The music on our website is in RealAudio format (it has the extension *.rm or *.ram). Therefore, you should use the RealPlayer to listen to it. Theoretically, the RealPlayer should automatically launch when you click on a link to a RealAudio or RealVideo file, but this doesn't always happen. Here are some of the possible reasons:

(1) The most obvious reason -- You don't have the RealPlayer. To get it, you must visit the Real website at www.real.com and download the free version (you can also download the pay version, but it won't give you any advantages over the free one with our audio files). Save it to your hard drive, and then double click on the file to launch the installer. Keep that installer file, because it may be necessary at some point in the future to re-install.

(2) Maybe you have the RealPlayer, but it's not automatically launching when you click on *.rm and *.ram files. This means that your computer has been told at some point that these files are to be opened up using some other player. In your case, it's the Windows Media player. This is what's known as "file association": You computer "associates" RealAudio files with the Windows Media player.

A file misassociation can occur for a number of reasons. The main reason is that when you install something, it hijacks the association of files from another player. For example, if you installed (or upgraded) the Windows Media player *after* installing your RealPlayer, the WM player might have hijacked the association from the Real Player. A couple of years ago, it was common practice for the various different players to do this without asking you, but they must have upset a lot of people, because nowadays these players ask you which files to associate before installing. The lesson here is this: When installing an audio or video player, it will ask you about file associations. Always pay close attention when you reach this point, and don't let it take anything other than files in its own native format.

Ok, so let's say it's too late and you do have a bad association. What do you do about it? Well, the easiest thing to do is reinstall the RealPlayer. It may seem like overkill, but it never hurts to reinstall, it keeps you current on the latest version of the player, and it gives you a chance to take back the correct associations (just make sure that the Real Player doesn't try to hijack Windows Media files or QT files). There is a way to get into the inner workings of your computer and fix the associations yourself, but I won't bother getting into that uless you specifically ask me to. It's a little bit more complex.

You'd think that if Windows Media was going to hijack the association of a specific non-native file type, it would at least have the courtesy to be able to play it. Well, you'd think so, but that isn't always the case, unfortunately. This is why we always recommend that you keep current on your audio and video players, watch your file associations, and always play the files with the player that you're supposed to.

Last thing: If you're wondering what you need to view files on our website (and on the web in general), here's a quick list: Quicktime Player (www.apple.com/quicktime), Windows Media Player (www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia), RealPlayer (www.real.com), Adobe Acrobat Reader (www.adobe.com), and the Flash Player (www.macromedia.com). These are the essentials.

I hope this fixes the problem for you. If not, let me know and we'll look into it further. Actually, let me know what happens either way... I like to hear success stories, too!

Sincerely,
Jonathan Atkinson
www.ballroomdancers.com