Introducing
The Slant team built an AI & it’s awesome
Find the best product instantly
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now
4.7 star rating
0
What is the best alternative to Musique?
Ad
Ad
Clementine
All
32
Experiences
Pros
12
Cons
19
Specs
Top
Con
Slow development
Very little development work has been going on for a while as of mid-2017. Nobody is responding to bug reports.
See More
Top
Pro
Tag editing
Clementine features competent tag managing for all music files, be it album art or just simple text entries.
See More
Top
Con
Resource exhaustive
Clementine uses up to two orders of magnitude more CPU than VLC and takes up about 180 MB of memory, plus additional memory for spawned processes (tag-readers), while VLC uses 80 MB with no other processes.
See More
Top
Pro
Intuitive and fast to set up
Clementine is easy to get up and running with lyrics, equalizer, online info, etc., within minutes after installation.
See More
Top
Con
Doesn't allow gapless playback
See More
Top
Pro
Sensible UI
A fork of the 1.X line of Amarok, Clementine favours usability over design trends.
See More
Top
Con
Bit perfect output no longer configurable
Audiophiles want to play their expensive HD albums.
See More
Top
Pro
Very good folder organization
Organizes your music folder based on the tags of your library.
See More
Top
Con
Too bloated by default with things like LastFM that can't be removed
When you install it, you get ton of internet radios and services plugins, that you can't remove, only turn off. There is also useless stuff like artist info that doesn't work and stuff.
See More
Top
Pro
Remote app for Android
There is a very good remote app for Android. The app lets you do a lot: from the usual volume controls to checking the lyrics on your phone. You can even download the songs from Clementine onto your phone.
See More
Top
Con
Not customizable
It doesn't allow you to modify its interface by dragging toolbars around etc.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports a lot of online services
Clementine includes support for services such as Ampache, Google Play Music, Spotify, and many internet radio stations such as Jamendo and Icecast. It's also possible to search all available sources (local and online) at once, as well as mixed content playlists.
See More
Top
Con
Horrible user interface and confusing layout
See More
Top
Pro
Built-in equalizer for custom sound
There is a built-in equalizer with many presets from genre-specific rock, pop, and party, to experiences such as large hall and live. You can also tweak it yourself and name your own preset.
See More
Top
Con
Ugly
See More
Top
Pro
Creates playlists based on past music you listened to
Clementine gathers the user's listening data to use for smart playlists. Clementine uses your listening history to play music similar to the music you play most - which typically is music you will like but maybe haven't discovered yet.
See More
Top
Con
Goes crazy with CPU and RAM
Takes its toll on your system's CPU and RAM.
See More
Top
Pro
Built-in format conversion
Users can format any of their music files to a different format with Clementine's built-in format conversion tool.
See More
Top
Con
Default settings aren't great
Although this is subjective, you might have to do some tweaking before you like it.
See More
Top
Pro
Can display song lyrics
Fetches lyrics from several lyric providers.
See More
Top
Con
Ugly ressource hog with no features and buggy without hotfix
And yet Nr. 1 recommended because of nerds being accustomed.
See More
Top
Pro
Looks good and is really responsive
Unlike some other players in this list, Clementine doesn't seem to go unresponsive in the Ubuntu 16.04 system and looks really good with options for Visualization too.
See More
Top
Con
Slow to start in Gnome/Cinnamon
It takes about the same time to start as an IDE or Photoshop.
See More
Top
Pro
Decent library management
Clementine allows the user to move and organize audio files easily. Some examples include the following: It's easy to find a specific album song (find artist, select album, select song). It's easy to add songs to a playlist and queue the songs. It's easy to rename files from their metadata (artist, album, song number, etc). It's easy to add cover images. There are options to find duplicates, untagged songs, etc.
See More
Top
Con
Not a lot of documentation
Clementine does not offer a lot of documentation, which can make discovering its features a bit difficult.
See More
Top
Con
Buggy
Clementine is probably the most fully featured music player for Linux, however it has its own issues. It crashes and experiences occasional memory leaks that can slow down your system.
See More
Top
Con
Database regularly messes up
See More
Top
Con
Sometimes messes up taskbar
See More
Top
Con
Last.fm support is broken
See More
Top
Con
Cannot choose which tag profile to use
I use Tag2 (ID3:2.4) which doesn't seem to be the default tag used and I can't see a way to choose this.
See More
Top
Con
No way to search on filename
See More
Specs
License:
GPL-3.0-or-later
Release Date:
2016-19-04
Development:
Open Source
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
697
192
Nuclear Music Player
All
6
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Streaming and playing local files within a single client
See More
Top
Con
Resource intensive
Just like any other web app.
See More
Top
Pro
Cross-platform
As an Electron app NMP runs on GNU/Linux, macOS and Windows.
See More
Top
Pro
Free and open source
Licensed under AGPL-3.0. Everybody can inspect the code, use it and improve it.
