Overview

MediaPortal offers a varitey of ways to create and use music playlists. Whenever music is played in MediaPortal the list of tracks being played is added to a playlist.

Use Your Existing Playlists

You can load existing, or externally created playlists in several formats–.m3u, .pls and .b4s. Support is built into MediaPortal.

• Set the folder location for playlists in Configuration > Music > Playlist Settings tab

   Tip: Use a different folder for video and music playlists so you can view them separately!
• In MediaPortal, you then can use the Music Menu - Playlists button to view all your saved playlists

Create Playlists

Whenever you play music within MediaPortal the tracks will be added to a playlist. You may also select playlist mode options in Configuration > Music under Playlist settings. These settings allow you to control how playlists are created as well as how items are added to playlists.

There are a few ways to add items to the playlist

1. Play button on remote or 'p' on keyboard
2. Enter / OK button 
3. Context menu (Info/More key on remote or F9 on keyboard)

Play Button

Pressing play (or 'p' on keyboard) on any item when browsing your collection will: 

1. Stop whatever is currently playing (music or not)
2. Clear the current playlist
3. Add all tracks under the selected item to the current playlist
4. Start playback

Enter / OK

When browsing a list of tracks, by default the Enter / OK button will perform the same as the play button above. However, you can configure how the Enter / OK button behaves in Configuration > Music on the Play Settings tab.  If you select 'Queue Item' it will add the track to the playlist after the current item playing.  If you select 'Add all tracks to the playlist, it will queue all the tracks currently displayed on the list.

If there is nothing playing when you press Enter / OK, or what is playing is not music, then MediaPortal will check if there are already tracks in the current playlist.  If tracks are found you will prompted as to whether you want to clear the current playlist or whether you want to keep it and add the track you want to play to the end of the existing playlist (playback will start with your selected track)

Context Menu

Brining up the context menu (via F9 key or the Info/More button) whilst an item is highlighted gives you several options:

• Play now - This is the same as pressing play - stops any currently playing track, clears the current playlist,  and plays the selected item  
• Queue item - adds the item to the playlist queue - plays the selected item after the current track has finished (if the selected item is an artist or album, all tracks will be queued
• Queue all items - displays only when a track or song is selected - adds all the tracks in the current list to the playlist

Note: When you 'queue' an item(s), it inserts the selection into the playlist after the current track, if one is playing.

Auto Create Playlists

The LastFMScrobbler plugin (v 1.6.0 or later) has an AutoDJ option to automatically add tracks to your playlist 

Display Your Current Playlist

If you have added items to a playlist, or previously selected a playlist, use the Menu > Current Playlists button,or the Context Menu > Show playlist option to  navigate to the current playlist.

You may also use F1 on a keyboard to easily switch between your current playlist and Music or program a remote key to perform this function.

Navigate to the up or down arrow buttons to move items in your playlist, or to the delete (X) button to remove them.

Menu Options

• Layout - to display playlists in either the default Playlist layout, or in Icons or Big Icons layout
• Shuffle - to shuffle the order of items in the playlist
• Repeat - to repeat or loop the playlist
• Playlists - displays your list of saved playlists
• Save - to save the current playlist
• Clear - to clear the playlist
• Now Playing - to jump to the Now Playing Window

Related Plugins

• LastFMScrobbler
• One Button Music
• Smart Playlists