Help needed with MP3 file of the Baron Collins-Hill alb

[stringalong]

I downloaded
https://mandobaron.bandcamp.com/album/old-time-mandolin

I am having a technical download issue with the MP3 file of this Baron Collins-Hill album. I downloaded it and unzippped it. It is in my PC computer Downloads file. I copied/pasted to my desktop, and from there was able to put the whole album successfully into Windows Media Player, where I made a Playlist. BUT each tune has its own icon on my desktop now. As you can imagine, that's a bit of a mess on my desktop. Windows Media Player works fine when these icons are still on my desktop. But I deleted them all off the desktop, and that disabled the Playlist in Windows Media Player. So I had to go through the routine again, and now every tune in the album is again sitting on my desktop. These are said to be MP3 files. Has Frosty or anyone found a way I can put this album into my Amazon Music MP3 collection?

[OneChordTrick]

Rather than unzipping it from your desktop move it to the My Music folder and unzip it there. I “think” (I’m a Mac user, not windows) that when you play them in Media Player it looks for them where you launched them from rather than moving them so when you deleted them from the desktop they had been removed from Media Player as well.

Hope that makes sense? It’s late here....

[James Miller]

I keep my music in one central location on the I drive/partition.

I:\Music
I:\Music\Butch Baldassari\Mandolin Hymns
I:\Music\Butch Baldassari\Appalachian Mandolin & Dulcimer
I:\Music\Butch Baldassari\Travellers
I:\Music\Compilations\Christmas Grass - The Collection
I:\Music\David Hudson\Didgeralia
I:\Music\David Hudson\Gudju Gudju
I:\Music\David Hudson\Yigi Yigi

And so forth. I try to keep the main Artist's name as their root folder and their albums under them in their own folders. With 40GB of music I needed order. Singles go straight to the Artist's folder. Compilations are albums with many mixed Artists. Sometimes this keeps iTunes happy. (That's another story.)

Hope that helps?

[stringalong]

Thank you, OneChordTrick and also James. I followed OneChordTrick's instructions and it worked perfectly! James, my music is in My Music, and I play it in Windows Media Player, except for the MP3 files which are in Amazon Music. So mine are organized that way.

[OneChordTrick]

Happy to help

[stringalong]

OneChordTrick and others, Something is goofy about my computer or my Windows Media Player. Sometimes tunes get corrupted and won't play. Even my computer guru does not know what to do. At first, the Baron album tunes all played after I put them into My Music, but then several of them got corrupted and I had to resort to the only thing that (so far) works, namely copy them to the desktop and then play them in Windows Media Player. I moved all the tunes to a remote corner of the desktop. It's strange that that particular download is so troublesome, but oh, well, for now all the tunes play okay.

[James Miller]

When was the last time you updated your virus and malware definitions and run a scan? And on that note, if you do not have a solid state drive, have you defragmented your drive? Pending that I would also run a disc scan to see if the drive has bed sectors or is about to fail.

Back them music and important files to a large capacity flashdrive and keep backed up.

[stringalong]

Dear James, I just wrote to my computer guy to ask if he'd done those things to my computer last month. He took it into his shop and worked on it then. Now I am scared. I do have a separate hard drive backup.

[James Miller]

It is always good to back up your data, especially the important items. Documents, music, pictures. Is a good idea to backup music & documents to a flashdrive and store that some place that is secured.

Is also best to keep a backup of your hard drive saved to DVD or another drive, so one can recover from an image. Acronis TrueImage is a good hard drive/partition backup program. Sometimes Western Digital or Seagate have their versions of this for free, and also diagnostics software. Lot of this stuff is fairly geeky, but having a more recent backup is a life saver.

[stringalong]

Dear James, thank you for this information. I try to be as careful as I know how to be, with backup. I am not a geek, but have a specialist that helps me out. For a whopping fee, I might add. I sent this information you've provided to him to see what he says I have, don't have, need, or don't need. I have a separate hard drive for backup. It's my understanding that it does not back up programs, only data. I'm going to check there and see if My Music is on it. What about Amazon Music, my MP3 files? That's online.

[stringalong]

James, again, I truly appreciate your advice! Very kind of you, very generous of your knowledge. I don't expect you to be there for all or even most of my questions, but here's what I know. I checked my backup hard drive, and My Music and all the files are in there. I turn on the backup hard drive every day, back up my files to it, and then turn it off so that if any bad things get into my computer, they won't infect that. About 3 weeks ago, my computer guy found a lot of things wrong with my computer. He took it to his home shop and fixed it. He said the files in the backup hard drive were not affected, but I don't know how he can be so sure of that. I wonder if the corrupted music files that keep happening mean a need a new computer. I hope not. But something is going on with either Windows Media Player or some of the My Music files.

