Managing Audio Files in Windows 8

Music Library Bringing all your songs under one roof can be helpful when they are distributed over several partitions or hard disks. The Music library can become that “roof” for your music collection. Music library maintains links to all the folders that you add to it. Thus, the space used on the drive is essentially the same as earlier; but the advantage is that now you can access all your audio files from a single place. Open the library from Windows Explorer’s tree pane. It is located under “Libraries”. The library thus opened displays the contents of all the folders included in it. In order to manage the library folders, go to Manage * Manage Library. This opens a small window that lists all the folders contained in the library. You can add or remove the library folders from here. Windows provides Music Tools, through which you can

• Play selected song directly from the library.
• Choose a device through which to play the songs.
• Add the selected songs to a playlist.

Music App

Now that you have collected your music, you need something to play it. Music app is a perfect choice for that, as it uses Music Library to collect the songs from hard disk. However, the app doesn’t stop at playing locally stored music. It is a one-stop shop to purchase songs/albums from Marketplace. To launch the app, click on Music tile in the Start Screen. The app will automatically read the Music Library. Music app has two regions.

• My Music Region lists the content read from the Music Library, as well as the songs/albums purchased from the Marketplace. Once you buy an album in the Marketplace, it is listed in the My Music section.

• Marketplace Region – This includes the “New Releases” and “Popular” sections of Music app. Both these sections list songs from the Marketplace. You can listen to the preview of songs in the app. Also, you can buy a song/album through the app.

One-stop Search

Music app implements Search Charm intelligently; your search term yields results from the local Music Library as well as the Marketplace. After watching Public Enemies, I became a fan of Otis Taylor’s song Ten Million Slaves. For this example, I searched for the song to see if I get any results from Marketplace. I did.

Share Your Favorites

You can share albums from Marketplace to your friends using the Share Charm of Music app. A link to the Marketplace’s album is shared by the app. I chose Mail app from the list of Share Charm’s apps. The mail contains a link to the album in Marketplace. An interested user can visit the Marketplace and may be buy it. Currently, Share Charm is useful only to the Marketplace songs. However, as the app is being improved consistently by Microsoft, we can hope to see this functionality for locally stored songs, too.  ]]>