See More
Top
Pro
Looks beautiful and modern
See More
Top
Pro
Plugin system allowing for easy addition of more streaming sources
See More
Hide
free
34
5
Quod Libet
All
16
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
7
Top
Pro
Great for organizing and editing large collections
Quod Libet gives the user the necessary tools to edit and organize their library from within the app. There is support for tags as well to help you quickly find the music to fit your mood. To help you sort through large libraries, you can use the filters which help filter by genera or other search perimeters.
See More
Top
Con
(not) customizable
If you get a player, you want to make it yours. QL has a lot of stuff preconfigured, which you can't make as you want it. So base is great, but never makes it to be come yours.
See More
Top
Pro
Lots of plugins available
Quod Libet offers many plugins including Last FM sync, lyrics support, and iOS sync.
See More
Top
Con
Doesn't support playlist files
See More
Top
Pro
Powerful search syntax
Quod Libet has powerful search syntax options, which are very useful for creating smartlists or querying a big music collection.
See More
Top
Con
The GUI could have more eye-candy
There aren't any icons within the GUI, just text. This makes it feel more like a library management tool than an audio player. A little polish would go a long way here.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to use
Despite very good library management capability, Quod Libet is easy to use. The base music player doesn't have too many features, making it a breeze to use. However, if you want to go deeper you can install plugins. These plugins can sometimes add complexity, but it's up to you what you do or don't want.
See More
Top
Con
Rhythmbox clone
Can't find many differences with Rhythmbox.
See More
Top
Pro
Integrates with IoT / home audio
Sonos, Squeezebox, ...
See More
Top
Con
GTK app
It will need a bit more of resources in a non qt environment.
See More
Top
Pro
Built-in Soundcloud support
See More
Top
Con
Plugins could be better integrated
Lyrics are not downloaded automatically in Quod Libet, while simply viewing lyrics could be made a lot more accessible. There is also little information pulled from last.fm - scrubbing works, as well as there being no artist info or suggestions for similar artists.
See More
Top
Pro
Folder view
Quod Libet has multiple viewing modes, including Folder (File System) hierarchy view. The only other program to have a good folder view would be Sayonara.
See More
Top
Con
Uses quite a bit of memory
Quod Libet can use up to 130 MB.
See More
Top
Pro
Customizable looks
There are a few controls that allow the user to change how the player looks.
See More
Top
Pro
Fast & Small
Fully functional and takes up little space on the hard drive.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
96
20
Winamp
All
10
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
4
Top
Pro
RSS, Atom Podcasts, and Internet Radio streams (among other modern features) are available
Modern features are essential for power listeners nowadays, proving that Winamp (while an old app) still offers features users look for in a modern player.
See More
Top
Con
Relatively poor quality audio
Compared to other players, Winamp doesn't offer high quality audio. Reason for Winamp's lesser audio quality compared to other modern audio players is that it uses deprecated audio output interfaces (APIs). In fact since Windows Vista onward, those APIs Winamp is using (such as DirectSound, WaveOut) are emulated in software mixer for compatibility purposes further distancing the audio path from the hardware. Modern audio players support modern WASAPI audio output for direct access to the audio hardware (especially in WASAPI exclusive mode). For more info see Wikipedia's entry on DirectSound.
See More
Top
Pro
A huge selection of skins are available
Winamp allows skinning the interface and there are thousands of community created skins available.
See More
Top
Con
No Major updates
There are no major updates since version 5.
See More
Top
Pro
Functionality can be extended via plugins
A wide variety of DSP, input, and visualization plugins have been created by the community.
See More
Top
Con
Heavy
At the beginning it was simple to download and install, now it has so many things it became very heavy to download.
See More
Top
Pro
Great search and Playlist functionality
Considerable functions to search and develop playlists.
See More
Top
Con
Cluttered interface
With all controls, skins, and options it's hard to find the basic commands.
See More
Top
Pro
Good sound quality
The sound quality of Winamp is good, especially with DSP plugins like enhancer.
See More
Top
Pro
HTTP streaming support
HTTP streaming is necessary for both live and on-demand content, which it can deliver without lengthy buffering or waiting periods. It is also less susceptible to network hiccups than other forms of streaming.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
127
26
foobar2000
All
32
Experiences
Pros
21
Cons
10
Specs
Top
Pro
Lightweight
Foobar2000 has a clean, minimalistic UI, small filesize, and is light on resource usage.
See More
Top
Con
Not easy to skin
Out of the box it looks like something out of win2000. It is also very difficult to skin for the normal user.
See More
Top
Pro
Functionality can be extended with components
Foobar200 has over a hundred components to choose from that add UI functionality, decoding support for various formats, etc.
See More
Top
Con
Provides little in terms of hand-holding
Advanced tasks such as skinning and installing components may be a bit intimidating for beginners because they require knowing your way around the computer, not just the player.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports a wide variety of audio formats
Foobar2000 natively supports MP1, MP2, MP3, MPC, AAC, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, ALAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, AU, SND, CD, Speex, Opus, and support for additional formats can be added with plugins.
