Chapter 12. Playing music

Chapter 12. Playing music

In this section:

Navigating the Music app
Listening to music
Searching for music
Creating a playlist in the Music app
Listening to radio
Finding music to purchase by browsing
Finding music to purchase by searching
Buying music
Configuring music in the cloud
Playing music with Windows Media Player
Sorting and viewing music
Creating playlists
Ripping music you own
Burning music to a CD

In Windows 8.1, you have two choices for playing and organizing your music: the Music app and Windows Media Player. Both allow you to browse your music collection, play music, and create playlists. When you want to do these things, you can use the app that you feel most comfortable with.

Beyond these similarities, the two apps differ greatly. They do not offer access to all of the same features. For example, if you want to buy music online or listen to Internet radio stations, you need to use the Music app. If you want to burn and rip music CDs, you’ll need to use Windows Media Player. If it sounds complicated, don’t worry; it isn’t. Generally, you’ll use the Music app to listen to and purchase music, and you’ll use Windows Media Player to manage that music, such as when you burn music CDs, view other types of media (videos and pictures), or sync music to a portable music player.

Navigating the Music app

The Music app, available from the Start screen, offers access to your personal, local, music collection, to Internet radio stations, and to the Xbox Music store. You can configure the app to also include music stored on external drives and networked computers that share media. This app, like others you might have used, also offers access to related music account settings (including your account name, payment information, and any Xbox memberships you might have) and preferences (which include how you want to manage music in the cloud, downloaded music, and handle media information).

Navigate the Music app

See Also

To work through this section, you’ll need to have music on your computer or available from the cloud. If you don’t have either, consider skipping to the applicable sections here that show you how to acquire music—specifically, Buying Music and Ripping Music You Own.

Try This

You can search directly from the Start screen for music tracks. Just begin typing the name of a song, artist, or album, and press Enter on the keyboard. The results will include the music that matches your search that’s available from the Music app.

Listening to music

The Music app is perfect for listening to music. It’s easy to sort music by albums, artists, and songs, and by what’s stored on your personal PC or music stored in the cloud. You can even sort music by the date it was added, by genre, artist, and other criteria. After a track is playing, controls are available for managing playback.

Play music

Tip

Some songs have icons beside them. A cloud icon means the song is available in the cloud and you can also play it when your device is offline. A Wi-Fi icon means that you can stream the song from the cloud, and you can play it on your device. (If you see a cloud with a rotating arrow on it, the song is syncing to the cloud.) You might see a down arrow with “downloading” showing, meaning the song is currently being downloaded. No icon means that the song is available on your computer only. An exclamation point means there’s a problem with the music file or that you downloaded music with a music pass and then canceled your subscription.

Creating a playlist in the Music app

A playlist contains songs that you group together yourself, often for a purpose. You might create a playlist for exercising, another for relaxing, and another to listen to while having dinner.

Creating a playlist in the Music app

Try This

If you’ve already created playlists in Windows Media Player, iTunes, or using some other method, you can import those playlists so that you can access them from the Music app. To do this, click Import Playlists, click Import Playlists again, and wait while the Music app updates. (A playlist is just a list of songs; no files are moved to create or import a playlist.)

Try This

Click your new playlist in the Music app. Click any song, and click Play to start playback. Playback will continue until the playlist ends. To have the playlist to start over at the first song after it reaches the end, from the Music toolbar (right-click if you don’t see it), click the ellipses and move the setting for Repeat from Off to On.

Listening to radio

You can play Internet radio from the Music app, provided that you are online. The Music app chooses the station based on an artist name that you input.

Play music

With the Music app open, click Radio.
Click Start A Station.
Type the name of an artist you like.
Make a selection from the results under Radio.
Use the controls at the bottom of the screen to control playback.

Tip

Click the album art thumbnail available to the left of the playback controls to access a different view that includes album art and a song list. Use the slider (called a scrub bar) that is just to the right of the thumbnail to move through the song quickly.

Tip

Radio stations you create and configure will be available when you click Radio next time. You can then simply double-click the item to play that station; you don’t have to start a new station each time.

Finding music to purchase by searching

If you know what you want to purchase, you can search for the album or track by name. This is the best way to search if the item you want isn’t something brand new or something that has recently hit the top of the charts.

Find music to purchase by searching

In the Music app, start typing the name of the artist, album, or song in the Search pane. Notice that it appears in the Search window as you type.
Verify that Full Catalog is selected. Click any result.
Continue to click and browse as necessary to locate the album or track to purchase.
If you want to preview the music, click Play.

Tip

If you know the name of the song or album you want to buy, you might also want to try typing it at the Windows 8.1 Start screen and pressing Enter on the keyboard. Look through the results as applicable, and click an entry. The result is that you still end up in the Music app, at the Xbox Music Store, so if you’re already in the Music app, using the app’s Search window is probably more efficient.

Buying music

If you don’t have a subscription for a music pass, you’ll have to purchase music. To purchase a song or album, you must have a valid form of payment on file with the Xbox Music store. This payment is associated with your Microsoft account and can be configured in many ways. One way is to access the Settings charm while in the Music app and click Account. You can click Manage Payment Options to get started. However, if you don’t have any information on file and want to buy music, simply follow the instructions here and enter information when prompted. These steps assume that you already have payment information on file.

