Is Windows Media Player Doomed?

Is Windows Media Player Doomed? ~ Chris PirilloAbout five years ago I made the switch from Windows Media Player to . WMP Jukebox pages for each song on Tuxedo Junction (there are many) because I came chris.pirillo.com/2007/07/ 26/is-windows-media-player-doomed/

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Chris,

You should give KMPlayer a strong look see.

I swear by it:

http://www.kmplayer.com/forums/index.php

Wondered if you looked at the latest version of JetAudio, Cowon Media Center.

JetAudio as before does not come with as many plugins as WinAmp but had/has more basic features installed. Before there seemed to be 2-3 popups in the free version when you started the program, Today with this version may one the first time you start it, appeared promoting their hardware player.

For free, they need to make an income somewhere. And if other users might be interested in their mp3 player, other programs do it right at the beginning so we never notice, this occurs a step into the program startup so it is more noticeable.

Their is a paid version which ads higher quality mp3 conversion and a few other features. But the basic JetAudio provides most of the basic features needed.

Finally for those that had used JetAudio in the past this version does not include jetCast, which has not been updated in several years.

But take a look at this version of JetAudio and let me know what you think.

UncleDoug

I like Media Monkey; loads quickly; rips quickly; it has nice integration with Amazon and FreeDB for getting hold of track listings and/or album art. I don’t know whether it replaces the WMP codecs though…

I have an extensive MP3 collection and use WMP 11 with absolutely no problems. The MP3 files play and sound just fine. Plus the sync function works great with my Sandisk MP3 player. I’ve tried a few other media players but WMP works best for me.

But you can always use iTunes to manage and listen to your MP3 files if you want to stay away from WMP.

I know this is unhelpful, but Winamp Pro is the best. And you really shouldn’t use anything but LAME to encode MP3s at 192Kb VBR (–presetstandard). Winamp Pro makes this easy. So it’s owned by AOL, so what?

IMHO, WMP and iTunes both suck. And is there anything else on Windows even vaguely worth considering apart from Winamp?

iTunes 7.3 works great with your iPhone, baby!

I tried winamp….many many years ago and was not impressed with it at all either. WMP10 was not much better so I went with Itunes. Its not the fastest program (on XP) but it gets the job done. Its simple and to the point, thats all i really want.

Try Xion. It’s skinnable!

http://xion.r2.com.au/

Like you I dislike WMP. for generally the same reasons I also dislike iTunes. I don’t share your dislike for and happily use Winamp for playing mp3s. Because of the range of skins available, I don’t understand why you say you don’t like the look of Winamp. Perhaps oddly because of my dislike of WMP, my current skin of choice is one which looks like WMP 10 and minimizes to the top like WMP. So I get the look of WMP without the drawbacks.

However, I don’t use Winamp for ripping CDs. I use Audiograbber (http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/ ) because, once set, it keeps ripping to the set format and my applied file naming convention. This means that generally my children can just put theit CDs in the tray, wait for the online database to be interrogated and rip. In order to rip to MP3, you have to install an MP3 decoder such as LAME, details available on Audiograbber’s download page.

Occasionally, I need to reorganise the formatting of the info, either because the people inputting onto the database have not followed the normal conventions or because my children have bought and downloaded a file which uses a different file naming convention to my preferred one. To sort this out I use MP3tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/).

Have you tried Zoom Player ?

Please give Cowon jetAudio a try!… I remember once Cnet compared jetAudio to WinAmp and jetAudio came on top.

Maybe VideoLan is good for you
http://www.videolan.org/

It has codec for everything.

Try BSplayer from Webteh. It is slim, support almost every codec in the world (both audio and video), it’s not memory or CPU hungry and very easy to use.

What about the Media Monkey Player?

i have also been faced with the unfortunate need to migrate away from musicmatch of late, and have been enjoying using songbird, a program built on mozilla. it works mostly like itunes but with very good web features built in. also, moving from the closed system that was musicmatch, i was delighted to see it has extensions not unlike musicmatch. it hasnt hit 1.0 though yet, so you might want to hold off.

Stick with MMJP.

I also am a premium subscriber and received the ‘aquisition’ email a few weeks ago but as long as you dont download the upgrade MMjp works great – and will continue to be the best mp3 cd player out there.

Just backup your download of the application as I’m sure they are killing all the old download links as we speak but apart from that you can continue to use it (and the cd lookup service for mp3 rips) for a long time into the future.

Cheers,
Dean Collins
http://www.Collins.net.pr/blog

Chris,

I have recently been using foobar2000 audio player. It supports WMA, MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, OGG, AAC, and more. I did not realize/remember that AOL/Time Warner owned WinAMP. :/

Downside, It’s just not an all-in-one player. But then again, I prefer VLC media player for video.

