How to Make a PlayList

After ripping all my CDs to Windows Media Player, I am ready to make playlists from the collected songs. Playlists are lists of songs (or other audio files) that you can create to organize your library.

• Open Windows Media Player. The window is divided into three sections. On the far left of the Library window under All Music there are 8 subsections. All these subsections contain the songs I ripped with each subsection organizing the songs by a different grouping. All I am interested in now is the alphabetized list (by first letter) under All Music Album Artist, so I will open Album Artist on the + sign to see all the music I ripped listed by the artists' names.
• Select an artist two ways: one, by clicking on the + sign by the artist's name I will see all the albums I ripped by that artist or two, by clicking on the artist's name I will see all the songs I ripped by that artist. In either case the ripped songs will show in the large middle window. There is other information included with the song titles also. The length of each song could be important when making a playlist.
• Now I am ready to make the playlist. Look at the far right side of the window. It's blue. I see Now Playing List at the top with a down arrow. I click that arrow and go down to New List then Play List. Click on Play List and I am ready to make some decisions about the songs I want in my playlist.
• From the large middle window, I can drag song titles into the right (blue) window to build a list of items for my playlist. Lots of options are available now. I can use one or more songs from the artist I have open, then close that artist and open another to add to the playlist.
• After the playlist is complete to my satisfaction, I open the drop down box again and click Save Playlist As and get a new window for naming the playlist. I will give the playlist a meaningful name so I can know which one this is after I have a lot of playlists saved. I'll call this one Music for Fast Walking 1.

Hint: When I couldn't remember what the song sounded like, I put on my headset, selected the song from the middle window song list, and listened to a bit of it by clicking the Play arrow at the bottom of the window (or double click the song title). After listening, I clicked the Stop button and made the decision whether or not to add to the playlist.