Put your CDs on your PC

Start clearing away that stack of CDs piled up beside your keyboard. Only a few years ago, immense file sizes and small hard drives made it nearly impossible to store CD-quality music on your computer. Now, at the press of a button, Windows Media Player records and encodes your music in the Windows Media format, a compressed file format that typically produces smaller files than those compressed in mp3.

Off your CD, into your PC
Before you can index and catalog your music in Windows Media Player, you have to get the songs into the computer itself. Don't worry—it's a cinch. Just follow these steps to move your songs from your CDs to your C:\ drive.

1. Insert an audio CD into your computer's CD tray, and then close the drive door.
2. Open Windows Media Player, and then click CD Audio.
3. Windows Media Player will automatically begin to play the first track on the CD.

You can pick the songs you want to copy, the level of quality for your files, and how much hard disk space they will consume.

1. Select or clear the check box just left of Name to toggle all tracks on or off (all tracks are selected by default).
2. To increase the quality at which Windows Media Player creates Windows Media files, open the Tools menu, and then click Options. Click the CD Audio tab, and then move the slider bar all the way over to the right. To decrease quality and save hard disk space, move the slider to the left.
3. After you have selected the tracks you wish to record, click Copy Music. A percentage will then appear in the Copy Status column, indicating how much of the track has been copied. Once a track is copied, the "Copied to Library" message will appear in the column. (If you select more than one song on the CD, your computer will continue to copy the additional songs while the first track is playing.)
4. Your copied audio files will now be accessible by clicking the Media Library button on Windows Media Player.

Here's a nice bonus: If you're a little hazy on the names of all the songs in your vast music collection, Windows Media Player can shed some light. If you're connected to the Internet, Windows Media Player automatically fetches the artist name, album title, and track listing of your CDs and displays that information on your screen. What's the name of that catchy keyboard instrumental from Beverly Hills Cop? Windows Media Player will tell you almost instantly that it is "Axel F."

If your computer is not connected to the Internet, or if Windows Media Player is unable to find the album data, you can enter the information manually.

1. To enter artist information, right-click one of the Unknown Artist entries in the Artist column, click Edit, and then type in the correct name.
   
   To save time, hold the SHIFT key or the CTRL key as you select multiple tracks, right-click one of the Unknown Artist entries in the Artist column, and then click Edit Selection. The information you enter will affect all the highlighted entries. Repeat this process to enter Genre information.
2. To enter track information, right-click one of the track names in the Name column, click Edit, and then type in the correct name.

You're the DJ
You'll soon find that storing music digitally offers many advantages. For example, playlists let you build extensive programs that play any songs in any order, including random, no matter which of your CDs they're recorded from. Playlists come in especially handy when you'd like to play a lengthy, customized mix of music. With Windows Media Player, you can make your playlist as long as you like, and you can set it to play indefinitely, without interruption.

To set up a playlist:

1. Open Windows Media Player.
2. Click the Media Library button on the left.
3. Click the New playlist button, type the name of your playlist, and then click OK.

The name of your new playlist appears under the My Playlists folder, but the playlist is empty.

To add songs to your new playlist:

1. Click one of the Audio folders on the left. The folders sort your music by All Audio, Album, Artist, and Genre.
2. Select the song you'd like to add, click the Add to playlist button, and then highlight the name of your playlist in the drop-down list. (To add more than one track at a time, hold down the SHIFT or CTRL key while you click your selections.)

When you click the name of your playlist in the My Playlists folder, you'll see the song you just added. You can change the order of your songs by using the arrow buttons, or delete tracks by clicking the – button. You can also use the + button to add new songs to the Media Library whenever you like.