See More
Top
Con
Outdated Plugins
Many, many plugins are outdated and not maintained for years, leading to stability issues with a lof of them. A rather complex SDK and missing sufficient documentation makes maintaining or creating new plugins unnecessarily hard. Getting to that neat GUI setup you've seen somewhere is probably impossible because of that.
See More
Top
Pro
Plugins can be used to bypass Windows mixer to output a bit-exact signal
Through the use of a plugin (of which there are three popular ones), users can get bit-exact sound output straight to their DAC or soundcard. While not something every user will use, for audiophiles this is a pretty important feature.
See More
Top
Con
Locks files and folders, making it hard to manage them
Several parts of Foobar lock files and folders in a way that they cannot be file-managed (move/copy/rename/delete) easily in the program (and externally). With the waveform plugin it's even worse. Cannot delete a file until the waveform is fully scanned.
See More
Top
Pro
Highly customisable
See More
Top
Con
Cumbersome start-up
Foobar2000 requires a bit of work to get it up and running.
See More
Top
Pro
ReplayGain support
ReplayGain can be applied on a per album or track basis, allowing the user to set up an even volumed listening experience.
See More
Top
Con
The previous button doesn't work in random playback
You are unable to go back to a song when using random playback.
See More
Top
Pro
Advanced layout
The player has a layout-editing mode that allows for a wide variety of UI setups.
See More
Top
Con
Breaks existing components every few updates
Makes it very hard to keep a customized version of Foobar running smoothly without worrying about non-working components.
See More
Top
Pro
Internal search is a beast
Foobar2000 provides an extensive search to look through your library. It supports special queries to only look for certain tags and other conditions and is incredibly fast in doing so even with over 20k of songs in your library.
See More
Top
Con
Periodical unexpected shutdown
See More
Top
Pro
Good quality
It was made in order to be as respectful to music as it can be.
See More
Top
Con
Not 'easy' as in plays stream services/ podcasts etc.
May be asking too much, this app is PERFECT for the 'hardcore'.
See More
Top
Pro
Good compatibility with Windows Media Center IR remote controls and wireless mini-keyboards
Foobar works well with Windows Media Center IR remote controls with virtual mouse functions; also with wireless mini-keyboards.
See More
Top
Con
Can crash right after install
See More
Top
Pro
Compatible with Microsoft Media Center (MMC) remote controls
See More
Top
Pro
Fast monitoring of the folders
It has one of the fastest monitoring abilities. Only couple of seconds passes between adding a file into monitored folder on external NAS and it appearing in the library.
See More
Top
Pro
Grouping by folder structure
Grouping files by folder structure is an important feature especially when files don't have proper tags.
See More
Top
Pro
Variety of skins available
Foobar 2000 has powerful theming support. Browsing a site like DeviantArt will give you hundreds of skins (that have been made by other users) to choose from.
See More
Top
Pro
Easily handles large music libraries
It has by far the best scanning of large music libraries containing couple of thousands of files.
See More
Top
Pro
Built-in support for Windows Media streaming
Foobar2000 can natively play ASX/MMS/RTSP streams.
See More
Top
Pro
Transcodes all supported audio formats
The converter component allows foobar2000 to convert from and to any file formats that the player is capable of playing back.
See More
Top
Pro
The many add-ons (components) available
Includes dynamic range analysis, integrity checkers, equalizers, and visualizers, such as waveform, oscilloscope, spectrum, spectrogram (waterfall), peak and smoothed VU meters, and X-Y (Shpect Lissajous) displays.
See More
Top
Pro
Random/Shuffle on an album basis.
I'm old enough to have a lot of music where whole albums are worth listening to. This is also essential when the composers created music where the flow from one song to the next is part of the art of the album. E.g. on Queen's ANight_at_the_Opera_, the first song -- Death_On_Two_Legs -- is a very hard rock song with very pissed off lyrics. The next is _Lazing_On_a_Sunday_Afternoon, which is a very lighthearted amusing song. The contrast is wonderful. Also many artists have one song flow into another and breaking them up by using random on a song basis really breaks the music. Plus shuffle prevents repeats until the entire playlist is done. If you want, you can select individual songs and the are shuffled as if they are the entire album. It's harder to describe than to do: configure play mode to shuffle albums If you're like me -- and I know I am: add library to list play But you can be more selective: select albums (or songs if you only like a few) do { play_the_shuffled_list(list); if (mood("not in for the current")) skip(); if (mood("change_the_list)) change_the_list(&list); } while !shuffled_off("mortal_coil"); die("happy");
See More
Top
Pro
Lots of themes made by foobar users.
