Adding music to the library

Introduction

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

This page details the following:

Adding and removing Sources
Scan (import) your music collection into the Music Library.
Troubleshooting common problems

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 and set up your Artist information folder

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
Allows Kodi to scan the tags in the music files and import that data into the library

Step 1: On the Home menu select Music from the menu items.
Step 2: In the Music File Browser select Add music. In some cases you may need to select Files to access this.
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
Step 4: In the Browse for new share window, navigate to where your music is stored, select the folder and then select OK.
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
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
Step 7: Choosing Settings in the previous step allows fetching additional info, setting up the scrapers and adding the Artist Information Folder if these have not been done yet. For the first scan, leave these disabled.
Step 8: If you selected Yes in step 6, Kodi will begin scanning your source to the library. Once finished, you can back out to the Main Menu. There is no ability to queue processes so wait until the first scan is finished before adding more sources.
Step 9: 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.

At this point you should have a functioning Music Library

Adding Additional Music Sources

To add additional sources to your library, from the Main Menu enter Music. Navigate to the to the bottom of the page and select Files. Then repeat the steps from Step 2 in the previous section.

Scan to Library

In step 6 above, you were asked Do you want to add the media from this source to your library?

Click the below link if you selected No and would now like to add the music files into the library

See: Scan Source to Library

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:

Artist Information Folder

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:

Artist Information Folder