If you are a Windows OS User and a music fan, chances are you using the Windows Media player to manage your music collection. Windows Media Player was basically just a player before the WMP version 9 was launched. Since then it has incorporated several features which make it an excellent Music Library Management tool. The WMP version 10 and version 11 have even more effective management options with the option to synchronize your external music devices like the Zune and your Cell phones, specially the Windows Mobile.

For some other external devices like a Nokia Smartphone you have to go through a few steps to setup the Sync with the Windows Media Player. The advantage is that your music and especially the playlists stay synchronized with your phone.  We discuss these steps below.

Setting up and connecting your Phone with Windows Media Player:

You first need to connect your cell phone to the computer via a USB cable. If you have connected it for the first time, the computer will install the necessary drivers for your phone.

Nokia Driver installation to sync with Windows Media Player

Once the drivers are installed depending upon your cell phone model you would get a few options on the phone screen. Before selecting any option from this screen open your Windows Media Player.

Sync WMP with Nokia S60 Phone

On the phone screen screen you need to select the “Media Player” option. For Windows Media Player 11, this goes smoothly, but for Windows Media Player 10 you may need to select the Data transfer option. At times WMP 10 doesn’t recognize the Media Player option from the phone.

Once we have selected the Media Player option on your phone, view the Windows Media Player on your computer. If you have synchronized your phone with any other computer you would get this screen.

Media Player and Nokia Symbian Device Setup

You can either select to sync your phones music collection just once or permanently. If you select to sync permanently, Media Player gives you an option to remove all the media from the phone and start a fresh sync or keep the existing phone data and just sync new data from Windows Media Player.

The final step is to name your device and finish the setup.

Media Player Device Setup - Step 2

Once you have finished this process, you would get a brand new section on the left hand side of Windows Media Player that would display your newly setup device.You can see this device section in the image below.

Data sync setup between your phone and Windows Media Player:

  Start the Sync between Media Player and Nokia

Right click on your device name and click the setup the sync option. Windows Media Players then displays a window where you can select which songs or playlists you want to synchronize.

Device Sync Setup

Here you can also select the option to sync this device automatically, every time its connected to the computer. Once you select the Music or Playlists that you want to sync, click finish. If the option “All Music” is selected, your entire music collection from the computer will sync with the external device. Depending upon the storage capacity of your device and the number or songs you are synching it can take some time for the sync to complete.

The image below displays the Playlist “Rockers” being synced with my phone. The first song is already on the device, hence it is skipped.

Ongoing Sync with Mobile and Windows Media Player

You can see the progress in the Sync screen also on the controls bar you would see the percentage of sync done.

Sync Progress at right bottom corner

You can always stop the sync by clicking the Stop Sync button at the bottom of the playlist.

Advantage of synchronizing your music data with your phone:

The major advantage of keeping your playlists in sync is if you use WMP regularly, the changes and additions that you make on the computer would automatically transfer to your phone.So no need to create that almost perfect “Rockers” playlist yet again in the phone.

Just sync the playlist from your computer and enjoy the music you like on your phone, as you enjoy it on your computer.

Although this is a fairly simple process, if you get stuck at any point, feel free to ask questions about it in comments below.