# How do you play mp3 files sequentially?



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

When I try to play a downloaded album in Windows' My Music, it plays one track, then stops. Is there a way to get it to play each track one after the other?


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Manxfeeder said:


> When I try to play a downloaded album in Windows' My Music, it plays one track, then stops. Is there a way to get it to play each track one after the other?


Get iTunes or a similar music library software. You can organize your music by album, complete with album artwork; by artist, composer, etc. You can easily program music to play in whatever order you want.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Get VLC media player. It plays tracks sequentially for me, or I can have it shuffle. Wikipedia:


> VLC media player is a free and open-source portable cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS, iPadOS, Tizen, Windows 10 Mobile and Windows Phone.


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## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

Don't use iTunes unless you need to transfer your music to an iPhone or you're a masochist.

If you just need something that will play a bunch of MP3 files in order, VLC Portable is free, open-source, lightweight, handles every format under the sun, and doesn't even require installation in the Windows registry.

If you want something that will let you organize a music library, foobar2000 is free, lightweight, handles every format under the sun, and can be customized to an insane degree if you're willing to do some homework. (It can also be installed as portable if you want.)

Here's what mine looks like:


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Thanks! I've had the Annie Fischer Beethoven download for years, but I never listen to it because it's such a hassle. Maybe I can finally get to it.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

You mean Gapless playback? Like when a movement is divided up into smaller tracks or when one movement moves to the next without a break, but they are tracked separately? When I play a redbook CD in the car stereo, and say a movement is divided in four tracks, they play one after the other without a problem. But make an mp3 and either on flash drive or a burned CD, there's that gap between tracks - extremely annoying. I've looked for car stereos that have the Gapless playback option without luck.


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## neofite (Feb 19, 2017)

If you want to play the tracks in some desired sequence on a regular basis, you can use _Audacity_ to make a new, big track and then copy and paste the individual tracks onto it. It is also easy to add any duration of silence between tracks, such as a few seconds, if desired. Audacity is a truly fabulous audio software editor that can do lots of things, can accommodate various file formats, and works on various operating systems. Highly robust and easy to use once you get used to it (don't let the complicated-looking interface fool you). Moreover, it is open source and absolutely free!


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## RogerWaters (Feb 13, 2017)

Manxfeeder said:


> When I try to play a downloaded album in Windows' My Music, it plays one track, then stops. Is there a way to get it to play each track one after the other?


Yep add all the tracks to the queue in my music


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Likely Windows Media Player is the player when you play an MP3 in Windows My Music. To have one mp3 play after another, all you should have to do is click on Play All at the top of the opened folder.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

neofite said:


> If you want to play the tracks in some desired sequence on a regular basis, you can use _Audacity_ to make a new, big track and then copy and paste the individual tracks onto it. It is also easy to add any duration of silence between tracks, such as a few seconds, if desired. Audacity is a truly fabulous audio software editor that can do lots of things, can accommodate various file formats, and works on various operating systems. Highly robust and easy to use once you get used to it (don't let the complicated-looking interface fool you). Moreover, it is open source and absolutely free!


Audacity if very good. I even used to to copy cassette tapes by connecting the earphone line from the tape player to the microphone input of my computer (male-male cord). Then I had to set up the interface I think in my Linux sound settings, not sure exactly, but I played the tape into Audacity and got an MP3 out of it.

I also use audacity to fix recordings if there is a little static blip, I can remove it sometimes without interrupting the flow of the music. Or you can remove excess applause at the end of a work. Lots of nice features. Can connect two tracks if they split mid-note, to make a more coherent track.

As for making one big MP3 file of an entire musical work, I would not do it because if you want to repeat the last movement it will be near impossible, where with individual tracks you can back up one track at a time.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

DaveM said:


> Likely Windows Media Player is the player when you play an MP3 in Windows My Music. To have one mp3 play after another, all you should have to do is click on Play All at the top of the opened folder.


Or create a playlist in media player. I don't use groove, but it also has a playlist feature.


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

I quite like MusicBee, which is free.
The key thing for classical music is gapless playback. Too many software solutions introduce a gap, and if you read a lot of reviews they are dominated by people listening to other genres where the gapless thing doesn't matter too much.
I also use mp3tag to edit the tags on mp3 (and other files, such as flac) to create "albums". mp3tag is also free. If you have a CD with 2 pieces of music on it each with 3 movements (say) then you can rip the CD (which MusicBee will do) and then edit the tags (using mp3tag) so that 3 files have the album tag of one piece, and 3 files have the album tag of the other piece. MusicBee will then regard them as separate albums, and you can choose which to play. It will play each one gapless within itself.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Since you're using Windows, you can try lots of different music players. I did a comparative review of many of them here. I've used Foobar2000 for donkey's years, but was very surprised to discover that, these days, if I was going to adopt a new music player, it would be MusicBee, not Foobar.

I don't recommend Windows Music Player at all (it likes to "update" your track metadata without asking and appears these days to be mostly Microsoft Abandonware... it doesn't have a great-looking future). VLC is an excellent multi-format video and audio player, but it is hopeless as a music library manager, so It's fine to listen to the odd track here and there, but isn't a long-term option for a truly versatile music player-manager. So that's why VLC isn't mentioned in my review. I also don't mention iTunes, because if you're not already bought into the Apple ecosystem, it's not worth getting sucked into it now: there are multiple free, open-source and non-proprietary ways of listening to music that don't require its walled garden approach.

If you are ever likely to run Linux of any description, then investing in a cross-platform player that can run on Windows and Linux equally well (i.e., natively) is important, and that would mean in my view that neither Foobar2000 nor MusicBee count (they are Windows-native only). My choice for a cross-platform player would then be Strawberry Music Player (which is a fork of Clementine), and runs native on both platforms.

If you are old-school Windows and like to use the command-line a lot, then you would do well to investigate Musikcube, which does the same sort of thing as Foobar2000 or MusicBee, but in a text-only environment that runs really fast!


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

Oh, and also with MusicBee you can set up multiple libraries. Hence, if you have a genre split, say classical versus non-classical, or orchestral versus opera versus XXX, etc, and you want to keep them separate then you can store the relevant files in different folders, and make MusicBee regard one folder as Library A and another as Library B, etc. Then, if you want to switch from looking at all your music of type A to all your music of type B you can just tell it to show you the correct library.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Eclectic Al said:


> Oh, and also with MusicBee you can set up multiple libraries. Hence, if you have a genre split, say classical versus non-classical, or orchestral versus opera versus XXX, etc, and you want to keep them separate then you can store the relevant files in different folders, and make MusicBee regard one folder as Library A and another as Library B, etc. Then, if you want to switch from looking at all your music of type A to all your music of type B you can just tell it to show you the correct library.


That's an excellent point -and not one I'd ever have thought of (because I only have classical music in my collection!), but could be the show-stopping deciding factor for many people. Good call!


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## Dorsetmike (Sep 26, 2018)

I use mixtape.exe, tell it how long a playlist you want, then specify genres, and names of folders containing the music, you can also specify artist and/or composer, I have 46 playlists of 3 hours each, genres from Baroque to jazz and swing, some lists a mix of genres others genre specific. The lists play all day from a dedicated PC through a Technics stereo system and speakers, if I just go through the lists in order it's about 10 - 12 days before a repeat, periodically I recompile the lists adding or removing tracks, changing the order etc.


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