Music library

This section covers topics and guides on playing audio, the music library, library management, ripping and scanning music in, playing music content off of the internet, and more. The Music Library allows the organization of your music collection by information stored in your music file ID tag, like title, artist, album, genre and popularity.


 * Support for a countless number of formats and codecs.
 * A full-featured customizable music library that makes it easy to organize, find and listen to your favorite music
 * Support for Music Videos
 * Built in ability to stream media from other computers
 * Full support for Playlists, including Smart playlists
 * Jaw-dropping Visualizations that add the visual element to your music experience
 * Integrated CD Ripping

Side bar
The library organizes your music into many categories, allowing you to find a specific song using one of many possible criteria. Below you can see root menu showing the different sections.

File mode
File mode is the most basic way of browing your music. In file mode, you browse through your sources folder by folder, in the exact same way they are stored. What you see in file mode is the same as you would see if you were to browse the folders on your computer.

Library mode
The library mode is much more advanced and has many more features than the Files View. It has features like song, album and artist info to name a few. In order to utilize library mode, you first need to scan your music into the Music library using the.

Searching your Library
The search button is available on the left side of the 'Music' window, and is also available in the root listing of your music library. Select it to begin your search. A keyboard will pop-up where you may enter search terms (SMS style with the remote, or just using the virtual keyboard). As you enter more letters, the search will be performed in the background, and results displayed in the search node of the music library. Previous searches are saved, so if you return to the search node later on, it will have the results of your previous search. Artists and Albums are shown on top, followed by matching songs. If the search string you enter is less than 3 characters, XBMC will just search in the first word of each artist/album/song. Otherwise it will do a full word search. NOTE: In order to search within words as well as just for words beginning with your search string, place a % sign in front of the match.

Party Mode
The Party Mode option allows you to randomly play music from your entire music or music video collection based on criteria specified in PartyMode.xsp. Simply build a Smart Playlist and save it as partymode.xsp in The UserData Folder.

Selecting 'Party Mode' from the sidebar will play ALL valid media scanned into your libraries in a random order that meet the conditions specified in the Smart Playlist.

Frodo
The Party Mode option allows you to randomly play music from your entire music or music video collection based on criteria specified in PartyMode.xsp. Simply edited the "Party mode playlist" item in the Playlist menu. Bring up the context menu and select "Play in party mode". You can do this for any valid playlist.

Context Menu
In the default configuration you pop up the Context Menu using the 'C' key on your keyboard. If you are navigating XBMC using a remote control, the default button is, for some releases, the 'title' button. If your remote control has no 'title' button then you may need to remap the ContextMenu action to another button.

File mode
The context menu allows you to interact with the individual media items. The following options are available whilst in File Mode, selecting an album: Other possible menu items
 * Search
 * Allows you to search for specific media

Library mode
You perform actions on your music files using the Context Menu. In Library Mode selecting an album, the following options are available:

Music Library Settings and Maintenance
The main Music Library settings can be accessed from the Library tab in Music Settings. Those can be accessed either from the Settings menu from the home screen, or via the context menu as seen above.

advancedsettings.xml
Some settings can only be altered through the advancedsettings.xml file, such as settings affecting the "All" database nodes and they way tags are displayed.

Clean Music Library
Cleaning up the Music Library (removing invalid entries and compressing)can be done via the User Interface Settings, in the Music Settings with the Clean Library option.