Buy a selection

In the Music app, locate a song to buy.
Click the Buy button.
If prompted, enter your Microsoft account password, and click OK.
Click Confirm.

Try This

You can enter payment information at www.microsoftstore.com. Just log in with your Microsoft account there and click Payment. What you enter there will be associated with your account and will be a valid form of payment at the Xbox Music store, the Xbox Video store, the App store, and any other related entity.

Configuring music in the cloud

When you purchase songs from the Xbox Music store, those songs are stored in the cloud. This means you can access those songs from each Xbox Music device you sign in to. You can also enable Music Match. Music matching lets you listen to the music stored on your PC on other Windows 8-based devices. Any device with Xbox Music is connected to the cloud for free. You configure these options from the Settings charm while in the Music app.

Configure music in the cloud

With the Music app open, use the Windows key+C to access the Settings charm. Click it.
Click Preferences.
Read what is available here regarding your monthly streaming limit (unless you have an Xbox music pass).
Verify that the first entry under Music In The Cloud is set to On.
To enable music matching, move the slider under Automatically add matched songs on this PC to my music in the cloud from Off to On.

Tip

If you aren’t seeing all of the songs in the Music app that you know are saved to your computer, from the Preferences pane shown in step 2, click Choose Where We Look For Music On This PC. Then, click the + sign to navigate to the folder where music is stored. You can add external drives and networked devices here too.

Try This

From Preferences (in step 2), scroll down to locate two additional sections: Downloads and Media Info. Read the description of these and configure as desired.

Playing music with Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player offers various ways to organize, access, and view all kinds of media, including music, videos, pictures, recorded TV, playlists, and others, such as audiobooks. However, because this section is about music, music will be the focus here. You can also easily access shared media from other computers on your local network that have been configured to share. That media appears under Other Libraries, and can be accessed and played as if it were on the computer you’re sitting in front of. Windows Media Player is a desktop app.

Play music

On the Start screen, type Windows Media Player.
In the search results, click Windows Media Player.
To display your music, click Music.
To play a selection, double-click it.
To go to the next selection, click the Next button.
To go to the previous selection, click the Previous button.
To play songs in a random way, click the Shuffle button.
To repeat a selection while it’s playing, click the Turn Repeat On button.
To adjust the volume control, click and drag it.
To pause playback, click the Pause button.

Tip

The first time you use Windows Media Player you’ll be prompted about how to configure settings. Just accept the recommended settings. You can change them later if you want to.

Try This

In the Navigation pane (the pane on the left side of the Windows Media Player interface), under Music, click Artist, Album, and Genre to sort your music in different ways.

Sorting and viewing music

In Windows Media Player, you can sort items in your music library and playlists by various criteria, such as Title, Artist, Composer, or Length. You can also view music selections by categories such as Artist, Album, and Genre.

Sort and view music

With Windows Media Player and the Music library open, click Organize.
Click Sort By.
Click a criterion to sort by.
Click the arrow to the left of Search.
Click Icon.
Repeat step 4 and click Tile.
Repeat step 4 and click Details.

Tip

If you aren’t seeing all of the music you expect to see in Windows Media Player, click Organize, click Manage Libraries, and click Music. Click Add to tell Windows Media Player where the missing media is stored (perhaps on an external drive or a networked computer).

Tip

Note the tabs under the Search window. You will likely see Album, Album Artist, Genre, Release Year, and so on. Click any tab name to sort the items shown by this criteria.

Creating playlists

You can create playlists that contain songs you hand pick and position them in the order you prefer. You can create playlists for all kinds of activities, including exercising, sleeping, eating, and entertaining. Playlists are all about customizing your music experience, and they’re easy to create.

Create a playlist

With Windows Media Player open, click Create Playlist.
Enter a name for the playlist.
To save the name, click outside the playlist name field.
Click Music (or other option) to search for a song.
Browse to a song to add, and right-click it.
Click Add To.
Click the playlist name to which to add the selection.
To add additional selections to the playlist, repeat steps 5 through 7.

Try This

After you’ve created a playlist, click it in the left pane to show it, and then double-click any song in the list to start playing it. Right-click the playlist, and click Add to, and then click Burn list to burn the playlist to an audio CD. Right-click the playlist, and click Sync list to sync the playlist to a connected, portable music player.

Tip

You can select multiple, noncontiguous music tracks by holding down the Ctrl key when making selections. Use the Shift key to select contiguous tracks. (Click the first and last in a list.)

Ripping music you own

If you own music CDs, you can legally copy the songs to your computer (and then share them with other computers on your network or burn them to CDs). This process is called ripping. You can then configure the Music app to use music matching (detailed earlier in this section) so that you can access those songs from other Windows 8-based devices.

Rip music you own

With Windows Media Player open, insert a music CD into the CD drive.
Deselect any songs that you do not want to copy.
Click Rip CD.

Try This

With Windows Media Player open, connect a portable music player. Click the Sync tab. Follow the directions to add songs to the Sync pane to copy to the player.

Tip

Click Rip Settings to change the default settings for the ripping process. You can change the audio quality and the format, among other things. One thing you might want to change is Format, especially if you want to sync those songs back to an older MP3 player that doesn’t support newer file formats.