See More
Top
Pro
MP3 player management
Users can easily send their music files to their MP3 device through the use of the right click menu when browsing their library.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS
License:
BSD-2-Clause
Release Date:
December 31, 2019
Portable:
No
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
503
90
VLC
All
18
Experiences
Pros
13
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
Free, open source, and cross-platform
VLC is licensed under the CC-SA v3.0+ and available on Windows, OSX, and Linux with source code available here.
See More
Top
Con
Not really meant to be a music player
VLC is made to be a video player. Therefore, it won't carry out actions such as managing your music library.
See More
Top
Pro
Simple to setup and use
VLC is an incredibly robust application but very simple on the surface. It makes playing music simple, yet still manages to give the user all the tools he/she wants in a music player.
See More
Top
Con
Lacks libraries and advanced music player features
VLC is a media player first and foremost. There is no library management (aside from playlists), limited usage of tags, and no rating system. VLC is best at playing a file directly from a folder, but falls behind when it comes to helping you manage or find good songs in your music library.
See More
Top
Pro
Very versatile and easy to use
See More
Top
Con
Absence of personalization
VLC Player has only one basic interface in white or black, and overall personalization opportunities are quite narrow. Unfortunately, you're pretty much stuck to the default look.
See More
Top
Pro
Doesn't require additional codecs
Everything VLC needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed. This makes it one of the most hassle-free music players as it can play virtually anything as soon as it's installed.
See More
Top
Con
Contains some insignificant but irritating flaws
Despite all keyboard shortcuts, the width of the picture can't be controlled by trackpad. Besides that, the VLC start-up window doesn’t open at the same place or the same width at which it was previously closed.
See More
Top
Pro
Tons of advanced settings
Besides basic configurations, video player has an extensive amount of adjustable settings.
See More
Top
Pro
Doesn't manage your music library for you
You organize your music into folders any way you want. Want to play an album? Drag and drop. No tags, no confusion, no fluff. Easy.
See More
Top
Pro
Can be almost completely keyboard-driven
VLC includes keyboard shortcuts for most actions. The video player can be controlled with simple and customizable keyboard commands.
See More
Top
Pro
Surprisingly Lightest on Resources
Yes. Lightest. Even better than the ones known to be light. Both when playing music, only a single song or when playing a video. Either in terms of Ram and Cpu. Compared with almost all, including the ones from Windows like mpc-hc .. or light ones from Linux like Alsa Player, Audacious, SmPlayer .
See More
Top
Pro
Can play every format video available (as of 2017)
See More
Top
Pro
Includes Blu-Ray playback support
Blu-Ray playback support was added on July 13th, 2014. It allows playing back DRM-free Blu-Rays with the help of libbluray, libaacs and libbdplus.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports a GUI interface and an ncurses terminal interface
See More
Top
Pro
Can easily stream music across your home network from any device on the network
Using sftp/ssh music (and videos) can be streamed from any server on the network to any device running VLC. VLC can also be used as a webcam for streaming and snapshots. Amazing all in one package
See More
Top
Pro
Large amount of extensions
VLC has a large amount of extensions.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, ChromeOS, AppleTV
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
634
188
MPV
All
10
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
See More
Top
Con
Minimal theme support
See More
Top
Pro
Integrates with streaming services
When used with youtube-dl.
See More
Top
Con
Lack of a typical GUI can be jarring to some
The minimal interface comes at the cost of beginner-friendliness. You need to know keyboard shortcuts by heart, settings are set in text files, right-clicking won't bring up a menu, etc.
See More
Top
Pro
Minimal interface
Click to open files and get Video with sound (and passthrough of codecs like DTS etc) for a perfect cinema experience. Works okay for many files. Default window is not much more than a title bar - and if you drag/resize the window it resizes the video and leaves no empty areas. There is no visible control or display unless you use mouse/keyboard over the window. This is the best player to use unless you're going for a media center (then use MPV based Plex Media Player to display and play the Plex Server library).
See More
Top
Pro
Up to date
Always up to date, rapid development.
See More
Top
Pro
Extremely responsive
See More
Top
Pro
Caches livestreams
Intelligently caches livestreams and enables jumping within the cached stream.
See More
Top
Pro
Fast
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, Android
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
1444
86
Audacious
All
12
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
Streamlined player not weighed down by unnecessary options
Audacious is a classic music player at heart that has not felt the need to weigh itself down with an assortment of unnecessary options. Advanced functionality can be attained through plugins available from within the program.
See More
Top
Con
No manual sorting fields
There is no option to add one's own categories to the sorting fields.
See More
Top
Pro
Tons of plugins
See More
Top
Con
Updates are not very frequent
See More
Top
Pro
Lightweight
My audacious uses only 18.5 MB of RAM. It has a Winamp visualization style that's very minimized and convenient.
See More
Top
Con
No bit perfect output past 24bit
Audiophiles require this, and while most users might not notice a difference, audiophiles will appreciate the improved audio quality.
See More
Top
Pro
Support for Winamp themes
Audacious can switch from its GTK interface to one that matches the looks of the famous Winamp player. What's even better is that this interface supports any Winamp themes, which allows for more options.
