Adding music to the library

Music library

Adding music to the library

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Kodi adds music to the library by scanning music files to extract identifying information from tags in the files. In order to be able to include information on your music collection in the music library, Kodi needs your music to be tagged. When your collection is scanned, Kodi stores all the tagging information (artist, album, year, genre, etc) in the database which allows you to efficiently search and manage your music collection.

Your audio files MUST have a valid ID tag for them to work properly in the Kodi music library. There are third party applications available for download from the internet that allow you to add and manage ID tags in your music files.

First Time Music Library Setup

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  Step 1: On the Home menu select Music from the menu itmes, then select Enter files section

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  Step 2: In the Music File Browser select Add music.

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  Step 3: In the Add music source window select Browse. You can also manually add your source by selecting the box with <None> then typing in your path. If you chose to do it this way skip to Step 5

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  Step 4: In the Browse for new share window, navigate to where your music is stored, select the folder and then select OK.

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  Step 5: You will now be taken back to the Add music source window where under Enter a name for this media source you can name your media source. If you don't enter a name then, by default, Kodi will use the folder name as the name for your source. You can then select OK.

• Estuary music scan source.png

  Step 6: You will now be asked if you wish to add your media source to the library. If you do, then select Yes, if you do not, then select No. By selecting No you will only have the option of accessing your media though the Music file browser.

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  Step 7: If you selected Yes Kodi will begin scanning your source to the library.

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  Step 8: Once your library is scanned you will be able to see & access Recently added albums, Random albums, Random Artist & Unplayed albums on the Home menu.

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  You will also be able to view your entire music library by selecting Music from the Home menu, then selecting the appropriate category. Or from the Home menu, navigate to Categories at the top of the Music menu item and then selecting the category you wish to view. Example: Category → Albums.

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  Example: Category → Artist.

Adding Additional Music Sources

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  To add additional sources to your library, from the Home menu select Music. Then navigate to the to the top of the page and under Categories select Files. Then follow the directions from Step 2 in First Time Music Library Setup

Sources for Music

Main page: Media sources

Kodi gives you the ability to listen to music from a variety of sources, click here for more information and examples of Types of Media Sources (link).
Some examples of sources that allow you to easily access all your digital music collection:

• On your computer or a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device/system, which supports SMB file sharing
• Stored directly on the hard drive
• On CDs/DVDs
• Streamed from the Internet

For information on how to configure remote file shares, please click here (link)

Ripping CDs

Main page: Ripping CDs

Kodi has integrated Audio-CD (CDDA) ripping functionality. In order to use this feature, first configure the CD ripping settings (to set which encoder quality to use and where to store the files). To Rip the entire CD, highlight the Audio CD from the My Music root listing and choose Rip Audio CD from the context menu. To rip a single track, enter the Audio CD, highlight the desired track, and choose Rip Audio Track from the context menu.

MusicBrainz integration

Starting in v13 "Gotham", Kodi has "MusicBrainzID" integration. This allows your music metadata to be updated automatically when that data is updated on the MusicBrainz database if the music has MusicBrainz ID tags.

Applications to edit music Tags

Your audio files MUST have correct audio tags to use the Music Library mode. Without tags you're limited to the file view in Kodi. There are several tools out there that will allow you to manipulate music ID tags.

• Supplemental tools/Linux#Music tools
• Supplemental tools/Mac OS X#Music tools
• Supplemental tools/Windows#Music tools

Technical Explanation: File tags

Skip this section if you're not interested a technical explanation of this subject. You don't need this information to use what is explained in the previous section.

For many categories, such as genres and artists, Kodi supports multiple values in the one field. By default it uses the character sequence " / " to divide the entry into multiple values. This divider may be changed via advancedsettings.xml.

Artist Tags - Resolving Compilations and Multiple Artists

Kodi reads the Album Artist tag in ID3, Ogg, APE and MP4 tags and uses it if available to assign an artist to the album (independently of the track's artist information). This is the "Album Artist" tag (in ID3 this is represented by the "TPE2" tag; in vorbiscomment (ogg) files "ALBUMARTIST", "ALBUM ARTIST" and "ENSEMBLE" are all supported). Multiple artists for either a track or album artist can be specified in "Artist1 / Artist2 / Artist3" format.

If no Album Artist tag exists, Kodi will use the first (primary) artist from the tracks as the Album Artist. Essentially we do a string comparison of all the track artists, and assign the common artists as the Album artist. This is generally the TPE1 tag in ID3.

As many users don't yet use the Album Artist tag, Kodi has an additional filter system for identifying compilation albums, where each track normally has a different artist. As Kodi scans a folder, it does the following:

1. Identifies albums based on Album name alone in the folder and groups the songs that have the same Album name together as an album.
2. Runs through each album's assigned songs. If there is 2 or more tracks with the same Track number, the group of songs must come from 2 or more albums, so the Album name is ruled out as a possible compilation.
3. If any of the songs assigned to the Album name have an Album Artist tag, then Kodi assumes the user knows what they're doing, and this album is also ruled out from being a compilation.
4. If two or more songs assigned to the Album name then have different primary artists, then the Album name is considered to be a group of songs from a compilation, and the Various Artists" tag is assigned as the album artist.
5. Otherwise, if all the songs have the same primary artist but don't have the same full artist list (eg a song or two has an additional artist) then the album is assigned the primary artist as it's Album Artist, and we assume the additional artists are guest artists.

Ratings in ID3 tags

Ratings in ID3 tags are read via the POPM field, and (if this doesn't exist) in a custom (TXXX) field named "RATING". For the RATING field, we accept 1-5 as valid ratings. For the POPM field things are more complicated, as there is no established standard in place. We currently most closely respect what Mediamonkey does, and also have some support for what Windows Media Player 11 does. The POPM tag takes a value from 0..255, with 0 meaning no rating, 1 the worst, and 255 the best. We currently map these as follows:

POPM value	Star rating
0
1	* This is a special case for Windows Media Player
2-8
9-49	*
50-113	**
114-167	***
168-218	****
219-255	*****

Artwork

See also: Artwork

The use of artwork will transform your mundane media player into a showpiece to be proud of, especially when teamed up with your favourite skin. Kodi will allow you to display Posters, Fanart, Album Covers, Actor and Artist images to name a few. Install the Picture Slideshow add-on, and you will have a constant display of video or music fanart to brighten your entertainment room.

NFO files

Main page: NFO files

NFO files are used to populate the music and video library using locally stored information. They are helpful if data for your particular title does not exist, such as for home movies and sporting events. A Parsing and Combination NFO file can be used to control the search behaviour of scrapers when problematic and ambiguous titles prevent your preferred title from being scraped.

Cue sheets

Main page: Cue sheets

Cue Sheets are used to provide index and playlist information for a large audio file. They are generally used in conjunction with either extracting from, or burning to, Music AudioCD. Cue sheets have the file extension ".cue", and are simple plain text files.

See also audio streams

See also: Internet_video_and_audio_streams