iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

Playing Music

MusicMatch Jukebox Plus is not just mere CD-ripping software, but a full-featured digital audio management program with plenty of ways to customize its look and feel to determine how it presents your music.

Once you’ve ripped a few tunes, you’ll see a list begin to grow in your MusicMatch library window. To turn your PC into a music machine, click the small + icon next to the artist’s or album’s name in the first column to see all the corresponding songs. (Of course, if you’ve fooled around with the display settings for this first column, you may already be staring at a big long list of songs.)

There are many ways to play a song or album:

• Click the song title, and then click the triangular Play button in the MusicMatch Jukebox player controls.

• Ctrl+click multiple songs in the library window, and then click the Play button.

• Click a performer’s name in the Library window, and then click the Play button to play all of that artist’s songs. (The same trick works if you’re viewing the main list by album or another category.)

The songs you select end up in the Playlist window, and a red triangle appears next to the song title that’s now playing. Use other player controls to pause, stop, rewind, or fast-forward the songs in an album or playlist. You can jump to another part of the same song by dragging the small Tylenol-shaped button on the progress bar. Of course, the volume slider works, too.

Visualizations

As music plays, you can control and manipulate the music and the visuals ...