[Ivan Kelsall]

I have a lot of music tracks in MP3 format which i downloaded from the I/net. When i do that (not very often these days - i prefer a 'link' to the music & play it on it's website.),the way my own PC is set up,is that when i select 'download',i'm always asked where the file is to be downloaded to - i have a ' Music Downloads' sub-folder in the ''My Music'' folder. All my music is downloaded to that one place. Having no knowledge of ''Amazon Music'' - is any music downloaded from an Amazon site automatically placed in an ''Amazon Folder'' ?.

As for the desktop icons,if you make a new desktop folder ie. ''Old Time Mandolin'',you should be able to move the single icons to that folder, & then move the entire folder to a space on your hard drive.
This is my 'My Music' folder. The 'Practice tunes' folder is just one of many. ALL my music is played via. Windows Media Player. I use a 16GB Flash drive to back up my music files,
Ivan

[James Miller]

Hard to say from this end what is going on. If it is just music files and nothing else I would suspect defragmentation issues. If you have issues with files vanishing, not being able to load, or getting corrupted, it would be time to replace the hard drive.
You would not need to buy a whole new computer if it a hard drive issue. However, reinstalling the OS and all them programs again can take some time if your computer tech did not do a proper image backup - which he should have done if he's worth his salt.

You should backup all your music files though, even if they are "online." Less of a headache later on. Having a master backup saved to a flashdrive, and a periodic backup over time is a good thing to do.

Depends upon how the backup software determines changes in files as to whether there is cause to be alarmed. There are so many programs out there and each has their own comparison algorithm that there is no easy answer without knowing your system.

You could try downloading Media Player again and trying a Repair option when installing over what you have. That might work and save some lost playlists. Usually is best to make copy of playlists, uninstall the software, reboot, and install the software again, copy the playlists back and see if the issue remains.
You could also recover your music files to see if that helps. Hope you're not having a potential hard drive failure.

Some people have even gone to using solid state drives. They have a different method of defragmenting and normal defragmenters should not be used on SSD drives. As a general rule SSDD do not have the issues that hard drives do. Then too SSDD also cost LOTS more than a hard disk drive (HDD) does ... thus why many still use HDD over SSDD. SSDD is basically a large flashdrive that is optimized for read/write speed.

[stringalong]

Dear Ivan and James, Thanks to both of you for the information and ideas. I'm sending your comments/recommendations to my computer guy. I think he must be on vacation this week, since he has not written back yet. I like Ivan's idea about a new folder on my desktop to put the Baron files in. As for moving it to My Music, I already did move these Baron files to My Music and when I tried to play them in Windows Media Player, they were corrupted.

[Ivan Kelsall]

If the files are corrupt,then IMO,they were downloaded that way. I can't think of any 'on board' PC software that would corrupt music files. Just in case you haven't already done so,check ''Autoplay'' in your Control panel. This is how mine are set up :-

I just noticed that although i haven't selected WMP to play ''Audio Files'' - they do actually play with WMP.

One thing to do,is to select one of the 'corrupt' MP3's,right click on it & select 'properties'. Look at the description. It should 'describe' the file as an ''MP3 Format Sound (mp3)'' & say which type of player will play it ie. ''Opens with Windows Media Player'' :-

I think that you can simply right click on an MP3 & select 'which' player you use without going into the Control Panel. ALL mp3's will then become playable with WMP automatically. So,you could try selecting an mp3 which will already play,right click on it > Properties > Opens with & select WMP to see if that automatically re-sets the corrupt files - it's worth a try.

There are other 'music players' available for free download ie.VLC player & others,so you could try one of those. If they don't work,just un-install them. :- https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.en-GB.html
Media Player Lite :- http://www.mediaplayerlite.net/

Window Media Player usually comes ''built-in'' if you're using Microsoft Windows,but it can be downloaded from here :- https://windows-media-player-11.en.s...c.com/download
Just make sure that you select the correct version for your PC,& check for unwanted ''add-ons'' which you can usually de-select,


Ivan

[stringalong]

Dear Ivan, Thanks for this tip. My computer guy worked remotely for my computer yesterday. Turns out the files from Baron Collins-Hill were not corrupt at all. Somehow, some of them had not been put (by me) into My Music file folder. He explained to me how to be sure to always make a folder for any new download and put it in My Music, but I'm not sure I really understand what he means/how to do that. Next month I'm going to rip a CD and have him guide me through the process.

[Freya7733]

You can try to download your favorite songs from Amazon Music with Tunelf Amatune Audio Converter, it can Preserve Prime Music with ID3 Tags for Easy Management.

[dang]

This is great! A 3+ year old rather esoteric thread and a throwback helpful post from Ivan!
The occurrence of a first post with some odd capitalization of specific product phrases does make me wonder, but hey, welcome to the cafe!