See More
Top
Con
Buggy
For example when using Visual Studio Code and Audacious you get flicked out to the gnome login screen.
See More
Top
Pro
Folder oriented player, but able to play any music container and highly configurable
Lets you play, delete and even change metadata of your music files.
See More
Top
Pro
The easiest player for multiple types of files
It plays dts, aac multichannel, etc.
See More
Top
Pro
Compatibility with most media formats
It's able to reproduce most of media formats without external plugins.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, BSD
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
227
40
AIMP
All
27
Experiences
Pros
20
Cons
6
Specs
Top
Pro
Multiple audio codec compatible
AIMP supports a huge list of audio formats and several playlist types.
See More
Top
Con
Not open source
AIMP is not libre / open source software, so development is closed and lead by the AIMP staff only.
See More
Top
Pro
Useful audio library
AIMP can play, manage, and filter music stored in the whole computer or specified folders. It is able to read metadata from music files' tags and perform real-time searching out of it.
See More
Top
Con
Buggy, bloated and obfuscated options
Seems to hang when adding a large number of files.
See More
Top
Pro
Internal updater
AIMP updates using its built-in updater, so you don't have to visit AIMP's website and download the whole installer every time a new version is available.
See More
Top
Con
Cluttered and confusing interface
The interface is very busy and not intuitive so it can take awhile to become familiar with it. The skins don't conform to specific design standards so they often have different behaviors. You can read more about it here.
See More
Top
Pro
Lightweight skinning
Even with lots of skinning options, AIMP is lightweight and works on the smallest computer.
See More
Top
Con
AIMP "Help" only in Russian and English
AIMP's "Help" included in the software itself is only available in Russian and English.
See More
Top
Pro
18 band equalizer + 22 presets + preamp
AIMP has an 18 band equalizer (which is manually customizable), plus 22 presets by default [user can add his/her custom presets]. It also includes a +15/-15 dB preamplification.
See More
Top
Con
Russian content
Supporting this is also supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
See More
Top
Pro
Multiple other features
AIMP has many more features including: dither, anticlipping, customizable hotkeys/shortcuts, customizable player's user agent string, access to Favorites audio files and playlists, rating for tracks, tracklist export, optional temporary information bar with track info every time a track begins, volume normalization, ReplayGain support, volume fading between tracks, and more.
See More
Top
Con
BEWARE FRAUD, MALWARE, TROJAN, BACKDOOR
Download only from the actual aimp site
See More
Top
Pro
Mini Player support
AIMP can be maximized, restored, sent to the tray, or switched to Mini Player for your convenience.
See More
Top
Pro
Among the best audio quality for Windows audio players
AIMP uses the BASS library, which provides one of the best audio quality of all currently available music players for Windows.
See More
Top
Pro
Multiple playlist management
AIMP can manage multiple playlists by a tab system, similar to web browsers.
See More
Top
Pro
Tag Editor + Audio Converter can carry out a multitude of tasks
AIMP has two tools for further music management. Tag Editor lets you add album art to audio files, fix metadata to individual files or to all files included in a folder, rename filenames, complete tags from filenames and viceversa, and more. Audio Converter lets you convert an audio file into another format (for instance, from FLAC to M4A). You can choose quality parameters, renaming of files, and output paths for converted files. Audio conversion supports multiple core encoding, so if your CPU has four cores, you can convert audio using 1, 2, 3, or 4 cores.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports audiophile-level playback quality
Other music players usually require separate plugins for this, but AIMP comes by default with the modern WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) audio output support thus providing purest sound output unadultered by the Windows mixer (in WASAPI Exclusive mode) out of the box.
See More
Top
Pro
Delete files from player
Simple and good working ability to delete files right away from the player.
See More
Top
Pro
Multiple languages available
AIMP is available in 36 languages, including: Russian, English, Arabic, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain), French, German, Italian, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), and more.
See More
Top
Pro
Built-in scheduler
AIMP has a scheduler which lets you stop playback, close the program, or turn off your computer at a specified time/period.
See More
Top
Pro
Waveform seekbar
AIMP's seekbar features a waveform display of the entire audio file for easier navigation within the sound file. For example you can easily see where are the silences which is especially useful for podcasts and talked content.
See More
Top
Pro
Icon sets available for download
The user can download icon sets for different audio formats.
See More
Top
Pro
Allows for radio capture
AIMP can grab internet radios' audios and save them to drive, in real-time. You can save the streaming in its original format, or choose the codec manually [AAC, OGG Vorbis, OPUS, etc] and its bit rate. You can even save its CUE log and split files, if desired.
See More
Top
Pro
DSP manager allows for sound effects
AIMP has a digital sound processor manager which lets you apply sound effects to the output audio in real-time. These effects include: echo, reverberation, Flanger, Chorus, bass, enhancer, speed, tempo, and pitch. It also has a voice remover feature for stereo audio files.
