Navigating Within the Music App

In our previous tutorial, we’ve gone through the steps involved in using the buttons and options found on the Music app’s main screen but just like the other built-in apps in Windows 8.1, there are still a lot of other stuff that you need to discover and learn so you can use the app to its fullest. In this tutorial, we will go through each one of them, learn how to navigate within the app effectively and help you manage your music contents, play the ones that you want or group them into playlists so be sure to get your Windows 8.1 machine prepared and follow the steps that I’ll be showing below.

Some Navigation Buttons

On the Music app’s main screen itself, you will find a good set of navigation buttons which will help you get to different places effectively. Most of them are in the form of drop-down buttons and options and if you want to get familiar with each one of them, simply go over each of the items below.

Accessing Songs by Category

Looking for a particular song or music on a very long list would take a long time so the Music app offers some drop-down buttons containing even more options for arranging all your music contents systematically and in order so you can easily find whatever song you’re trying to search for quickly and easily without having to scroll over a very long list of music contents that you have on your computer.

1. Albums

When you click on the “Albums” button from the top center portion of the screen while your “Collection” of music is open, you will notice that the list will become shorter since the Music app would arrange them according to the albums to which each song belongs. You need to take note though that the Music app depends on the available detail of each song in grouping them into Albums so be sure that the songs saved in your computer’s hard drive have enough details about the artist, year and album. This is not a requirement but having a complete detail on each one of the songs that you have would make the job of grouping them become a lot easier.

While on the “Albums” grouping of your songs. You’ll notice two drop-down options to the right of the grouping buttons and when you click on the first one, you will see even more options for the Albums grouping which are “all music”, “available offline” and “in the cloud”. Take time to experiment on these groupings and you will notice that the list will move according to the option that you choose. Just find which one is most comfortable to you and set it as the grouping for the current songs that are saved on your computer.

Next, you can also click on the second drop-down option and you will see even more groupings for arranging the songs saved in your computer’s hard drive. If you clicked on the “Albums” button, the second drop-down option will arrange your albums further to “By date added”, “By a to z”, “By release year”, “By genre”, and “By artist”. From these options, simply click on the one that you want to set and your songs will automatically be arranged according to the grouping and sorting options you’ve selected.

2. Artists

The second button for grouping your songs is labeled “Artists”. Try clicking on it and you will be able to group all your songs according to the artists who sang it. The songs that don’t have an artist detail will just be labeled “Unknown Artist” or “Various Artist”. The good thing about the “Artists” grouping is that it is arranged in alphabetical order so you won’t find it hard searching for songs that you want to play.

Again at the right of the grouping buttons is the same drop-down option for accessing music from a specific source which are “all music”, “available offline”, and “in the cloud”. However, the second drop-down option is not available in the “Artists” grouping because the artists are arranged alphabetically.

3. Songs

The third grouping button is labeled “Songs” and when you click on it, all of the music that are saved in your computer’s hard drive will be arranged individually. The list of songs will also be longer since the arrangement and grouping will not be according to artists or album. Again, the two drop-down options will still be available and the first one still having the music sources the same as the other groupings. The second drop-down options is also available and all you need to do is click on the groupings and options that you want to use and the list of songs will automatically be arranged according to your preference.

Selecting Songs

Unlike selecting some stuff on the desktop environment which requires the use of a mouse in highlighting or a keyboard in selecting items one by one, selecting items such as songs within the Music app which is a modern-style app in Windows 8.1 is simply done by right-clicking and that alone. No other keys or gestures to do, just right click on all the music that you want to select and they will all be highlighted which means that they are already selected with the options that you can do with them available on the app bar which will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Creating Your Own Playlist

You might want to select some of your favorite songs and just play them instead of playing all your music one after another. This is possible if you create a new playlist which contains only the songs that you want to play. To do this, simply arrange your music contents according to the “Songs” grouping and once all your music appears on the contents screen, simply look for the one that you want to add to the new playlist then right-click on it. After right-clicking the song, the app bar will appear at the bottom and from here, simply click on the option that has a “+” symbol and is labeled “Add to”.

After doing so, some options will appear on a white box which says “New playlist” and “Now playing”. Since you want to create a list that only contains your favorite songs, you will need to click on the “New playlist” option and an input box will appear which is labeled “Name this playlist”. Just input your desired playlist name on the box provided and click on the “Save button”.

To access the playlist that you saved, simply go to the navigation pane at the left of the Music app screen and look for the playlist name at the bottom then click on it.

Pinning a Playlist to the Start Screen

There are still even more options available from the playlist screen and one of this is pinning it to the Start Screen. To do this trick, all you need to do is click on the button that bears a “…” symbols in it. After doing so, there will be a white box bearing two options. From here, you will need to click on the one that says “Pin to start” and it will be pinned to the Start Screen right away.

That’s all there is for this tutorial however, there are still more things to learn about the Music app but we will go through all of them in our next article which will complete our three part tutorial series talking about Windows 8.1’s Music app.