[Cralis]

Hi guys,

I have my music library (Ripped from the CDs I own, of course! :o), in the following format:

Full Albums
|_AC/DC
|_Back in Black
|_Song 1.mp3
|_Song 2.mp3
|_Black Ice
|_Song 1.mp3
|_Song 2.mp3

|_Bon Jovi
|_Crossroads

etc

Problem is, when I go to my Music area on XBMC (Live), it just shows folders. I then select a folder, and THEN it shows the album covers.

So, because I have the Artist as a folder, and then the Albums within it, is there anway I can get the Artists to show as some form of album?

[jmarshall]

Use library mode.

[jhsrennie]

To expand on jmarshall's comment, see http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Music_Library

When the library is enabled XBMC stores info about each album in a database so it can produce views like the one shown in the above web page. Without library mode all XBMC can see is a directory, and there's no way it can know what's in the directory until you drill down into it. Library mode is especially easy with music as XBMC can read the tags from your mp3s to construct the library. You only need to use scraper if you want extras.

But ...

... maybe I'm just being a Luddite, but I find library mode doesn't work that well with music. Like you, I have my albums carefully organised, and I find selecting albums using file mode suits me. Every time I try library mode I find it too hard to find the music I really want to listen to. In theory, if I was in the mood for some prog rock the library could offer me a selection of my favourite prog rock albums. This would be nice, but in practice the genre tags are never consistent enough to work well. I either get too few albums to be interesting or so many it's hard to choose.

If I sat down and went through my several thousand albums (the product of 35 years collecting!) and carefully edited the tags I might reach this ideal. In practice I usually think of a band and drill down to their directory in file mode and choose whatever album seems to fit the mood.

With films I can see that library mode offers lots of goodies like cast lists, synopsis, etc, but for music I'm not so sure. Still, whatever suits you.

JR