Using Windows Media Player's Auto Playlist to Get the Most out of Your Music Collection

If you’re anything like me, your digital music collection is a mess.  You’ve got mp3s on your computer that have been moved from hard drive to hard drive as you’ve upgraded your PC.  You’ve burned all of your CDs and bought or otherwise legally downloaded a lot of individual songs.  You’ve got a core playlist of stuff you know that you like and you rarely listen to the thousands of other songs floating around on your hard drive.

But if you’re like most people you can’t be bothered fixing all of the tags, rating every song, and creating playlists for every mood to organize your whole mp3 collection into something instantly accessible.  Unless you’re a huge music freak the time simply isn’t worth the return.

Be honest, though, don’t you wonder sometimes if you’re missing some of the gems of your music collection by neglecting it so badly?  When was the last time you sat down and listened to an entire album straight through?  For most of you it’s likely been quite some time.

It doesn’t have to be that way.  You can use your PC and the Windows Media Player software that came with it to plumb the depths of your music collection, seeking those great songs that you have been missing.  All you need is a little creativity and a willingness to either listen to the crap between or to keep hitting that skip button.

Use the auto playlist tool in Windows Media Player to easily find only songs you’ve rarely if ever heard.  Under the File menu select Create Auto Playlist and you’ll get a screen where you can name your playlist and set criteria for what to include and how it plays.

Set a single criterion for your first auto playlist.  Windows Media Player offers a bevy of attractive choices but don’t be lured in too deep for your first attempt.  Choose “Play Count: Total Overall” and set the number to less than, say, two.  There’s a good chance that you heard a song at least once when you picked it up, after all.

If you want the really neglected mp3s go ahead and set the criterion to less than one.  You may be surprised at the number of songs that have been moved onto your PC that you haven’t heard since or have never listened to entirely.  I certainly was.

Once you’ve figured out how to make an auto playlist in Windows Media Player, the fun can really begin.  You can extract strange lists based on how long it has been since you listened to an mp3, its genre, and its length, for instance, and just breeze through the songs that your computer coughs up skipping, rating, or deleting entirely the ones you absolutely hate

Setting several criteria allows you to create an auto playlist of a dozen or so songs, a manageable number to work through in one sitting without making you hate your entire music collection.  If you don’t get many or any results, right-click on the playlist name in the library and edit the criteria until you do.

Delving into your music collection rewards you with great songs you’d forgotten and wonderful mp3s for which you may not have been in the mood the first time you heard them.  Windows Media Player gives you a simple tool to make that search fast and fun and you’ve already got it on your PC.  Now get out there and find those ELO mp3s!