When I was still on a PC I liked WinAmp quite a bit. It’s free, so you don’t have to worry about putting money in AOL’s hands, and I was always happy with the equalizer and sound quality. I miss it; I think iTunes is teh suck (the equalizer bites). If anyone has Mac suggestions, *I’m* listening.

you can play and rip mp3 files with windows media player, with the newest version 10, but also version 9. on vista and xp…
you simple change the default setting to mp3 once, never again wma pops up.

I have been embedding Windows Media Player (WMP) into Tuxedo Junction’s web pages for more than five years now. Tuxedo Junction is located at:

http://www.tuxjunction.net/

WMP is a popular MP3 player and often pre-installed on new computers, making it easy for my site visitors to use.

When I launched Tuxedo Junction, a big band site, in October 2000, I didn’t no beans about web design and even less about media players. I used FrontPage 1998 to build Tuxedo Junction, “muddling through” as I went along.

in December 2000, I was trying to figure out how to embed WMP in my web pages. I spent several evenings on the phone with Mircosoft Technical Support, not really getting anywhere. Finally, a supervisor intervened. He said they were working on an easy fix that would be available on the Insert Menu in FrontPage 2000. In the meantime, he recommended I use the free Crescendo Internet Music Player, then available from LiveUpdate at http://www.liveupdate.com.

From then on, until August 2004, I used both Crescendo and Windows Media Player on Tuxedo Junction, creating duplicate “jukebox pages” to allow visitors to choose. But in August 2004, the LiveUpdate web site mysteriously disappeared from the Internet. I soon found another Crescendo user who showed me how to offer Crescendo from my own site, which visitors can still do by visiting this link:

http://www.tuxjunction.net/crescendo_download.shtml

The beauty of Crescendo remains its tremendous sound quality, ease of use, and its small size.

What did I use to transfer music from LPs to my computer? Musicmatch. It made it very easy to do. I used it for years, until recently, when Yahoo! acquired Musicmatch. Yahoo! Music Engine does not incorporate many of Musicmatch’s best features, including the ability to transfer music from LPs, cassettes, or tapes. Musicmatch is scheduled to disappear at the end of August.

The good news is that there has been and remains an excellent program for transferring audio to a computer, and to do so for free. I learned about it from TechTV’s “Call for Help” and “The Screen Savers” about four years ago. This program is called “Audacity” and can be downloaded from this site:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I have been using Audacity mainly to edit MP3 files I transferred to my computer using other programs, but recently, I began bypassing other programs and transferring music from cassettes and LPs using Audacity. It works beautifully!

Earlier this week, I removed both Musicmatch and Yahoo! Music Engine from my computer. I just don’t need them.

Moreover, I have halted a project to create separate WMP Jukebox pages for each song on Tuxedo Junction (there are many) because I came across a program that makes individual song pages unnecessary, namely, Project Playlist at:

http://www.projectplaylist.com/

You can see how I have been using Project Playlist by visiting the new home of my big band broadcast web site, The Palomar:

http://thepalomar.blogspot.com/

or my monthly Tuxedo Junction Newsletter blog:

http://tuxjunction.blogspot.com/

You don’t have to be a big band fan to appreciate what I am doing. If you like to embed music in a blog or a web site, Project Playlist is easy to use and can save you a great deal of time. It is becoming more and more popular every day. And The Palomar and the Tuxedo Junction Newsletter site just might give you a few ideas for your own sites and blogs.

I am still “muddling through” with my sites and blogs, learning as I go. You never know what is waiting for you next, but one thing is certain. It’s always fun!

George Spink
Los Angeles

Have you tried the Zune software, Chris?

“WMP’s codec is pretty horrible” What? I have seen multiple show-downs that say that wm8 and wm9 files had the BEST quality at 96 to 128 bps.

Remember mp3 is an old spec and is shoing its age.

I use old WinAmp2.78 with the DSP effect equalizer. I don’t allow it to go onto the internet because of its need for patches and updates which in turn ruined the sound quality. I only use it as a player. As to burning or converting formats, DBPower amp converter is my first choice, its free. I haven’t found anything that can compare to my old winamp for sound quality.
I use WMP10 for watching email videos and not much else.I also have blocked it from automatically updating. If it must have an update, I put the codecs onto it from a site other than the windows update site. My music continues to sound wonderful. I’ve put the old winamp onto all of my computers to replace WMP and whatever else came preloaded on them. I guess I’m from the old school, if something sounds great, why update or replace it.

On Windows I use foobar2000
http://www.foobar2000.org/

Aside from the cool name, it is fairly full featured and available for free download.

