Playing Music with the Music App

The Windows 8 Music app lets you play music from your local Music library. It also serves as an online music marketplace, promoting different artists and albums. In addition to playing your own music, you can hop online to preview and purchase other songs and albums. You can also search for music by album, artist, or title to find profiles of various artists along with their albums and songs. Though the traditional Window Media Player offers additional options, such as the ability to rip CDs and burn music onto a CD, the Music app comes in handy if you simply want to play music. This task explains how to play music in the Music app.

1 Add music: Add music to Windows 8 by burning CDs through Windows Media Player.

2 Open Music app: From the Start screen, open the Music app by clicking its Start screen tile.

3 View your music: Scroll to the left. The albums and songs that you have added to your Music library appear on the left side.

4 Play an album: Click a specific album to open it. Click a specific track and then click the Play button to play it. Otherwise, click the Play button under the album's cover art to play the album starting with the first track.

5 Control your music: Right-click any empty area of the screen to display the app bar. Click the Pause button to pause the track. Click the Next or Previous buttons to move to the next or previous tracks. Click the Repeat button to repeat the current track. Click the Shuffle button to shuffle the order of the tracks. If the app bar disappears, right-click anywhere in the Music app to display it again.

6 View player full screen: Right-click on the Music app to display the app bar if it is not already visible. Click on the small album art in the middle of the app bar. The Music app changes to full-screen mode.

7 Control track: Click the Pause button to pause the track. Click the Play button to resume the track. Click the Next or Previous buttons to move to the next or previous track. Drag the green circle along the slider bar to move forward or backward in the track. If the controls disappear, simply move your mouse to display them again.

8 Access all tracks: Click the Now Playing icon in the lower-left corner of the screen.

9 View all tracks: A list of all tracks from the current album appears. Click a particular track to play it. Click the X in the upper-right corner of the now playing list to turn off the list.

10 Return to Music app: Click the Back button in the upper-left corner to return to the Music app.

11 View current track: Scroll to the right to view a large image displaying the song currently playing. Click on the image to switch back to the music player.

12 Access music player: The music player opens again. Click the Back button to return to the main screen.

tip You can play music either through the Music app or through the traditional Windows Media Player.

tip The Music app can play music in different formats, including WMA, MP3, and AAC (iTunes), but it may have trouble playing protected files.