Just to be clear: You are not talking about the Play button (
1) but about the Play entrie in the right click (
2) menue, I guess?!
For the Play button (
1) selecting the option to "Play playing now" should work. If this option is set, hitting the play button doesn't do anything but playing the playing ow list.
The selection doesn't effect the behaivor of right click on a file -> Play (
2). Selecting
2 allways replaces all files in playing now by the selected onces. No chance to change this, I think.
A (really dirty) workaround:Go to "
X:\[aplication folder]\Data\Languages\", copy the folder containig the language you use into the folder and rename it somehow e.g. "
English (modified)". Then open the .xml file in your new folder. Leave the first two lines ("
Play/Pause" and its subline) as they are and the third line ("
Play"). Replace the content of the fourth line (if you use english as language it's the second "
#!" with a simple ".". Now, if you select "Tools -> Languages -> English (modified)" in MC instead of "Play" you'll allway see a dot. I guess this doesn't bother anyone, but it will effect that nobody choses "play" in the right click menue again, but double click the files.
I'm not sure, if this works for you (even I don't know if it would for me), because I'm not sure if all users who don't now MC will use a double click or drag&drop the songs they want to listen to to the right location... but I don't see an other way to "protect" playing now of getting wiped the way you described.
For some easier use you may search the xml-file for "
Add (Play Now)" and replace the following line (in the english language it is "
#!") with "
Play". Now be sure to have set "Tools -> Options -> Tree&View -> Advanced -> Right click recent command count: x" to "3" or something higher than "1". Then,
after doing this two steps, and before your party starts, right click some file and select "Send to -> . -> Play". Doing this should make the "Play" command stay at the top of the right click menu for your party, which now correctly means "Add (Play Now)".