LinuxQuestions.org - music player / metadata editor

i'm new to linux so please forgive any ignorance but i'm looking for a music player. my metadata is a mess so i would like to be able to open several files from within a file manager (e.g. nautilus) and have them automatically populate into a 'currently playing' playlist. Alternatively, i would like to start the application and use the 'open file' command to open several files and have them automatically populate into a playlist. this is one of the few functionalities i miss from windows.

EDIT: what i mean is that i want to use the folder hierarchy rather than the metadata to sort my music

I have tried Totem, Mplayer, Real player, Rhythmbox, XMMS and VLC and only Totem allows me to do this. unfortunately it's not very good as it doesn't have an equaliser and it seems to shutdown randomly pretty regularly.

Alternatively, i could clean up my metadata and use something like Rhythmbox. Rhythmbox allows me to do this but only by searching for the file through the already existing metadata. What i need to do is find the file through the folder hierarchy (i.e. open my 'various artists' folder) and change the metadata from there. I would definitely take this route if there was something out there that could take the filename and populate that into 'title', take the folder name and populate that into 'album' and take the next folder higher up the hierarchy tree and populate that into 'artist' for a whole bunch of selected music; i.e. if i input .../various_artists/dance/somedancetrack.mp3 then it would change the metadata to
Title: somedancetrack
Album: dance
Artist: various_artists

also, i need to be able to play wma files as unfortunately a fair amount of my stuff is in this format and i can't rip them again due to a rather annoying theft incident.

i would be eternally grateful for any assistance you can give!

Edit: i should say i'm running Gnome on ubuntu 6.06 on a dual boot acer laptop. let me know if i should offer more info on my setup