See More
Top
Pro
Support for several WinAmp's plugins
AIMP supports several plugins originally designed for WinAmp. However, it also supports new plugins designed for AIMP itself. From visual plugins to extra codec support, YouTube playlists playback, Soundcloud playback, or spectrum analysing, these are a selection of supported plugins.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to use
Handsome design
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Android
Release Date:
January 13, 2020
Windows Versions Supported:
Vista/7/8/8.1/10 (64-bit)
Hide
See All
Experiences
FREE
362
59
MusicBee
All
32
Experiences
Pros
23
Cons
8
Specs
Top
Pro
Customizable look and feel
MusicBee can be skinned which can significantly change the appearance of a player. To apply a skin, it must first be downloaded, moved to the appropriate folder, and after restarting MusicBee, it can be applied. A collection of skins can be found here. It's also possible to customize the layout by choosing which panels to display.
See More
Top
Con
Extremely buggy
Crashes and freezes a lot.
See More
Top
Pro
Can autofill information on songs
MusicBee can automatically identify songs based on their sound signature and use that information to pull metadata about the song (such as tags, artwork, and lyrics).
See More
Top
Con
The UPnP plugin is still buggy
See More
Top
Pro
Simple interface
MusicBee offers a very straight-forward and easy-to-use interface.
See More
Top
Con
No shuffle play
Does have an option for shuffle play but this randomizes the songs, which means repeats.
See More
Top
Pro
Remarkably responsive interface with small to medium numbers of files
Your media library is stored in a flat file rather than a traditional database, limiting its ability to manage truly massive collections of audio files, but offering far reduced processing overhead for small to medium-large collections.
See More
Top
Con
Does not handle large numbers of files very well
When opening a large number of files, the interface slows down, album view blocks, process blocks disk every now and then on updates.
See More
Top
Pro
Portable version is available
A version of MusicBee can be used without having to be installed. It can be kept on an external device and run from that.
See More
Top
Con
Doesn't integrate with system media playback interface
Yes it does - Read the manual, check or ask for help at the forum to find out how to use Musicbee.
See More
Top
Pro
Functionality can be extended via plugins
A collection of plugins can be found here. These plugins extend the uses of the app from iOS support, last.fm support, to streaming services support.
See More
Top
Con
Installs pictures that are irrelevant to the artist being played
See More
Top
Pro
Auto-playlist creation with powerful rules
See More
Top
Con
MP3 and AAC transcoding requires installing separate encoders
Due to licensing reasons, MP3 and AAC encoders don't come bundled with the software and have to be installed separately.
See More
Top
Pro
Lots of ways to organize media
See More
Top
Con
Plays same tracks repetitively , even when marked for skipping
See More
Top
Pro
Synchronized lyrics
In addition to automatically pulling lyrics for songs, MusicBee can synchronise music playback with lyrics.
See More
Top
Pro
WASAPI/ASIO support
High-end audio cards can be easily used to their full potential without any additional software due to WASAPI and ASIO support.
See More
Top
Pro
Can convert media
See More
Top
Pro
Good podcast support
MusicBee allows the user to subscribe to and auto-download podcasts.
See More
Top
Pro
Waveform seekbar
See More
Top
Pro
Integrates with Last.fm
MusicBee allows scrobbling with Last.fm.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports Winamp visualizers
See More
Top
Pro
MiniLyrics integration
Not only does it allow MiniLyrics to search for and add synchronized lyrics to your music files, but the MiniLyrics window can be docked in MusicBee over its own lyrics panel so you can edit them and see them displayed along with whatever you're playing.
See More
Top
Pro
Vast library capabilities - handles a massive collection of music with ease
Current file count exceeds 500,000+. Updates the library faster than other similar feature rich players whilst being fully capable of playback, id tag editing, even visualiser generation simultaneously, limited only by the power of your PC. If your experience is different you likely don't have a capable machine.
See More
Top
Pro
Runs well under WINE in Linux environments
There are detailed instructions in the community forum describing how to create a suitable WINE prefix in which to install MusicBee with nearly all the features operating as they do in Windows. There is also support for Linux using CrossOver by CodeWeavers, who offer an automated installer to accomplish the same result on nearly all major Linux distributions as well as Google's ChromeOS.
See More
Top
Pro
Does it all better than any other app .... still
See More
Top
Pro
Media library
Has media library support that can displays all available tags plus custom tags.
See More
Top
Pro
iOS sync support
There is a plugin available that allows users to sync their iOS devices (including music ad podcasts).
See More
Top
Pro
Ability to lock down access to settings
It's possible to lock down access to settings while still having access to the player. This is great for parties, allowing guests to browse and play music without worrying if they will mess something up.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports seeing time on seek
MusicBee tells you the time you are seeking to on mouseover on the seek bar.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows
License:
All rights reserved
Release Date:
February 19, 2023
Portable:
Yes
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
396
83
Spotify
All
10
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Huge collection of music and fast access to newly released songs
Spotify has over 20 million songs and arguably the largest collection out of its competitors and usually has the fastest access to new music. The Spotify desktop client allows local music files to be imported with the option of syncing with a mobile device which largely mitigates the issue of missing artists.
