Music player for Windows

[Nonno Bassotto]

I'm looking for a decent music player for Windows, but it seems I cannot find any. I have, I think, reasonable requirements.

1) It should be library based, and handle about 11000 songs.
2) It should play mp3 and ogg
3) It should have a SIMPLE interface, not too cluttered, and be easy to use, since it will be mainly used by my mom.
4) If possible, it should be nice to see, but this is not a must.

On Linux many players would satisfy these requirements: Listen, Ario, Rhythmbox, Exaile, Banshee, gMusicBrowser... On Windows I have tried so far:
Windows music player
Simple music player
Aqualung
MusikCube
JetAudio
Songbird
FooBar

but noone seems to satisfy my needs. Either the fail loading the library (Aqualaung, SimpleMP) or they are too complicated for the simple task of browsing and searching the library and listening to music (all the others). Among these, the best so far is MusikCube, but I'd like something even simpler and cleaner.

Something which does not rip CDs, play movies, browse online stores, buy tickets, and so on. Just play the music on my computer and maybe something related to it, like album art (which I already have on the disk) or lyrics.

I have also considered MediaMonkey and iTunes, but MediaMonkey looks to cluttered without even installing it, and iTunes... well, I do not trust the owners of iTMS to handle my music.

Do you have any suggestions?

[TheLions]

Winamp

[SuperSonic4]

Winamp
VLC can also handle audio

[2hot6ft2]

For windows I liked MediaMonkey enough to dish out the money for the full version which wasn't much for a lifetime of upgrades. I've used it for about 10 years now and it's still the best IMO. The only difference between the full and trial version is the fact the full version would keep track of the library and I had close to 20,000 mp3's at one time.

It can do a whole lot from organizing your tags to album art and organizing your files on your drive however you want them.

You can use winamps plugins with it too, jammix gave the sound a nice boost.

[Nonno Bassotto]

Winamp.... is it library based? My library is perfectly organized and tagged, so this is really important.

Mediamonkey looks too complicated. It organizes tags, burns CDs, download podcasts, has a visualizer, converts files... all of this is unuseful to me, and I think it will overwhelm my mother, who has a VERY basic familiarity with computers. Anyway, I'll have a look, thank you.

[Nonno Bassotto]

Maybe I should add a screenshot of how the perfect music player should look... http://ario-player.sourceforge.net/images/ario-main.png

[Nonno Bassotto]

I ended up with a heavily customized foobar2000, which I think is simple enough. Anyway I was not able to have the columns view together with the searching ability: it seems that if you want the columns view for your library (as in the screenshot above, opposed to the tree view) you have to change interface, and then you don't have the searching facility anymore. :(

Anyway, if anyone has some suggestion, I may change idea, just let me know. :)

[NoSmokingBandit]

You can run Ario on windows.
Install the GTK+ runtime for windows:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=71914&package_id=255391&release_id=561910
And grab the msi installer from Ario's website.

see:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a93/canada2113/Picture1-28.jpg

[Nonno Bassotto]

Yes, but Ario is a MPD frontend, so the difficult part is installing MPD on Windows. If there is any simple way to do this, I'd be glad to know.

[EnGorDiaz]

I'm looking for a decent music player for Windows, but it seems I cannot find any. I have, I think, reasonable requirements.

1) It should be library based, and handle about 11000 songs.
2) It should play mp3 and ogg
3) It should have a SIMPLE interface, not too cluttered, and be easy to use, since it will be mainly used by my mom.
4) If possible, it should be nice to see, but this is not a must.

On Linux many players would satisfy these requirements: Listen, Ario, Rhythmbox, Exaile, Banshee, gMusicBrowser... On Windows I have tried so far:
Windows music player
Simple music player
Aqualung
MusikCube
JetAudio
Songbird
FooBar

but noone seems to satisfy my needs. Either the fail loading the library (Aqualaung, SimpleMP) or they are too complicated for the simple task of browsing and searching the library and listening to music (all the others). Among these, the best so far is MusikCube, but I'd like something even simpler and cleaner.

Something which does not rip CDs, play movies, browse online stores, buy tickets, and so on. Just play the music on my computer and maybe something related to it, like album art (which I already have on the disk) or lyrics.

I have also considered MediaMonkey and iTunes, but MediaMonkey looks to cluttered without even installing it, and iTunes... well, I do not trust the owners of iTMS to handle my music.

Do you have any suggestions?

songbird search it up in google very very nice media player very customizeable

[NoSmokingBandit]

Yes, but Ario is a MPD frontend, so the difficult part is installing MPD on Windows. If there is any simple way to do this, I'd be glad to know.

Im not exactly sure what you mean by this :D
I installed the gtk runtime then the MSI and everything works perfectly, i have all the features you requested in post #1, and it has the great gui you posted. Im not sure what we are missing here, tbh.

[Nonno Bassotto]

songbird search it up in google very very nice media player very customizeable

SongBird is the exact opposite of what I'm looking for. Full of unuseful features and with an overwhelming and messy interface :)

EDIT: mmmh, I may have to reconsider this. It looks like Songbird has made big steps in usability...

[Nonno Bassotto]

Im not exactly sure what you mean by this :D
I installed the gtk runtime then the MSI and everything works perfectly, i have all the features you requested in post #1, and it has the great gui you posted. Im not sure what we are missing here, tbh.

Well, does it... play music? :D
Ario is just an interface, the program actually playing the music is MPD, and this is quite difficult to install on Windows. It may be that the Windows version of Ario is actually standalone, but I don't think so.

[Bungo Pony]

Winamp, but get an older version. I've found that the newer versions crash a lot and enjoy nagging you about updates. I'm running v2.80 and it's solid as a rock. I currently have almost 3000 songs loaded into it.

[Nonno Bassotto]

This leads again to my question. Is winamp library based? Last time I checked (with older versions) it was similar to XMMP.

[NoSmokingBandit]

The last time i used winamp (5.2 i think, although i really have no idea) all you had to do was tell it where your music is and it would find it right away. I've always used MusikCube though, its light, i can sync it to a folder, and doesnt get in my way. Its the best, imo.

[Frak]

Still say foobar2000

[L8erG8er]

I use VLC on Windows (work machine) so that I can play some of my .oggs off of a thumbdrive. VLC works great on Windows.

[Phreaker]

Definitely foobar2000

[Nonno Bassotto]

I wonder if people actualy read the first post, or they just name their favourite media player... :(

[cammin]

This leads again to my question. Is winamp library based? Last time I checked (with older versions) it was similar to XMMP.

Winamp has a media library with album art and whatnot.

I never use it so I can't tell you how well it works.

[sobakasu]

Hmm, how about Billy (http://www.sheepfriends.com/?page=billy) (beware, extreme simplicity ahead)?

I don't remember if it's got an actual library, though...