Windows 8.1 For Dummies

Chapter 16

Playing and Copying Music

In This Chapter

Playing music, video, and CDs

Creating, saving, and editing playlists

Copying CDs to your hard drive or CD

In keeping with the two-headed persona of Windows 8, Windows 8.1 includes two media players: one for the Start screen’s tile-filled world, and the desktop’s Windows Media Player, a Windows staple for years.

Like most items living in the Start screen’s minimalist world, the Music player app offers the bare minimum necessary to play, pause, and skip between songs.

The desktop’s Windows Media Player, by contrast, offers a huge bundle of buttons that organizes your music, creates playlists, transforms music CDs into files, and turns music files back into music CDs.

The desktop’s Windows Media Player is virtually identical to the Windows 7 Windows Media Player, with one big exception: It can no longer play DVDs. To do that, you need to buy the Windows Media Center add-on, or Windows 8.1 Pro Pack, which are upgrades to Windows 8.1 that I describe in Chapter 1.

This chapter explains how to play music with each player as well as how to get the most from the player you prefer.

Playing Music from the Start Screen

Whereas the Windows ...