Sharing the Music

Lenny Bailes

Warning: Microsoft issues stern warnings predicting doom and gloom if you install the prerelease version of Windows Media Player 7 software. We didn't experience any problems in our testing, but if you have valuable data on your hard drive, you should back it up as a precaution before you install Windows Media Player.

Windows Media Player 7 makes it easy for you to create playlists you keep on your hard drive. The playlists can combine digital music, video files, and links to Internet radio stations, movie previews, and music videos. You can also create desktop shortcuts that automatically play back your playlist, or share your playlists with friends who also use Windows Media Player.

To create a new Windows Media Player playlist, select the Media Library tab (at the left side of the application window), click the New Playlist button (located over the left hand Category display pane), and enter a name in the New Playlist dialog box. Your new playlist appears in the "My Playlists" section of the left display pane.

• To add a file in your Media Library or an Internet link to the playlist, drag the track in the right Media Library pane over the name of the playlist you just created under My Playlists (in the left Media Library pane). To select multiple tracks from the list in sequence, click the first entry, hold down the Shift key, and click the last entry (just as you would in Windows Explorer). To select tracks in a discontinuous sequence, click the first track, hold down the Ctrl key and click each additional track you wish to select.
• To add a streaming Internet Radio Station or other Internet broadcast that's currently playing to your playlist, right-click the presentation in the Now Playing window and choose Add to Playlist.
• When you're satisfied with your playlist, choose File, Export Playlist to File, name the playlist file, and click Save. If you mail this file to a friend, they will need to detach it, open Windows Media Player, choose File, Import Playlist File, navigate to the directory where they stored the attachment, select it, and click the Open button. In the final version of Windows Media Player, you will be able to double-click the playlist file to add it to your collection, but in the prerelease version you can't.