Windows – How to delete music as it’s being played

audiomusicwindows media player

I have huge old collections of music that I'd like to whittle down by listening through and deleting those I don't want to keep. Currently, my process for doing so is this:

  • Open the folder containing my music files and play one

  • Listen to it in a player and determine that it's low quality and needs to be deleted

  • Minimise the player and maximise the folder containing my music files

  • Right-click and delete the file

  • Repeat process for every single music file in the folder

As you can see, this is incredibly unproductive when trying to organise large collections because it requires constantly switching between the music player and the filesystem.

I currently use Windows Media Player for playing music and MPC-HC for playing video.

Is it possible to use either of these players to delete music from within the player itself, while it's being played, and then simply have it skip to the next track in the playlist/queue?

If it's not at all possible with either one of these players, is there an alternative that will let me do so?

Best Answer

Windows Media Player has an option to allow this. Go to Organize -> Options -> Library and check the option Delete files from computer when deleted from library

Windows media player Delete files from computer when deleted from library option

This option requires your music files to be part of Windows Media Player's library which by default means they need to be located in your user's Music folder (%UserProfile%\Music). If your music is stored elsewhere you can either move the files into your music folder, or add their location to WMP's library paths using Organize -> Manage Libraries -> Music.

With the option above enabled, you can now play your music from WMP's library and when you find a song you want to remove, just select it and press Delete. Playback will stop and the file will be deleted (to the recycle bin). To play the next song, simply press Enter. Alternatively, press CTRL+F before deleting the current song to start playing the next song, then press Delete

Note that WMP has a playlists feature that is visible as a side-bar (shown/hidden by the Play tab). This is separate from the library and unaffected by the obtion above. For the above option to work you need to select and delete the song from the library view, not the playlist view.

This method works in both Windows 7 and Windows 10.

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