Introduction

iPod library access lets your application play a user’s songs, audio books, and audio podcasts. The API design makes basic playback very simple while also supporting advanced searching and playback control.

iPod library access opens up iOS to allow a wide range of music-related enhancements to your application. Here are just a few ideas for what you can do:

• Let a user assemble and play a soundtrack for your game or exercise app

• Let a user retrieve the names of their favorite artists, songs, and albums from their iPod library to send to a friend

• Provide a recommendation service for new music or artist touring schedules based on the content of a user’s iPod library

Before reading this document, you should already be comfortable with iOS development as described in iOS App Programming Guide and iPhone Development Guide. For a tutorial introduction to creating programs for iOS, read Your First iOS App.

iPod Library Access Guide complements Media Player Framework Reference, which you may find helpful to refer to as you read this document.

Organization of This Document

This document includes the following chapters:

• “About iPod Library Access”—Provides a complete overview of music playback and iPod library access using this API.

• “Using Media Playback”—Explains how to create and use music players.

• “Using the Media Item Picker”—Shows how to invoke the picker and implement its delegate methods for retrieving the media items chosen by a user.

• “Using the iPod Library”—Goes into depth on creating and using predicates and queries to retrieve media items from the device iPod library.

• “Glossary”—Defines terminology used in describing this API.