Music Navigation and Control

There are two different ways to view your media in Music: The Files View and The Library View. Choose either option to learn more about them.

Navigating in Music

When you first open Music, the interface will look like the image on the right. Dominating the screen on the right-hand side is where your media is displayed. In this case, it is displaying all of the Media Sources available to Music. To the left hand side, you have the following controls View You can the toggle between the different display options, amongst others; List, Icons and Big Icons. Sort By You can choose what criteria to sort your media by. Note the arrow to the right which controls whether the items are sorted in ascending or descending order. Library Mode This control allows you to switch between Library Mode and File View. (used to be called Switch View) Playing music is as simple as navigating through your sources and selecting a song.

Controls During Playback

Controls during playback can be divided into two categories, in the GUI and during Visualizations. While in the GUI you are able to browse all of XBMC and even look at pictures while playing music. If we look at the different controlling methods XBMC offers, gaming controller playback options while in the GUI are limited. A remote, such as the orignal XBOX DVD-Remote has conventional playback controls that can be used during music playback in the GUI as well as during Visualizations. During GUI playback you can call up the Mini Control at any time if you are using a control method that does not offer standard playback controls.

Original XBOX Controller

GUI Playback Options

Once the desired song, album or playlist is highlighted, start playback by pressing the button. Pressing the White button (Info on the remote) will toggle song information and art on/off. The Start button will stop the music. The button queues the selected item and the Black button will bring up the Now Playing window.
The button toggles visualizations on/off. (They will also come on after a certain time if the controls are not touched).
During GUI playback you can call up the Mini Control at any time by pressing the Start button.

During Visualizations

Pressing the button will pause/resume music while the triggers can be used to fast forward or rewind during playback. The left and right D-Pad will skip backwards and forward. Pressing will stop playback.

The Start button (Menu on the remote) can be used to bring up the OSD (On Screen Display) from where you can alter the visualization settings and bring up the Now Playing window.

The Context Menu

The Context Menu allows you to interact with the individual media items. The following options are available whilst in File Mode, selecting an album:

Queue Item Adds the item to the Now Playing playlist Play Plays the selected file. Add to Favourites Adds the item to your Favourites menu. Album Information Displays information about the item from allmusic.com. You can also highlight the item and press the Info button on the remote. Scan Item to Library Scans the item into the the Music Library. Performing this on a folder will cause every item in the folder to be scanned. Switch Media Allows you to switch to playback of other types of media (e.g. video files). Go to Root Takes you to the "Music" root folder. Now Playing... Takes you to the Now Playing screen that shows what is currently playing and what the next queued files are. Settings Opens the Settings/Music menu.

Other possible menu items

Search

Allows you to search for specific media

Delete

Deletes the item. Must be enabled in Appearance Settings.

Rename

Renames the item. Must be enabled in Appearance Settings.

The On Screen Display (OSD)

There are two different onscreen displays available in Music, learn more about them here.