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Music Catalog

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[The feature associated with this page, Windows Media Player SDK, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by MediaPlayer. MediaPlayer has been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use MediaPlayer instead of Windows Media Player SDK, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

A type 1 online store creates its music catalog as a set of tab-separated-value (TSV) files. Then the online store uses Microsoft's catalog compiler to compile the TSV files into a compressed catalog that can be downloaded by Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player can download full catalog files or catalog update files. Catalog updates contain only the catalog information that has changed since the last catalog update. It is up to the content partner plug-in to determine whether to download a full catalog or an update. In either case, Windows Media Player applies the changes to the current catalog upon notification from the plug-in.

If the online store has a new catalog prepared, the plug-in can notify the Player by calling IWMPContentPartnerCallback::Notify and passing wmpcnNewCatalogAvailable as the value for the type parameter.

When Windows Media Player is ready to download a catalog or update, the Player calls IWMPContentPartner::GetCatalogURL. This method provides the plug-in with information about the current catalog, such as the catalog version and locale identifier. The plug-in responds by supplying the uniform resource locator (URL) of the correct full catalog or update, as well as an updated version number and expiration date. Windows Media Player will periodically request catalog updates based upon the information provided by the plug-in in GetCatalogURL.

About Type 1 Online Stores

Catalog Compiler for Type 1 Online Stores

IWMPContentPartner Interface