Manage Your MP3 Player Using RealPlayer: Introduction

Apple's iPod is far-and-away the number one digital audio player on the market today, and while this is largely due to the iPod's cool styling and ease of use, it's undeniable that iTunes - Apple's easy-to-use music management software - is one of the primary reasons the iPod continues to be a consumer favorite. With iTunes, you can easily move audio to your iPod, create and edit playlists, and generally manage your audio collection, all from one screen. Audio players from companies like iRiver, SanDisk and Creative provide excellent audio performance, equal to or greater than that of the iPod, but because Microsoft hasn't been able (or willing) to produce to an easy-to-use, iTunes-like application for managing music, many users are frustrated when it comes to actually getting music on their player.

Windows Media Player, Microsoft's clunky go-to audio software, is the official Microsoft equivalent to iTunes, but it leaves much to be desired. Fortunately, another company in the digital audio game has done a much better job creating a more iTunes-like experience - and surprisingly, that company is Real Networks.


To be honest, I've always hated RealPlayer, Real Networks' well-known jukebox software. When you install it, it tries to take over every file association, pushes you to install extras that clog your system and generally annoys the hell out of you. That said, if you install RealPlayer carefully, and painstakingly force it not to do all of the annoying things it tries to, RealPlayer offers a surprisingly user-friendly MP3 player management interface, one that's closer to iTunes than Windows Media Player has dreamed of being.

In this tutorial, or rather, set of five tutorials, I'll show you how to use RealPlayer to manage your non-iPod MP3 player like a pro. Once you learn the ropes, if you're anything like me, you'll use RealPlayer over Windows Media Player every time .