{"id":69223,"date":"2005-08-08T13:39:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-08T13:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2005\/08\/08\/how-can-i-list-all-the-songs-in-the-windows-media-library\/"},"modified":"2005-08-08T13:39:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-08T13:39:00","slug":"how-can-i-list-all-the-songs-in-the-windows-media-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/how-can-i-list-all-the-songs-in-the-windows-media-library\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can I List All the Songs in the Windows Media Library?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hey,<\/p>\n

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I get a list of all the songs (and their artists) in the Windows Media Library?<\/p>\n

— KF<\/p>\n

\"Spacer\"\"Hey,\"Script<\/a><\/p>\n

Hey, KF. Three words: practice, practice, practice.<\/p>\n

You know, the old joke about how do you get to Carnegie Hall and this is kind of a music-related question and Carnegie Hall is where they play music and we were just trying to be cute and… well ….<\/p>\n

OK, never mind. Instead of practice, practice, practice, how about these<\/i> three words: Use this script.<\/p>\n

By which we mean this script right here:<\/p>\n

Set objPlayer = CreateObject(\"WMPlayer.OCX\" )\n\nSet objMediaCollection = objPlayer.MediaCollection\nSet colSongList = objMediaCollection.getByAttribute(\"MediaType\", \"audio\")\n\nFor i = 0 to colSongList.Count - 1\n    Set objSong = colSongList.Item(i)\n    Wscript.Echo objSong.Name & \" -- \" & objSong.getItemInfo(\"WM\/AlbumArtist\")\nNext\n<\/pre>\n
The script begins by creating an instance of the WMPlayer.OCX<\/strong> object, which turns out to be the way you instantiate Windows Media Player in VBScript. We then use this line of code to make a connection to the Media Library:<\/p>\n
Set objMediaCollection = objPlayer.MediaCollection\n<\/pre>\n
As you probably know, the Media Library can contain all sorts of things: JPEG pictures, video files, audio files, etc. Because we only care about music files (like .MP3 and .WMA files) we use this line of code to return a subset of the Media Library, a subset containing only audio files:<\/p>\n
Set colSongList = objMediaCollection.getByAttribute(\"MediaType\", \"audio\")\n<\/pre>\n
As you can see, all we do is call the getByAttribute<\/strong> method, passing two parameters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
•<\/td>\n\n
“MediaType”, which represents the attribute we’re interested in.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
•<\/td>\n\n
“audio”, which represents the value of the attribute we’re interested in.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
In other words, “Bring me back all the objects where the MediaType is equal to audio.”<\/p>\n
The getByAttribute method returns an array of media items, each one representing an individual audio file. To retrieve information about these media items we need to set up a For Next loop that loops from 0 to the Count<\/strong> of the media items minus 1. (As with most arrays in VBScript, the first item in our array is item 0; therefore the last item will be the number of items minus 1. For example, if we have 100 items in the array then the last item will be number 99.)<\/p>\n
Each time through the loop we bind to an individual audio file using this code:<\/p>\n
Set objSong = colSongList.Item(i)\n<\/pre>\n
For each audio file we then echo back the name and the artist. You might note the crazy way we have to get the artist name: we have to call the getItemInfo<\/strong> method and specify the WM\/AlbumArtist<\/strong> attribute. Why? Well, just like your mom and dad used to tell you: because. That’s just the way the Media Player object model works.<\/p>\n
When we run this script we get back information similar to this:<\/p>\n
Losing My Religion -- R.E.M.\nGarden Party -- Rick Nelson\nTeacher Teacher -- Rockpile\nLet's Spend the Night Together -- The Rolling Stones\nAnybody Seen My Baby? -- The Rolling Stones\nIt's Only Rock 'N Roll (But I Like It) -- The Rolling Stones\n<\/pre>\n
Cool, huh?<\/p>\n
We realize that this script is a bit different from most of the scripts we cover in this column, and we realize that we might have scrimped on the explanation from time-to-time. <\/p>\n
And don’t forget: practice, practice, practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I get a list of all the songs (and their artists) in the Windows Media Library? — KF Hey, KF. Three words: practice, practice, practice. You know, the old joke about how do you get to Carnegie Hall and this is kind of a music-related question and Carnegie Hall is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[123,3,5,192],"class_list":["post-69223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-multimedia","tag-scripting-guy","tag-vbscript","tag-windows-media-player-and-audio"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I get a list of all the songs (and their artists) in the Windows Media Library? — KF Hey, KF. Three words: practice, practice, practice. You know, the old joke about how do you get to Carnegie Hall and this is kind of a music-related question and Carnegie Hall is […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}