Customize Music
Music can be customized in an almost infinite variety of ways depending on your needs or preferences.  

• Configuration > Music
  You may also change some directly within MediaPortal:
• Music Settings
  Related Plugins
• LastFMScrobbler 
• Lyrics
• Global Search
• Smart Playlists
• Fanart Handler
   

Overview

Browse all your artists, albums, tracks, CD:s, DVD:s or playlists, with album art and artist images, detailed artist biographies and their album track listings. Select from several display layouts or views and sort the results. Add artists, albums or tracks to a playlist, or to your favorites list.

Browse by Shares (Explorer Style)

Now that you have organized your music, either by folders and files, or by scanning them into the database, you can browse your music to your heart's delight. 

If you organize your music by folders and files, you must use the Shares view:

You can press  (or Show Info button on your remote - usually the yellow button) on a selected artist, album or track to display the artist or album information or to download the information from AllMusic and automatically add the artist or album to the music database.

Browse by Views

If you tag your music and scan it into your music database, then you can use a variety of views and layouts:

If you select an artist, you can display all the albums or single tracks you have for that artist. If you select an album, you can display all the tracks and press to play the track.

Or, at any time you can press the Play button on your remote, or to add the artist, album or track to your playlist. You may even configure MediaPortal to automatically navigate to the Now Playing window, playlist or fullscreen when you press play.

Use the Menu Options to choose the display layout, views, sort options, to search music, play a CD/DVD or to navigate to playlists.

Menu Options

Menu

Access the Music Menu by pressing  (in most skins), if in Cover Flow view, or hovering the mouse at the left edge of your screen. 

Layout:

Clicking this button lets you choose from the various layouts or display modes for music:

• List
• Icons
• Big Icons
• Filmstrip
• Big Icons List
• Cover flow

View by:

Provides the option to change View:

1. Shares
2. Album Artists
3. Album Artists (Index)
4. Genres
5. Artist Tracks
6. Albums
7. Albums by Age
8. Years
9. Recently Added
10. Rating
11. Songs
12. Favourites
13. Top 100

Note: All views other than Shares View are Database Views which require that your music files have been added to the music database. If you use Artist or Album lookup from Shares View, and the artist or album is found, the file will automatically be added to the database and the artist or album will appear in these views. You may also add files to the music database using the Scan option on the Context Menu (see below) in Shares view.

Sort by:

This allows you to change the order of the files.

1. Name
2. Artist
3. Album
4. Track
5. Title
6. File
7. Year
8. Rating
9. Time
10. Size
11. Date
12. Disc#
13. Composer
14. Times Played

You may also define additional sort options and link them to specific views in Configuration > Music

Playlist

Current Playlist

If you have added items to a playlist or previously selected a playlist, this button will navigate to the current playlist. You may also use to easily switch between your current playlist and Music.

Playlists

This option will display any playlists you have saved, either in MediaPortal or external playlists in

.m3u

,

.pls

or

.b4u

format. To get your external playlists to appear, just add your playlists folder in Configuration > Music on the Playlist settings tab.

Settings

Music

Takes you to the Settings > Music screen for configuring music settings.

Jump to

Now Playing

This button will take you to the Now Playing window, which is a 'full screen' display when music is playing. You may also use to jump to the Now Playing screen.

AutoDJ

While this does not require a Last.FM account, scrobbling tracks will feed back and end up in better matches for everyone. This will simply look for similar tracks in your music database (won't work unless you have scanned tracks into the database):

• Will attempt to keep playing music forever 
• Tracks must be scanned into the music database for this to work

See Configuration Tools > MediaPortal Configuration > Plugins > LastFMScrobbler for configuration of the AutoDJ plugin.

Search

You must install the Global Search plugin, for this option to display. MediaPortal will automatically use this plugin when you select Search.

Lyrics

Opens the MyLyrics plugin if installed.

Context Menu Options

Right click an item, press , or the Info/More key on a remote to display the Context Menu. The context menu options will vary depending on the current view.

Database views 

• Play now - This is the same as pressing play - stops any currently playing track, clears the current playlist,  and plays the selected item  
• Queue item - adds the item to the playlist queue - plays the selected item after the current track has finished (if the selected item is an artist or album, all tracks will be queued
• Show album/artist info - downloads information and artist or album images from Last.fm and automatically adds the artist/album to the MediaPortal database. 
• Show Playlist - displays the current playlist

When a song or track in any Database view the following context menu options will also be available:

• Queue all items - adds all the tracks in the current list to the playlist
• Add to Favourties - adds the track to your list of Favourties which can be displayed using the Favourites view
• Rating - allows you to assign your own rating to a track

Shares View

• Play now - This is the same as pressing play - stops any currently playing track, clears the current playlist,  and plays the selected item  
• Queue item - adds the item to the playlist queue - plays the selected item after the current track has finished
• Show album/artist info - downloads information and artist or album images from Last.fm and automatically adds the artist/album to the MediaPortal database. 
• Find Cover art  -  looks up album cover art from ? and adds it to ?
• Scan - rescans  your Music Folders
• File Menu
  When File Menu is enabled:
  1. Select Shares View in Pictures, Videos or Music
  2. Navigate to the folder where you wish to add a new folder or select the folder or file you wish to rename or delete
  3. Press the Info/More button on your remote, F9 on your keyboard, or right click with a mouse for the context menu
  4. Select File Menu to display the dialog window:
     
  5. Choose Rename, Delete or New Folder
  6. To Rename or add a New Folder, enter the name you wish in the Virtual Keyboard

     Copy or Move a folder or file

     When File Menu is enabled:
  7. Select Shares View in Pictures, Videos or Music
  8. Navigate to the folder where you wish to copy or move the file or folder
  9. Press the Info/More button on your remote, F9 on your keyboard, or right click with a mouse for the context menu
  10. Select File Menu to display the dialog window as above
  11. Select Set as destination
  12. Now navigate to the file or folder you wish to move
  13. Select File Menu again from the context menu - once you have set a destination folder, you have new options:
      
  14. Select Copy or Move 

Changelog