Absolute Beginner's Guide to Microsoft Windows® XP Media Center®

Sorting Your Collection

One of the most powerful features of Media Center’s My Music interface is the capa-

bility to manage a large music collection using a wide variety of sorting and search

techniques. From the My Music main menu, you can automatically sort your music

collection by the following criteria:

■ Album name

■ Artist name

■ Playlist name

■ Song title

■ Musical genre

■ Keyword

Simply choose your sorting preference from the default Recent Music page (see

Figure 14.3), which displays the audio you have most recently listened to.

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ABSOLUTE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER

FIGURE 14.3

The Recent Music

display in My

Music shows var-

ious items reflect-

ing your most

recent musical

selections.

To sort by album, artist, playlist, song or genre, choose the corresponding tab on the

left of the My Music screen. Each choice will reveal additional options for viewing

and filtering the contents of your digital music collection.

Albums

Choosing the Album tab provides a list of the albums stored on you Media Center

PC (see Figure 14.4). You can choose from the following options:

■ Play—This immediately begins playback of the currently listed items.

Playback will occur in the order shown onscreen. When you select Play, the

screen will change to the Now Playing display (see Figure 14.2).

■ Shuffle—This begins playback of the listed items in random order. The Now

Playing screen will be displayed.

■ View by List—This is the default view for the Albums screen.

■ View by Cover—Shows your album collection using thumbnails of the

album cover art (see Figure 14.5) that Music Center was able to retrieve from

metadata stored online.

CHAPTER 14 PLAYBACK TIME: SORTING, VIEWING,

AND CONTROLLING YOUR MUSIC

197

FIGURE 14.4

The dot that

appears on the

View by List tab

indicates that

My Music is dis-

playing a list of

all your albums.

Artists

Choosing Artists will display the initial Artists screen (see Figure 14.6), listing every

artist on every track of every album in your collection—or at least all of those that

were identified in Media Center’s online metadata search.

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ABSOLUTE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER

FIGURE 14.5

When My Music

is unable to

locate an album

cover graphic, it

displays a

generic graphic

such as the pic-

ture of a stereo

speaker shown

here.

FIGURE 14.6

The Artists

screen lists

recording artists

in alphabetical

order based on

the first name,

or the first word

in the name of a

music group.

If you select the View All tab from the Artists display page, My Music will show the

View by List screen (see Figure 14.7). This screen also permits you to choose View by

Cover, which will display a different view of Album cover thumbnails (see Figure 14.8).

CHAPTER 14 PLAYBACK TIME: SORTING, VIEWING,

AND CONTROLLING YOUR MUSIC

199

FIGURE 14.7

The View by List

screen shows all

your albums,

sorted by the

artists’ names.

FIGURE 14.8

The View by

Cover screen

shows thumb-

nails of all your

album covers,

but this time

they are sorted

in alphabetical

order according

to the artists’

names.