See More
Top
Con
Free account have lots of ads
If you hate commercials, you would buy Premium or go on using something else.
See More
Top
Pro
Related artists
Helps to find new authors based on your previous picks
See More
Top
Con
Discovery is terrible
The discovery algorithm is poor and does not learn fast enough. Not obvious how to train it.
See More
Top
Pro
Curated playlists
Public playlists on Spotify created by other people are great for finding new music.
See More
Top
Con
Poor audio quality
There's a high range of bitrates and most of vary from average to bad.
See More
Top
Pro
Client's functionality can be extended via third-party apps
Spotify desktop client allows for third-party apps. They extend the functionality of Spotify and many of them offer new ways of discovering music. Noteworthy apps include Moodagent, Last.fm, Swarm.fm, ShareMyPlaylists, The Hype Machine, We Are Hunted, Shuffler.fm.
See More
Top
Pro
Has a free version
A free, ad-supported account allows streaming from an extensive library of music.
See More
Top
Pro
Weekly Discover playlist uses a great algorithm
A playlist generated by Spotify based on your listening habits and released every Monday. The algorithm used by this playlist is great and stands out from its competitors.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Web; Android; iOS; Linux; Windows; MacOS
Playlist Sharing:
Yes
User-Created Playlists:
Yes
Offline download:
Yes
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
504
148
Mellow Player
All
4
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
2
Top
Con
QML
It written in Qt-QML which ignores all Human Interface Guidelines and make the app look like a web page.
See More
Top
Pro
Native
It is written in Qt so it requires less resources than a web browser or an electron application.
See More
Top
Con
Not native
It's using qt5-webengine which is not much different from electron / a webbrowser.
See More
Top
Pro
AppImage
It is available as AppImage so you can easily try it.
See More
Hide
free
12
1
Winyl
All
6
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
1
Top
Pro
The library is well organized
Winyl organizes your library by folder and not by ID3 tags. As such, your library stays organized (as long as your music folders are organized) even if you have incorrect or missing ID3 tags.
See More
Top
Con
It only shows the file name when playing tracks
Winyl cannot display the format or bitrate of the track as it plays. The user must therefore find the file in their library, select it, and go to properties.
See More
Top
Pro
Looks great
Winyl has a beautiful interface with thumbnails for each album (if the art is in the ID tag). If not, you can easily add cover art. It also has a great mini player and that too has cover art.
See More
Top
Pro
You can quickly and easily add music
Winyl is designed to be a fast media player with low resource usage, meaning that it takes about 20 minutes to load 67 000 files. This is a pretty good time frame in comparison to some other media players' import times. So for those with a large library, this may be a good choice.
See More
Top
Pro
Album view
Shows albums, covers and tracks next to it, like Google Music.
See More
Top
Pro
This program uses .cue files to split albums that are in one file
This is a convenient tool for those who may have many albums that are not yet split into separate files for each song.
See More
Hide
Get it
here
61
6
iTunes
All
19
Experiences
Pros
13
Cons
6
Top
Con
Heavyweight
With each update, iTunes appears to get bigger and bigger, though adding little more value, especially for the user who just wants to listen to and organize music.
See More
Top
Pro
Can create a playlist based on rules
There is a feature included in iTunes called Smart Playlists that allows the user to create playlists based on criteria such as BPM, Genre, Artist, Album, Plays, Rating, etc.
See More
Top
Con
Buggy iTunes app
Immediately after the worldwide launch of Apple Music, a new version of iTunes was released (12.2). Many users have reported issues with this release, such as music lists getting mixed up, music having wrong metadata, etc.
See More
Top
Pro
Can automatically create playlists based on a chosen song
There is a feature called Genius included in iTunes that allows the user to select a song and create a playlist based on that song. It will analyze the music library and choose songs similar in tone to the one chosen.
See More
Top
Con
Unfortunately required to fully manage iPods
See More
Top
Pro
Syncs across devices
Synchronization of playback information, podcast subscriptions, and settings is possible in iTunes. It can also automatically download purchases made on other devices.
See More
Top
Con
Duplicates media files
See More
Top
Pro
Airplay support
Streaming audio to all Airplay enabled devices within WiFi range is permitted by iTunes. It's also possible to select more than one device to play a song at the same time.
See More
Top
Con
Album organization can be fragmented
Songs purchased from the same album at different times will be added as separate albums.
See More
Top
Pro
Can auto-import CDs
The user can set up iTunes in such a way that media (from CDs) can be automatically imported once a CD is inserted. This also comes with customizable import settings (bitrate, codec). Additionally, iTunes can automatically fetch track names from the Internet.
