I just spent forever looking for where your LOOP PLAYBACK button/setting is and can’t find it. It should be in the playback toolbar.
All audio editors and most players have a simple LOOP PLAYBACK button. Is it really possible Audacity does not???
It’s not the same to set how many times to repeat in effects.
There should be a simple button that stays on or off and allows people like me who want to edit files with playback looping continuously without extra effort to set each file. 
This is dangerously close to executing and changing effects in real time. We can’t do that, either.
Koz
You have got to be kidding. All it does is turn on looped playback on and off just like Sound Forge, Windows Media Player, Wavosaur and just about every other player editor.
Shift + Play button
or
Shift + Space
(See: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/transport_toolbar.html#play)
Right. On every other program it is an on/off button close to the PLAY button not a two step process you need to remember each time you play a loop.
You are making us musicians who use loops do extra steps (assuming we remember shift + space). Not friendly.
I don’t understand why this is something you are fighting against doing. Making it easier to play files and just have them loop without contorting your fingers to do shift + space…
Simple transport button on/off for looping is what modern programs have.
Oh well… I can only try to help you.
i would also favour a loop button, as shift + space starts playback from the beginning of the track but not from the position of the cursor on. how can this be achieved easily (without marking a passage)?
“Every” other program 
The new version of Audacity (2.1.1) was released today, and has some nice new features that I hope will be particularly useful for musicians (I’m a musician), See: Audacity Manual
the new features are very useful, thank you.
but i think a global loop button on the other hand would have been much more prominent so to prevent future requests for it once and for all 
I’ve added votes for you (ledestin) and audionerd on the “Feature Requests” page of the wiki for “Separate loop-play button”.
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Feature_Requests#New.2FModified_Toolbars_or_Menus
Moved to “Adding Features”.
A loop button would probably play from the beginning of the track too, given SHIFT-click on the Play button does that, unless we decided that a dedicated Loop button would not do the same as SHIFT-click on Play.
There is a good consensus that Loop (initiated by SHIFT-click on the Play button or SHIFT + SPACE) should play from the cursor, so I think we will make that change in the not too distant future.
There is less consensus if loop should loop the whole track cursor-to-cursor, or loop from cursor to track end. Slightly more votes have been cast in favour of cursor to track end.
Does anyone else want to vote on that point who has not yet done so?
Gale
If its one or the other, I would vote for looping the whole track from the cursor position, (though I’m not convinced that we need a dedicated loop play button now that we have the Quick Play loop features).
The “use case” for looping the whole track is that it enables the user to check that a long loop loops correctly without having to wait for the entire track to play. What is the use case for looping between the cursor and the end of the track?
You already have voted (already counted and now recorded on the Wiki Feature Requests).
I think it’s that you don’t then have to draw a selection, only place the cursor?
Gale
OK, but what’s the job? Why would a user want to loop between the cursor position to the end of the track? What does that facilitate that cannot be achieved by just pressing the spacebar when play reached the end of the track?
@gale: the new timeline feature ‘‘do not scroll while playing’’ is awesome (for cutting) in combination with shift looping & start playback from cursor.
so why not make the shift-loop button a drop down menu including these options and the possibility to also choose between the method of shift-looping (entire track / cursor to end)? this would be supreme and in the end all are happy
@steve: thanks for adding my vote.
You should look at Wavosaur and how it handles loops and loop playback. It’s not as good in other areas but is very loop friendly as well as having SLICING and EXPORT options that are valuable for editing loops and samples.
If there is a selection that should loop - otherwise it would loop whole file if no election.
What we’re trying to do is to avoid over-bloating the Transport Toolbar.
You can loop play (not from the cursor) but by making a selection and the invoking loop play - the selection will then be looped.
You can create your own single-key shortcut for loop-play - see this page in the Manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/keyboard_preferences.html
WC
You can’t listen continuously if you have to press SPACE.
Gale
Actually I would like to see a Preferences layout for more, smaller buttons on Transport Toolbar.
Shortcuts are fine, but not everyone can always remember them easily (or discover them in the first place).
I agree that Wavosaur’s transport buttons are quite useful.
Gale
For those that like buttons, it could be good if more (all?) the toolbars were customizable.
For example,
Yes absolutely. View > Toolbars > Customize… as in a web browser.
Gale