Overview

The Now Playing Music window is a special window designed for eye catching display while your music is playing.

Display the Now Playing Window

You can access the Now Playing window from the Music Menu, or you can configure music to automatically jump to the Now Playing window when you press Play or . See Configuration > Music > Misc Settings > Play Now Behavior

You may also use , or map a button on your remote to Jump to Music Now Playing.

What is displayed?

• Song or track title
• Track number
• Artist
• Album
• Year of the album
• Alternating display of the album cover and latest artist images (downloaded from Last.fm) and visualizations (if enabled)
• Current time elapsed
• Duration of the song
• Slide bar of the progress of the song playing. 
• Next Track

Note: Different skins may display additional details of the current or next track - See Music Now Playing Skin Properties for details.

VU Meter

You can choose to display either an Analog or a LED VU (Volume Unit) Meter on the Now Playing screen, but only when using the default BASS player. These are very similar to the VU Meters, or volume indicators, often included in audio equipment to display a signal level in Volume Units.

You can select or change your choice of VU Meter in Configuration > Music > Now Playing tab or Now Playing Settings within MediaPortal.

Best and Similar Tracks

Most skins also support display of:

• Best album tracks (from Last.fm)
• Similarly tagged songs (track suggestions)

MediaPortal actually searches the songs in your songs collection with the same tag and displays similarly tagged tracks from Last.fm.

The "best tracks" and "other tracks tagged with" (track suggestions) are only available if MediaPortal can access an active internet connection, and if you have enabled Internet lookups in Configuration > Music or Now Playing Settings within MediaPortal.

What actions can you perform?

While viewing the Now Playing window, you can perform the following actions from the Context/Actions menu:

• Add to favourites - then view all your favourite songs using the Favorites view (see Music Views)
• Add this album to playlist - will cue all the tracks you have for the current album in the playlist
• Love or Ban a Track on Last.fm (see below for details)

Love or Ban a Track

If the LastFMScrobbler plugin is enabled, you may 'Love' or 'Ban' a track on Last.fm via:

1. Keyboard shortcuts -  for Love, K for Ban
2. Context menu - or Info/More button on your remote
3. Menu buttons - if supported in the skin

When you Love or Ban a track, a dialog will pop up informing you:

Rate a Track

While music is playing in the Now Playing window, you can rate the track by pressing a number on your keypad or remote, 1 - 5, where 1 is a low rating and 5 is a top rating.