computer music question

[joycenalex]

okay there has to be an easier way to do this. i download the cd to my computer, then i'm manually dragging the songs to a designated playlist. how do i set up a playlist on the computer, for example, all 10 garth brooks CDs under a garth playlist. thanks, it's plaguing me

[Catlady711]

I don't know about what operating system or media program you're using but here's how I do mine.

I have Windows XP, and use version 10 of the Windows Media Player.

I put my CD's in and download them to the cpu with the RealOne player. I use that one because I find it easier but that part doesn't matter much, just so they're in MP3 format.

Once I have them downloaded they go to the 'My Music' folder automatically under folders with the artists name, or Various if multiple artists.

From the 'My Documents' screen, click on the my music folder and access each sub folder the CD went into.

(this part is a PAIN) On each song you'll have to click 'Rename' and remove the automatic track number insterted at the beginning of each song. (ie; 01-Thunder Rolls) If you don't remove that number then it can't sort your songs by title later, it will sort by track numbers and if you have more than one CD worth of music you could have 100 track number one's!!

Once you have all those annoying numbers removed select all of the songs. You can do this by holding the shift button down and clicking the first and last song in the list, it will highlight all of them.

On the side of the screen for XP it says 'Move File'. Click that and move into the general 'My Music' folder, NO subfolders!!

Once you have all your songs there open Windows Media Player, make sure the 'Library' tab is checked at the top. There are columns for Artist, Album, Title, Length, Genre. If you made sure that info was already put in before you moved the files then all you have to do is click whichever column you want your songs sorted by and it will do it. You can click a new column to sort with whenever you want.

If you want to play all of just say Garth Brooks you just select all the Garth Brooks songs once they're sorted the same way as above, using the shift button, drag over to the playlist on the right. Then just click play.

You can do a similar thing from the 'My Music' folder then just click play on the left of the screen instead and it will use the media program you downloaded it with to play just those selections.

Either way you can listen to all your Garth Brooks songs at the same time no matter how many albums they came from and still be able to access them by Genre later if you want for your MP3 player, say listing all country songs.

I have about 900 songs by all kinds of artists, genre's in my computer and it's a snap to sort them with the Window's Media Player. Getting them there though is a bit of a time taking pain, but easy once I've got them there.

Hope that helps.

[G535]

Something like this: http://www.stintercorp.com/br.php will rename those files in a batch lot rather than doing it one by one. There are more and probably free programs available, that one is just an example of what's out there.