Adding music to the library

Steps to create your Music Library
1. Guide Main Page
2. Music Settings
3. Music File Tagging
4. Scanning Music Into Library
5. Artist information folder
6. Scraping Additional Music data
7. Update Music Library
8. NFO Files 8.1 Music NFO Files
9. Artwork 9.1 Music Artwork
10. Import-export library 10.1 Music Import-Export
11. Backup & Recover

Music library

Adding music to the library

Introduction

This page details the following:

• Adding and removing Sources
• Scan (import) your music collection into the Music Library.
• Troubleshooting common problems
• Describes the network protocols accepted for remote music sources

If you are a new user of Kodi, or you have little experience setting up the Music section, then it is important that you followed Steps 2 (Music Settings) & 3 (Music File Tagging) of the guide.

A reminder of the following:

• Ensure the setting Fetch additional information during updates is disabled
• Ensure you have taken care to correctly tag your music. If you haven't... then you are about to find out what happens.

Adding Music to Library

• Populating the music library is a two step process.
  • The first step reads the tags embedded in the music files. This is referred to as scanning. If there is any embedded artwork, this will also be scanned and cached.
  • The second optional step fetches additional artwork, artist and album information. This information and artwork can be downloaded from either online sources or fetched from local nfo files. This is referred to as scraping and is covered in detail in the next step of the guide.

Initial Set Source & Scan

This process achieves the following:

• Sets your music source(s) in Kodi. Simply explained, this points Kodi to your music files (Steps 1-5)
• Allows Kodi to scan the tags in the music files and import that data into the library (Steps 6-7)
• A brief introduction to navigating the Music Library (Steps 8-9)

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  Step 1: On the Home menu highlight Music from the menu items, then move across and 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. Under Enter a name for this media source you can optionally name your media source to replace the suggested name. 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. Once finished, you can back out to the Main Menu.

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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.

At this point you should have a functioning Music Library

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 Initial Set Source & Scan

Scan to Library

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  Image 1

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  Image 2

In step 6 above, you were asked Do you want to add the media from this source to your library? If you selected NO and would now like to add the music files into the library, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to and enter Files as illustrated in Image 1
2. Highlight the source to be scanned
3. Call up the Context Menu (Image 2)
4. Select Scan item to library (Image 2)

Your music files will now be scanned and the data contained in the embedded tags will be added to the library
If you answered Yes to the question in step 6 above, there is no need to perform this step. If you do perform this step, there are no consequences and Kodi will only search for new files added since the last scan.

Note: In v18 it will be possible to request a rescan of all tags. Useful if you have modified tags.

Remove A Source

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  Image 1

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  Image 2

To remove a source, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to and enter Files as illustrated in Image 1
2. Highlight the source to be removed
3. Call up the Context Menu (Image 2)
4. Select Remove source (Image 2)
5. A confirmation prompt will display- Are you sure? Yes / No
   1. Select Yes to remove the source
   2. Select No to cancel the procedure
6. If you selected Yes you will then be asked Do you want to remove all items within this path from your library?...
   1. Yes- Will remove all songs from the library that were located in that source, and the associated Artists and Albums if they do not appear on any other source
   2. No- Will keep the library listing of all music that was in that source. Be aware that you will be unable to play any music from the removed source, even if it is still displayed in the library
7. It is recommended that you now perform a Clean Library to remove all orphaned entries from the database

Troubleshooting

Library contains random or duplicated entries This is a result of errors in tagging. Take note of the errors and correct them by following the recommended procedure in the previous step of the guide- Music Files and Tagging Once errors are corrected follow the steps detailed in Remove A Source Re-add the source using the Initial Set Source & Scan procedure detailed above

I cannot add a source on my network Seek further information in Section 5 - Network Sources, below

If you have successfully scanned your music library, then you can safely ignore the next section and proceed to Scraping Additional Music Data

Next step:

[[ |Scraping Additional Music data]]

Network Sources

Main page: Media sources

Kodi gives you the ability to listen to music from a variety of sources.

See Types of Media Sources

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

See also: Sources.xml

If you use an non-standard network protocol to stream your media from a network, or for information on how to configure remote file shares

See also: Configuring PC Shares

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Next step:

[[ |Scraping Additional Music data]]