Win 8.1 not seeing music files

Libraries are set and I can play any tune by surfing via explorer. But no matter what, if I use the music tile on the start page, tells me I have no music or even audiobooks, no nothing basically. I used windows file transfer , I got my pics and docs, the music is there, windows just doesn't see it on the start screen. Most purchased with iTunes. What am I doing wrong?

hello ,not sure, what program do you have set as the default music player, if its iTunes ,then you might try windows media player ,to see if that helps .go to defaults in control panel to check

No other media players installed yet, was going to check file associationd

file assocations

it was set to windows music icon, I changed to windows media player with no change, most files at Mp3's, sooner or later I will have to install iTunes anyways, ill install and see

Open the Music App then the charms bar. Choose Properties. There should be a link that says 'choose where we look for music'. Click on it and follow the instructions to see if you can point it to the right place.

As OldGuyGeek said, you can point the music app to wherever your music is stored. I have many gigabytes of mp3s on a network drive and the music app is able to add them to My Collection and I am able to play them fine.

I wonder if you may be running into a DRM (Digital Rights Management) issue? Are your iTunes songs DRM free?

You need to set the default player for each file type, for mp3 files, follow the screen shot. Next time when you double click on the mp3 file, music apps will Open & Play. In addition, if you want to build the play list(s), you have to set it in the Music Apps to include all the Music folders in your PC.

Library is set properly, I keep all my music in one place

Most I purchased , some I did not, neither of them show up

That was the first thing I checked good with file associations. Loaded iTunes but did not allow it to set itself as default media player, pickup up all my music in library and ran with it, windows still says no files to play with

the Xbox music app in Start doesn't show all my music in its list ,I didn't show bob Dylan witch was clearly in the music folder with the rest ,but I assume it was not shown because they are .flac files , and that player doesn't play flac file type ,I use VLC player for those . so it could be a file type issue for you .see picture

The OP said all the files were mp3s. If iTunes can see/play the files but the Music app can't, I still think it's a DRM issue. That's why I personally won't have anything to do with DRM content, too restrictive as to what you can do with it.

I've had the same problem with ripped files - from my own CDs I might add - transferred from a W7 system. They played and then somehow mysteriously vanished, or actually couldn't be seen by Explorer. I think it is a DRM issue and not sure how to solve it since taking ownership dosen't seem to work understandably. I had to rip the CDs from the W8 system to get back to normal. The old versions will play if selected in Explorer and added to an existing Playlist it seems but that might be because I moved them to or from the C: drive. Bit of a bummer really but perhaps I have the wrong settings in Windows Media Player - I tend to disable almost everything. I hate DRM.

strollin said:

The OP said all the files were mp3s.

Click to expand...

so they did ,sorry

OldGuyGeek said:

Open the Music App then the charms bar. Choose Properties. There should be a link that says 'choose where we look for music'. Click on it and follow the instructions to see if you can point it to the right place.

Click to expand...

correct ,there is ,as you said ,in properties ,go to settings ,and the link is there under collections , choose where to look for music