Adding a network location to Music Library in Windows 8
I was trying to figure out how to get my network location of music indexed and used in Win8. I tried a bunch of different things I found on the net, and nothing seemed to work. Then I stumbled upon a solution.
First is to set the location of your “My Music” folder to your network location. If you right click on your “My Music” folder and hit properties, you can then choose the location tab, and choose the “Move” button and choose your folder with music in it. Choose yes to move the files (if you choose no nothing bad happens, it just leaves your c:\user\username\My Music folder intact with any files in it instead of moving any files and deleting the folder). So even though that now your music folder defaults to your network location, Windows isnt indexing it. Here is how to trick it. Choose any music file in your folder and right click it, then choose play in media player. Setup media player (you can just choose to use the defaults), and let it start playing. If you then click the little button to open media player in library mode, and wait a minute or two, you will start to see you music populate it. It will take some time to get everything in there. I would just leave media player open until its done (not sure if it needs to stay open or not, but I just left it open).
Now when you open up the Music app from the Metro interface, you music will be listed!
July 10th, 2013 at 9:10 pm
See below for a more elegant solution.
http://abendin.hubpages.com/hub/Adding-a-Network-Directory-to-a-Library-without-Indexing-in-Windows-7