`.
@@ -20,8 +27,11 @@ def convert(in_file, out_file, tag):
     # On Windows, use Unicode paths. (The test harness gives them to us
     # as UTF-8 bytes.)
     if platform.system() == 'Windows':
-        in_file = in_file.decode('utf8')
-        out_file = out_file.decode('utf8')
+        if not six.PY2:
+            in_file = in_file.encode(arg_encoding())
+            out_file = out_file.encode(arg_encoding())
+        in_file = in_file.decode('utf-8')
+        out_file = out_file.decode('utf-8')
 
     with open(out_file, 'wb') as out_f:
         with open(in_file, 'rb') as in_f: