5.2 A Quick Tour

As shown in Figure 5-1, the MusicMatch Jukebox main window has plenty of buttons and a small menu bar in the upper-left corner. The circular control panel just below the menu bar contains the familiar volume slider, and play, pause, forward, reverse, and record buttons ; the song currently playing is identified in the adjacent panel. A small window capable of displaying animated "laser-light shows," album art, and video snippets sits between this area and the Playlists section.

Figure 5-1. Top: When you need all the screen space you can get, the player neatly collapses down into a petite control bar. To shrink the player down like this, press Alt+Page Down. To return it to full size , press Alt+Page Up. (The View menu also contains these commands.) Bottom: The library window shows you the artists in your collection and the songs you've acquired . You can modify and rearrange the columns and look of this window, as well as each track's tags “a great way to repair the typographical and other minor errors that commonly occur with CD lookup services. (For most people under the age of 100, for example, Peggy Lee's music is not considered New Age.)

NOTE

If you've used an MP3 player with RCA Lyra or Creative Nomad Jukebox, then MusicMatch Jukebox may look and feel familiar to you. Lucky you ”you've got a lot less software learning to do.

Below this top section are four oblong buttons that each reveal something different in an expanding window below. The buttons, and each of their contents, are:

• My Library . Click here to examine the contents of the MusicMatch Jukebox music library. Songs are grouped by performer name , with album information, genre , and track length easily visible.

• Radio . This button reveals a list of streaming Internet radio stations in a range of genres.

• Music Guide . With a click of this button and an Internet connection, MusicMatch provides links to music downloads, recommendations, charts , and more.

• Now Playing . This button brings information about the musician you're currently listening to right into the MusicMatch window for instant gratification.

5.2.1 Window Fun

When you first look at your music library, you'll notice that the View by Artist column groups your music by performer. If you click the + button next to the CD icon, a subcategory unfurls beneath the artist name, showing you all of the songs you have by that particular person or group (Figure 5-1, bottom).

NOTE

You don't have to view your music library grouped by artist. You may prefer to organize that first column (the Folder View ) by album, track title, or any of several other categories. Just right-click anywhere in the Folder View column and choose from the shortcut menu.

You don't have to sort your music alphabetically by artist, however. You can have all kinds of fun with this columnar display. For example:

• Change the order of the columns by dragging. For example, if you want to have Time right before Genre (instead of after), drag the word Time horizontally until it's to the left of Genre.

• To change the identity of just one column ”to swap in the Artist column where the Time currently appears, for example ”right-click its title. From the pop-up list of column categories (Bit rate, Recording Year, and so on), choose the name of the column you want to replace it with, as shown in Figure 5-2.

  Figure 5-2. Right-clicking a column heading gives you plenty of choices for substituting a different kind of column ”all the better to sort your music by. MusicMatch can display seven columns in the main window at any one time.

  
  

• To adjust the width of a column, drag the vertical divider line on its right side.

• To add more information columns (or fewer), choose Options Music Library Music Library Settings to produce the dialog box shown in Figure 5-3, where you can turn columns on and off en masse.

  Figure 5-3. The Settings box lets you set up your My Library columns with just the info you care about, in the order you want to see it. (The bottom two checkboxes let you choose which version of the track-tagging standard you want for your files. The older ID3V1 tag format can't hold as much information as ID3V2, which can display pictures and lyrics in the song's tag file. See the box on page 121 for more about ID3 tags.)

  
  

• Click a column title (like Artist or Album) to sort the song list alphabetically by that criterion. Click a second time to reverse the sorting order.

  For example, if you're having the girls over for tea and want to have some nice mellow music wafting about in the background, you can sort your music library by genre and select all the music in the Classical section.