I’m happy to say that getting .flac files playing in Windows Media Player wasn’t actually all that difficult. Still, there seems to be some confusion regarding the process and everything I’ve read online makes it out to be more difficult than it needs to be. So I thought I’d write a quick guide that I’m hoping will have a better signal-to-noise ratio than what’s already out there. I suspect the instructions I’m providing here work equally as well on some older versions of Windows Media Player, though I’ve only tested this out on version 12 and your mileage may vary.

The short version of getting .flac files to play in Windows Media Player 12

1. Close Windows Media Player 12.
2. Go to http://xiph.org/dshow/ and download the Windows 32-bit Installer of the codecs. Do this, regardless of whether you have a 32 or 64-bit operating system. Install it.
3. Restart your computer.
4. Open Windows Media Player 12.
5. Try opening one of your .flac files through Windows Media Player 12.

If at this point you’ve got your .flac files playing through Windows Media Player, then rejoice in whatever way you see fit (if you lack imagination, a cheque in the mail would be fine). If your .flac files aren’t playing, then by the power vested in me by my Works On My Machine certificate, I hereby abdicate myself of all responsibility for your stuff not working and redirect you back to Google to seek further assistance.

So you’ve got your .flac files playing, but they’re not showing up in your media library. Fear not! There’s an emacs command a plugin for that!

Getting your .flac files to show up in Windows Media Player 12 library

1. Close Windows Media Player 12
2. Go to http://www.softpointer.com/WMPTagSupport.htm and download the tag support plugin. Install it.
3. Restart your computer.
4. Open Windows Media Player 12.
5. Reimport your music library.

Now the last step there, “reimporting” your music library – I don’t know of any new fan dangle way of doing this and if a “reimport” button does exist then I sure haven’t found it. The way I “reimport” my music library is to first remove all of my library folders (press Ctrl + M to show the menu bar and then go File > Manage Libraries > Music and remove all of the library location folders that you keep your music in). Then I add my music folders back again; believe it or not, using the “Add…” button. This should force Windows Media Player to repopulate your music library, this time including any .flac files.

And really that’s all there is to it. Now you can play your .flac files through Windows Media Player and even access them through the media player library.

For those interested, here’s a few quick notes on some of the things I glossed over in the instructions:

• I’ve recommended restarting your computer after installing both the codecs and the library tag plugin. You might actually be able to get away without doing any restarts. The only reason I recommend restarting your computer is that when I installed the codecs/library tag plugin, Windows Media Player froze on me when I tried to pause one of the .flac files I was listening to. I suspect this was caused by having not restarted my computer after installing the codecs, although I could be wrong.
• I’ve said to download the 32-bit version of the codecs, regardless of whether you have a 32 or 64-bit operating system. If you have a 32-bit version of Windows, of course this makes sense. If you have a 64-bit version of Windows, then your computer actually has two versions of Windows Media Player installed on it; a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. The thing is, by default, Windows uses the 32-bit version of Windows Media Player whenever you launch it and not the 64-bit version (I don’t know for sure why, but I imagine it’s to do with some aspect of compatibility). The 64-bit version of the codecs don’t work with the default (32-bit) version of Windows Media Player.