Music players

[hannigan_rex]

So I have reset my computer and am now looking for a program to play all the mp3s I saved. I have Window Media Player, but it doesn't do much for me. I like iTunes okay. I haven't had WinAmp since college. It worked then, but I don't know about now. Any suggestions?

Comments

[jpfed]

There's this wonderful command that programs used to have called "File-Open..." I use that one almost every time I run any program, first thing. It's really great- you get to look through your files and folders for the file or files that you're interested in opening.

Winamp allows you to do this. I like Winamp. Windows Media Player, on the other hand, does not believe in files and folders. It believes in libraries and albums and artists and songs. Maybe that's nice if you haven't already organized your MP3 collection into folders. But if you haven't been using Windows Media Player all along (so that it knows about all your albums and artists and songs) it's a tremendous pain- in fact, the worst software-related pain I've ever experienced. It should just let you browse your directory structure for the files you want to add to your playlist, but no.

Windows Media Player relies on metadata (like ID3 tags) to know how it should categorize your files. If you've been ripping your own songs and haven't been careful about adding metadata (say, because you're putting the songs in folders) then Windows Media Player is pretty clueless about what artist or album a song is- which is too bad, because "artist" and "album" are the only ways it lets you find your goddamned songs.

Maybe I'm just stuck in the Stone Age or something but give me Winamp any day of the week. I like File-Open... and I'm mystified as to why anyone would write a program that uses files but does not use that menu command.

[hannigan_rex]

It has file-open, it's just that the later editions are trying to hide things like that to look more (I'm totally stealing this term for like everything now) "magic-box" like. You know, that style that Apple is mastering? That style that makes people not know how things work they just do "intuitively" (if your intuition has been mapped by Steve Jobs).

So one of the reasons I stopped using winamp is because I heard that they were becoming not freeware once long ago. I've since learned this was never true. Or is there a real truth somewhere in the middle?

[jpfed]

I'm surprised to hear that Windows Media Player actually does have a File-Open...

Winamp is still free. You can even get old versions of it if you don't like the newer versions.