Music library

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Revision as of 00:22, 7 October 2006 by >XLoial (→‎Remote browsing: added musicdb:// info)
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The music database is one of xbmc's strongest points. It allows organization of very large music collections by genre, title, artist, album and popularity. To get the most out of your music xbmc needs to have all this information available to it. When your collection is scanned XBMC stores all the tagging information (artist, album, year, genre) in a database which allows you to efficently search and manage your music collection. If you have never taken the time to tag your music properly, this is it. Today more pc applications and mp3 players (ipods for example) organize your music by tag information. You MUST tag your files for them to work properly in XBMC's library.


Preparing your Music to be Scanned

For information on preparing your music to be indexed see:


Scanning your music

To start scanning your music change the my music view to 'files'. Then proceed to browse to the location of your music collection and press the white button. This shows the context menu with various options. Select the entry labeled "Scan folder to database". XBMC will then proceed to scan the selected music-folder or share in the background. Once this is complete you can browse your collection by changing the view to 'Library'.
Note that scanning in this example would scan all directories listed including full albums, singles, and unsorted.

Navigating your Library

The library organizes your music into many catagories allowing you to find a specific song using one of many possible criterias. To the right you can see root menu showing the different sections.

Searching your Library

The search button is available on the left side of the 'My Music' window. Select it to begin your search.

Enter your search query as shown. Here we use the artist K-Os.

The results are organized and labeled as 'song' 'album' and 'genre'. This makes it easy to read the results.

Party Mode

Party Mode allows you to play music from your entire music collection based on criteria specified in PartyMode.xml. Simply build a Smart Playlist and save it as partymode.xml in the UserData folder.

Selecting Party Mode from the sidebar will play ALL music scanned into your Music Library that meets the conditions specified in the Smart Playlist.

Remote browsing

To be able to browse the Music Library outside the GUI, like through the webserver, you'll currently have to add a special musicdb:// bookmark, and browse it.