Organizing Your Music: Playlists

The third primary means for organizing your music in Rhapsody are playlists. Playlists are an integral part of any digial audio library. They allow you unlimited freedom for creating customized, virtual CDs. You can also share your Rhapsody playlists with the entire community of Rhapsody users.

Follow the below steaps to learn how to create and share playlists:

1. Select the Playlists tab under the Sources pane and left click somewhere in the Playlists window. Choose New Playlist as shown to the right.
2. After you have given your playlist an appropriate name, you need to add tracks to the playlist. There are several ways to accomplish this. You can drag and drop tracks from your Library or likewise, you can drag and drop tracks from the Mixer. Spend a few moments creating your own playlist. When you are finished it will appear in the Playlists window.
3. Click on the playlist that you just created. If I select the "Cool Jazz" playlist that I just created, I see the playlist details shown below:
4. Now it is time to share your playlist with other aspiring guitar players! Select one of your playlists and choose "Share" (as shown in the Playlist panel above). Follow the steps. The entire Rhapsody community can now access your playlist!

There is a good chance that there are other guitarists with similar tastes to your's. So why not check out other people's playlists? There are two main ways to do this. Follow the steps below to learn how to find playlists to your liking.

1. Earlier, when we went over the basics of finding music on Rhapsody, you may have noticed the Top Playlist listing when we used Joe Satriani as an example. Call up Joe Satriani in Rhapsody as we did earlier and find his Top Playlists section. It should look similar to that shown to the right.
2. Click on the "More" link at the bottom right corner of the Top Playlists box. You should then see a listing similar to that shown below:
3. Select one of the playlists featuring Joe Satriani. Click on the Add All button to add it to your playlist. It is that simple!

Now we will use another method for finding and adding playlists. This time we will find playlists by genre.

. 1. First click on Rhapsody's Playlist Central button . This will take you to Rhapsody's Playlist center.
2. From Playlist Central, select "Genre Mixes" under the Browse Playlists box.
3. Next, select "Rock/Pop" in the Browse Playlists box.

Now you can view playlists in the Rock/Pop genre and add them to your own playlists by taking similar steps to 2 and 3 above. You should see a view of playlists similar to that shown below:

If you have made it this far then you should consider yourself Rhapsody savvy. You know how to seek out the music you enjoy through a variety of means. You know how to make sense out of the wealth of information that Rhapsody displays. You know how to build your own music library and also know how to create custom playlists that you can share with friends and with the entire Rhapsody community.

In the next section, Reaching New Guitar Playing Heights, you will use your knowledge of Rhapsody to further your quest to become the best guitarist you can possibly be!