MUSICat Guides
Guides for building a local music collection using the open-source MUSICat platform.
Featured Playlists
Featured Playlists are playlists created by librarians or community curators that are linked to from your site’s main navigation (along with albums and artists) and are intended to give listeners a startling place to exploring a MUSICat collection.
Playlist Builder
To access the Playlist Builder, log in as admin, and play any track so that you see the MUSICat player in your browser window. In the player, check “Show Admin Playlist Builder” and select one of the options (create or see existing playlists). You will now see the Playlist Builder, where you can upload a custom image for your playlist (in the style of an album cover), name your playlist, and give your playlist an author.
To add tracks to your playlist, play any track on the site and, in the player, click “Add to
Preview Playlists
When you’ve built a playlist you like, you can Preview your playlist directly from the Playlist Builder or from “Features” in the Admin Menu.
View and Edit Existing Playlists
View a list of existing playlists at any time by clicking on “Featured” in the Admin Menu. Edit an existing playlist in the Playlist Builder by clicking on its image or title.
Publish Playlists
When you’re ready to publish a playlist or set of playlists, do two things:
In “Featured”, uncheck the “Hidden” box that corresponds to the playlists you are publishing, give your public playlists position numbers if you would like them to appear in a particular order, and Save All Changes. In Configuration, check “Show Featured Playlists” and, if desired, change the default name for this page (Featured) to whatever you’d like. Then Save New Configuration.
Share Unpublished Playlists
If you’d like to share a playlist with, say, a juror or partner without publishing it to your public site, make sure that the playlist is “Hidden.” Simply “preview” the playlist, and copy and share its URL.
Beta Cover Mosaic Image
If you want, play around with the beta feature here: a generator that uses covers from albums in your playlist to build a mosaic playlist image. Let us know what you think! :)