How to get the duration of mp3 file without playing or storing them

Question

I am building a wp8 app which could play poems line by line displayed in listbox.

Say I have 20 lines of Poems showing as 20 items in listbox. I have 20 mp3 files (one for each line), I used BackgroundAudioPlayer to play individual files and select each item (poem) in listbox. During playback of these mp3 files, there were delays of 1-3 seconds, so I found the full version of these mp3 files (20 files merged into one), reading poems line by line.

I am playing this mp3 file using BackgroundAudioPlayer. Playing as one file, I cannot select each item in listbox as I don't know the line number by playing one mp3 file.

Now what I want is to store the duration of 20 files in seconds, without storing and playing. The files are located in a link (http:123.com/1.mp3, /2.mp3, ...)

I used AudioTrack with absolute path and then used duration property, but it always returns zero. How can I get the duration of an mp3 file without playing them?

Edited: In the background Agent I did below:

protected override void OnPlayStateChanged(BackgroundAudioPlayer player, AudioTrack track, PlayState playState)
{
switch (playState)
{
case PlayState.TrackReady:
TrackDuration tr = DataSource.Connection.Table<TrackDuration>().SingleOrDefault();
if (tr.IsGetTrackDuration)
{
if (player.Track != null)
{
player.Position = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(player.Track.Duration.TotalSeconds);
Recitation r = DataSource.Connection.Query<Recitation>("select * from Recitation where ID = " + player.Track.Title).SingleOrDefault();
r.AyaDuration = player.Track.Duration.TotalSeconds;
DataSource.saveRecitionDownloaded(r);
PlayNextTrack(player);
}
}
break;
}
NotifyComplete();
}

protected override void OnUserAction(BackgroundAudioPlayer player, AudioTrack track, UserAction action, object param)
{
switch (action)
{
case UserAction.Play:
   PlayTrack(player);
break;
case UserAction.Seek:
if (null!=player.Track)
player.Position = (TimeSpan)param;
break;
}
NotifyComplete();
}

private void PlayNextTrack(BackgroundAudioPlayer player)
{
 if (++currentTrackNumber >= audioTrack.Count)
   return;
 PlayTrack(player);
}

private void PlayTrack(BackgroundAudioPlayer player)
{
//If No Track then load Track
 if (audioTrack.Count == 0)
 {
     //Load Tracks and Add them into Track Play List
 }
if ((player.Track == null) || (player.Track.Title != audioTrack[currentTrackNumber].Title))
    player.Track = audioTrack[currentTrackNumber];

if ((player.Track != null) && (player.PlayerState != PlayState.Playing))
    player.Play();
}

The question is It plays some of the files which I don't want. (tr.IsGetTrackDuration) is always true, but I don't know why it plays some?

Answer 1

MusicProperties class has a property for the duration

 MusicProperties musicProperties = await file.Properties.GetMusicPropertiesAsync();
 outputText.AppendLine("Duration: " + musicProperties.Duration);