I use iTunes, but that’s probably because i own an iPod. :P

I personally use Amarok. Although it isn’t available yet for Windows yet, it should via KDE 4 which should be released for Windows as well. I like it a lot. I used WMP 10 when I was in Windows, and Amarok is a lot better.

Foobar2000!

It’s a pain to set up, unless you keep it in it’s boring initial installed state. But, you can have artwork, lyrics, mp3, flac, ogg, wav, and pretty much any other codec played/transcoded within foobar2000.

I started using foobar2000 about 3 years ago… and dumped winamp (ver.2. something), and never looked back.

foobar2000 is by far the most advanced audio media player available. With kernel streaming available, fully customizable interface, and an endless number of add-ons developed by its users, foobar is hands down the music program of choice. For all video media, I still think Media Player Classic handles everything you can throw at it.

Why not give iTunes a try? That’s been my choice for a while on windows or mac.

If I were you, I would go to Jet Audio, plays and creates most formats, I have used it for ages with no problem.

I used Musicmatch back in the day and have tried many others. Windows Media Player has improved but it’s still not great.

For the past 4 years I’ve used Q-Player. It has a small footprint and works great. I load the Minima skin and the izotope DSP and it sounds great and just works.

http://www.quinnware.com/

I use Xmplay from Un4seen Developments. I’ve been using it for about 4 years now. I keep trying others every several months. Nothing compares yet.
Free of course and sounds better than any other player in my opinion.
It can use many winamp and VST plugins and has all the visualizations, library and playlist features. It is far more intuitive than WMP and it has a tiny tiny footprint about 4M. But come on Chris there are dozens of media players for mp3. Many of them are free and work great or just fine and most are ’skinnable’. Try a Google search ;)

Foobar would be an excellent alternative, if you did have the time and patience to customize it according to what you need in an MP3 / Audio software.

Yes, WinAmp is owned by a hippie newbie do-gooder company that hasn’t had a useful service since dial-up died a decade ago. Nonetheless, it’s a solid product.

A good alternative is mplayer2, which has come with windows for over 10 years.

Over the years I have tried many different media players. I have settled on a couple that do everything i need. Firstly i use XMPlay, this is a great audio player, and portable too, I keep a copy on a flash drive with a bunch of music files, so I can listen to the music I like where ever I happen to be.

On my main computer where I have all my music files I use MediaMonkey to organise them, it combines an organiser, player and cd ripper into one feature packed program.

links
http://www.un4seen.com/xmplay.html
http://www.mediamonkey.com/

I’ve tried a lot of them. MediaMonkey has the most functionality and flexibility.

While I call bullshit on the concept that Microsoft would actually cripple MP3 quality, I do agree that WMP is not the greatest player. Everyone seems hooked on iTunes yet I prefer a similar yet much more robust player called JRiver Media Center. It needs a new name, but the software is really cool.

Go for VLC for your media player. It plays great, is free and has a few extra features. It is cross platform, for Mac and PC plus 10 or more other OSes. I love it myself. But check it out for yourself.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Having dumped Vista(for now), I’m back to using XP and still running wmp10.
But a friend of mine swears by BSPlayer ( http://www.bsplayer.org/ ).
I haven’t tried it myself, but my friend reckons it’s great.
I recently re-installed WinAmp5.2. It’s good, but I’ve been with wmp too long.

Try VLC works quite well for me. I also use WMP 9, Having had the same problems you had. Got it from Major Geeks. Good Luck

Huh? I’m confused. The guy is complaining about the playback quality of MP3 under WMP, or is he saying he doesn’t like the MP3 compressor? He can up the quality to 320kbps, or if he’s really a stickler, use EAC + LAME to rip outside of WMP, and have WMP automatically sync up/import from there.

http://www.pdsys.org/blog/

Have you tried Real Player?

I’ve been a big fan of Media Monkey for some time now. Handles large MP3 collections very efficiently and has a good set of features.

Check it out at http://www.mediamonkey.com/

WMP sucks. I use VLC for all my video watch. For audio I use 1by1 audio player, the Explorer player.. 1by1 works with Winamp plugins and lets you enjoy practically all audio formats.

I still use Musicmatch 10 and even with the nag screens to upgrade I ignore them. I don’t like or trust Yahoo and their new player in a step backward. In the jukebox subdirectory I deleted the BMP file(s) and the single audio file so I don’t see the startup screen or hear that annoying tone. As for ripping you can’t beat media monkey. It’s free, you don’t need the upgrade and as it rips it will fill in the title artist and album art automatically from freedb. http://www.mediamonkey.com/
Very nice. Also try DFX for musicmatch it makes quite a difference on my machine, it fills out the tone quality (free to try and I think $10 to purchase). http://www.fxsound.com/dfx/pages/download/index.php

Should you want to return to MMJB 10 it can be found at http://oldversion.com

My favorite today is AmaroK which is awesome mp3 player. Collects them all and also gives a lots of informations, likes of the band and lyrics. Seems not to be able in Windows but as I rembember one (while I still used Windows) was the Quintessential Player which you can download from http://www.quinnware.com/ which I liked most.

