Playing Music

The AT&T a2b music Player plays compressed audio files in mime-encoded song format only. These audio files can contain from a single song to the contents of an entire CD. Once you have installed the a2b music Player and downloaded purchased or sample music from the a2b music Store, then you're ready to play it on your PC.

This page provides several scenarios to help make you comfortable with the a2b music Player:


Loading and playing my first song

Once you have downloaded the a2b music Player, you'll need some a2b audio files (*.mes files) for input. These files are encoded to be played only by your player on your PC. If you cannot remember where you stored your files, then use your File Manager to search for the pattern "*.mes". If you can't find any, then you'd better get online and surf our website: http://www.a2bmusic.com and download at least one song.

Okay, now you have at least one .mes file to play. Bring up the a2b music Player by:

	Start->Programs->AT&T a2b music->AT&T a2b music Player

and hit the File Tab to open a song:

	File->Open 

This brings up the file browser, and you can navigate to the proper directory to find your song. Now you're all set! Hit the red buttons at the bottom of the Player window and you'll have the responses of a normal CD player. Touch the upper green buttons to change the center display.

If this does not work, then go back to our Player Help index for some help.


Creating a playlist

The Playlist Manager within the a2b music Player provides you with the capability to gather any of your songs together into a collection called a playlist. This is nothing short of fantastic, for it enables you to create your own custom collection of digital songs, which can be played as if they were consecutive song tracks on a CD!

The notion of a playlist is just that: a list of songs to play. The playlist manager does not move or rename your digital song files; it simply refers to them as an ordered list, the first representing track 1, the second representing track 2, et cetera. You may refer to the same digital song name from within as many playlists as you desire. A playlist may be as long or as short as you wish. Playlists can be reordered with ease as shown below.

Shown below is the Playlist Manager window, which comes up when you select from the Player Menu Bar:

			File->Playlist Manager


We observe herein a playlist entitled My Favorite Songs which currently comprises the list of digital songs "You've Got a Friend" through "Black Water". To the left is the digital music file browser, with which you can find any of your stored digital songs. The semantics of the Add-> button above Close are to add the highlighted digital song file name(s) to the end of the playlist shown to the right.

The Playlist Manager command buttons to the right are as follows:

    Create: create a new playlist
    Load: open an existing playlist ( a file of type .a2b )
    Save: Save this playlist file
    Delete: delete a song from this playlist
    Move up: move a song up 1 track in the playlist
    Move down: move a song down 1 track in the playlist
    Play: play this Playlist

So to make your first playlist do the following within the Playlist Manager:

  1. Click Create to create your new playlist
  2. Click Add-> to add song(s) to this playlist
  3. Click Save and name your playlist
  4. Click Close to close the window
Anytime after this you can play selections from this particular playlist by selecting from the a2b music Player menu bar:
	File->Open
and viewing Files of type *.a2b and selecting your playlist. When you later Load this playlist, you can add songs to it as you did before with the Add-> button; you can rearrange the list by a sequence of Move up and/or Move down clicks. Use the Playlist Manager to create you own unique blend of music!


Organizing my songs

Song organization is completely at your discretion. Every digital song you download is stored as a file with the suffix .mes. Every Playlist you create is stored is a file with the suffix .a2b. The a2b music Player will store these files by default into the directory named Music, but you may move them to any location you so desire.

Organization is normally done to avoid chaos. In this case, until you have a large number of songs then you may not worry too much about it. But if you do move your song files, then any playlists that referred to them in their former location are now invalid. So remember, when you reorganize you will also have to redo your playlists. Here is a case where early thought to some organization (for instance, subdirectories named rock, classical, blues, ...) will save you a lot of work later.

If you move your songs or playlists, you should check the Directories tab within the User Preferences window to see that they coincide.


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