Playing Digital Music with Windows Media Player

After you've downloaded a fair number of digital audio files, it's time to start listening to themwhich you do with a music player program. As you learned in Chapter 30, "Playing CDs and DVDs," the most popular music player program is Windows Media Player (WMP), which is provided free with Microsoft Windows, and is probably already installed on your PC.

Playing Digital Audio Files

All the music files you download should be stored in the My Music folder, typically under subfolders for artist and album. All music stored in My Music is automatically sensed by the Windows Media Player, and added to WMP's Library.

To play a digital audio file with Windows Media Player, you follow these steps:

1.	Click the Library button to display the Library window.
2.	Browse through the list of files, like that shown in Figure 32.4, until you find the song you want to play. Figure 32.4. Play your downloaded music from WMP's Library.
3.	Double-click the song title to begin playback.

Creating a Playlist of Your Favorite Songs

Files in your WMP Library can be combined into playlists. You can create playlists from the files you have stored on your hard disk, in any order you wantjust like listening to a radio station's playlist.

To create a new playlist, follow these steps:

1.	Click the Library button to display the Library window.
2.	Pull down the File menu and select New Now Playing List.
3.	Click the Now Playing List button and select New List, Playlist.
4.	Click and drag songs from the Contents pane onto the List pane to create your playlist.
5.	Click New Playlist and select Save Playlist As. tip To play the songs in a playlist in random order, click the Turn Shuffle On button or select Play, Shuffle.
6.	Enter a playlist name.
7.	Click Save.

Playing an entire playlist is as simple as going to the Library and double-clicking a playlist in the left-hand pane. WMP will start playing the first song in your playlist, and go on from there.

tip

Although you can listen to Internet radio over a traditional dial-up connection, you'll hear better quality sound over a broadband connection.