Chris, check out freeware Irfanview (www.irfanview.com) for MP3’s and about a billion different image and video formats. After a decade of improvements, it’s still a 1 MB download, plus you can choose – or not choose – any or all or none of 5 MB of plug-ins. It is SO powerful and fast and intuitive to learn. The best freeware I’ve ever run across.

I don’t understand your comments regarding WMP. It works just fine. I find no problem with WMP11 playing MP3 files. Now WMP even rips in MP3 format (altough only at 192kbps). It automatically rips new CDs (if configured to do so) in the format you choose. It updates (if configured to do so) your mp3 metadata so that you’ll never see a Track 1.mp3 file again. It has a very good play list management and it performs synchronization with external devices (USB pens, mobile phones, etc.). So what’s the problem with it?

On the Windows side I use VLC.
On the linux side I use VLC.

WMP is an invasive, bloated, home-phoning piece of dung that I abandoned years ago for Winamp. I still use Winamp here and there, but VLC does it all for me.

MMJB is also too invasive for me. I don’t want an audio visual experience – I want it to play the damn file.

iTunes is even worse than WMP as far as the interface is concerned, so I try whatever’s available. I have used jetAudio in the past with good results. Also, it seems like foobar2000 is a nice one to have around when you need to ‘clean’ crippled MP3’s.

You think WMP stinks? Try and find a decent (free) player for Mac OS X. Just plain awful. That’s why iTunes reigns; it is about the only one (for free). Bleargh.

Well, if just want to play your MP3’s, try the Random MP3 player; googles or any search engine can get you to the download.

Greetings

Henricus

Nother vote for VLC. None of these other players linked to in comments can possibly hold a candle to THE player. If you’ve got it chances are VLC can play it, and if it can’t chances are good they’ll add support for it.

As a fully fleshed media player with which you can play almost everything with the right codecs, like Real Alternative, ffdshow and QuickTime Alternative, I’d suggest Media Player Classic, a light video/audio player.

For ripping, there is always the classic CDex for that.

As for just listening audio, XMPlay is really good too, very light, skinnable and no install. I use it as well along MPC, especially when I use extensively my computer, i.e. playing videogames and I am in no mood to listen to the game’s music and I need a very very light player.

You can try “Media Player Classic” Copyright (C) Gabest, a GNU GPL software. To my surprise, I receive a product catalog on a DVD and it was able to read it (I do not have any DVD software installed (… except this one).

And for some other “formats”, run: mplayer2

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I’ll be trying out your suggestions over the next couple weeks. This really is a powerful community. Thanks, Chris, and everyone.

I ripped my collection of over 2000 cds to my hard drive in 320kbps using Media Monkey. It’s tagging features are excellent, and those few features it lacks (capitalize first letter of every word) can be found in TagScanner http://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm.

Before settling on MM, I tried out WMP 11, iTunes, Quintessential, WinAmp, and FooBar. None could touch the feature set MM offered. I manually downloaded my album art into MM from rateyourmusic.com, and it looks perfect on a 40″ plasma through Xbox 360 Media Center, as well as on my iPod and the 1 & 1/2″ screen on my Alpine xDA-X001 in dash in my car. MM’s iPod synching features blow away iTunes’s, but it has yet to support iPhones.

I spent over two months working on transferring my music collection to my computer, and I absolutely swear by Media Monkey. I still use WMP 11 for video.

I guess my problem is that I get up to 48x ripping speeds with MMJB Plus, and no other media player out there will offer that speed for free. MediaMonkey and Songbird look to be the most promising options, but unfortunately, I’m stuck on MMJB for now. It just does an excellent job with the library, ripping, burning, playlists, file tagging, and has a fairly good mp3 codec.

I agree with Frank C, foobar2000 and VLC for me.
Did you know Irfanview plays music, movies etc! sounds Good too!
Mediamonkey is brilliant also.

Just use Cowon Media Player -JetAudio 7. That can do everything you’ll want and more.

You’re an idiot. WMP does not in any way change quality compared to other players, and the WMA codec is completely and totally competitive with MP3 (which I use) if you are enough of an idiot to believe you need to convert your MP3s to WMA.

WMP is the best out there!

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I wish I still had my liftime key for MMJB. If I had known that you still could get it, man that ticks me off. I really hate what yahoo did to it. Any one care to send me their key, I’m truly sorry that I tossed mine after all these years…………….