Mix Your Music in Playlists |
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October 2005
Playlists are a great way to control what you listen to on your computer, allowing you to mix any combination of songs you want, and then enjoy hours of listening. (You can also create playlists of items such as pictures, video, and TV shows.) You can create regular or auto playlists using Windows Media Player 10. A regular playlist doesn't change unless you add or remove items from the playlist. On the other hand, an auto playlist changes automatically to reflect changes in your Player library, according to criteria that you specify when creating the auto playlist.
This article has the following sections:
Make a Music Mix by Creating a PlaylistA playlist is a customized list of songs (or other items in your Player library) that you can save and play any time. You can add any songs in your library to a playlist.
To create a playlistIn Windows Media Player, click Library, and then click the List button at the top of the List pane, as shown in the following screen shot. If you need to clear the list before beginning, click the List button again, and then click Clear List. Drag items from the Contents or Details pane in your library to the List pane to add them to the new playlist, as shown in the following screen shot. To play the list, click the Play button  . To save the list, click the List button, and then click Save Playlist As, as shown in the following screen shot. In the File Name box, type the playlist name. Once you save the playlist, it is added to the My Playlists category in the library. You can keep the sound of your playlists fresh by selecting Shuffle on the Play menu, which causes all the songs in a playlist to be played in random order.
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Let the Player Make a Mix for You with an Auto PlaylistPlaylists are a great way to manage what you listen to, but auto playlists are even more powerful because they enable the Player to help you find, organize, and play just the music that you want to listen to, according to criteria you set. Instead of containing a static set of songs, the contents of auto playlists update dynamically when you make changes to your library. For example, if you add a number of songs to your library, you don't have to add each song to playlists manually; the Player adds them to the appropriate auto playlists automatically by using each auto playlist's unique criteria. It's like having an assistant who knows what you like and takes care of the details so you can focus on listening to good music.
The Player comes with a number of ready-to-play auto playlists that you can use and enjoy, and you can also create your own auto playlists. Viewing an existing auto playlist is a great way to get ideas about new auto playlists that you might want to set up.
To play or view an existing auto playlistIn Windows Media Player, click Library. In the Contents pane, expand Auto Playlists. Double-click an auto playlist to begin playing. -OR- To get an idea of how an auto playlist was set up, right-click the auto playlist, and then click Edit, as shown in the following screen shot.
Creating an Auto PlaylistThe flexibility of auto playlists allows you to set up just about any mix of music that you want. To illustrate the power of auto playlists, this section walks you through a scenario for creating an auto playlist.
Let's say you have a wide range of music interests, with Disco being a favorite. You add new music to your library regularly, and are tired of spending time updating your playlists to include your new songs. A Disco auto playlist is a perfect solution. To create one, simply tag your songs with the Disco genre, and then create an auto playlist that specifies Disco as the genre to play, as described below.
To specify the genre for a songIn the Player, click Library, right-click a song, and then click Advanced Tag Editor. In the Genre list, click Disco, as shown in the following screen shot. Note Songs that you rip from a CD or buy from an online store may come with a genre already specified. For example, the song pictured in the previous screen shot came from an online store with "Pop" as the genre. You can change the genre if you want, as this procedure describes. Repeat steps 1 and 2 with any other songs that you want to add to the Disco auto playlist.
Now let's make a Disco auto playlist. In addition to the Disco genre criteria, we'll add a time criteria to illustrate how to add other criteria to an auto playlist.
To create an auto playlistIn the Player, click Library. In the Contents (left) pane, right-click Auto Playlists, and then click New. In the New Auto Playlist dialog box, in Auto Playlist name, type the name of your auto playlist, for example Disco. Under Music in my library, click Click here to add criteria. In the list, click Genre, as shown in the following screen shot. To the right of Genre Is, click click to set, and then in the list click Disco. To restrict this auto playlist to songs that you've added to the library in the last week, click Click here to add criteria, and then add Date added To Library Is After Last 7 Days, as shown in the following screen shot. When you are done setting your criteria for the auto playlist, click OK. To see what songs are included in an auto playlist, expand Auto Playlists in the Contents pane to see the auto playlist that you want, click the auto playlist, and then view the songs that it contains in the Details pane.
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