See More
Top
Con
Authorization limit
See More
Top
Pro
Built-in parental controls
iTunes parental controls can be used to deny access to certain parts of iTunes such as podcasts, internet radio, store, or shared libraries, as well as restricting access to media that has a certain rating or warnings.
See More
Top
Pro
Can autopull information about songs
Track names and album artwork can be automatically obtained by iTunes.
See More
Top
Pro
Sleek interface
The interface of iTunes presents a flat, clean design with playback controls at the top-left, search at the top-right, and a row of ways to categorize available media beneath that. It can also be minimized to take up much less space. The minimized interface is called the Mini Player and it can be set to display on top of all other windows. It's possible to show iTunes on top of all other windows when playing movies as well.
See More
Top
Pro
iTunes store has a huge selection of media
The iTunes store offers a huge catalog of videos, songs, and podcasts.
See More
Top
Pro
Advanced podcast management
See More
Top
Pro
iCloud integration
See More
Top
Pro
Internet radio
A music streaming service called Radio is available in iTunes. It creates stations based on chosen genres, songs, or artists and requires Apple ID for access.
See More
Top
Pro
Ability to add RSS feeds
The ability to add RSS feeds in iTunes keeps the user informed of the latest web content.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
66
65
MediaMonkey
All
15
Experiences
Pros
11
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Exceptional cataloging options
You can organize music by over 40 different criteria, including common criteria such as title, artist, and album, as well as items like track volume, lyricist, and parental rating. You can even use custom labels by which to organize and you can set how you want to prioritize the criteria. Media Monkey can also rename large batches of files based on set rules.
See More
Top
Con
Not really "multi-user" friendly
Example: If you have a family, not everyone has same tastes or star ratings. You CAN achieve a somewhat multi-user experience, but it's overly complex and clunky.
See More
Top
Pro
Helps remove duplicates from the library
MediaMonkey can find duplicate files and songs, helping the user to remove any unnecessary items from the library.
See More
Top
Con
Really buggy at times
Biggest annoyance: Often get database errors (data corruption?). Usually, you'll end up clicking "cancel" in some dumb cryptic error prompt and/or restart app. Android sync isn't a breeze. Multiple instances sometimes open up (due to unknown cause) can cause the corruption / database issues. You should backup often just in case.
See More
Top
Pro
Can pull metadata from the web
See More
Top
Con
Accuracy of automatically pulled meta data can be spotty
In cases where a song is a part of multiple albums, or there's a re-release with slight changes (such as track numbers, bonus songs, etc.), MediaMonkey can get confused and apply wrong titles to songs based on their track numbers. It then ends up mislabeling content that has already been labeled correctly. There's also no way to manually set what album to base the auto-tagging on in order to work around this.
See More
Top
Pro
Works with almost any UPnP or DLNA enabled media player
MediaMonkey can stream the library to most UPnP or DLNA enabled devices. This allows you to, for example, stream to your Blu-Ray player.
See More
Top
Pro
Powerful file renaming system
See More
Top
Pro
Advanced automatic auto-dj
MediaMonkey has a built-in auto-dj feature, appropriately called Party Mode, that can automatically play tracks based on set criteria.
See More
Top
Pro
Can convert audio and video files
MediaMonkey can convert all common audio formats and some video formats. Supported files include .mp3, .ogg, .aac, and .flac.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports most tagging formats
See More
Top
Pro
Format agnostic
MediaMonkey supports everything from lossy MP3 files to lossless FLAC files.
See More
Top
Pro
Has a decent companion Android app which can sync with / connect to PC server
See More
Top
Pro
Can build smart playlists with automatic filters
For example: 4+ stars jazz songs Top played recent songs Best rated classic rock Unplayed recently added songs Build your own "smart" radio station, etc.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows/Android
License:
Proprietary
Release Date:
January 10, 2020
Portable:
Yes
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free / paid
82
15
Music Player Daemon
All
7
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
4
Top
Pro
Multiple frontends available
MPD is a music player server that requires a separate client for user interaction. There are many frontends available, with the most popular being ncmpcpp.
See More
Top
Con
Not a music player, only a music server
You know how you need your browser (Firefox, Chrome, etc.) to access web pages? The browser is what YOU touch, see, and interface with, but in order for it to give you anything it must connect to a server that "serves" appropriate content. mpd is the server in this analogy, NOT the thing you actually use. The front-ends that are available for mpd, now those are music players.
See More
Top
Pro
Features provide a good music experience
While mostly bare-bones, Music Player Daemon does include a few features which help make it perform well. Buffer support ensures that your music continues to play without interruption even when your system is under an extremely heavy (but temporary) load, gapless playback starts loading a song just before it's needed so that it's ready to play the instant the last song ends. Meanwhile, crossfading allows your songs to blend into one another for continuous playback.
See More
Top
Con
May not conform to how you organise your library
MPD expects you to have all your music in a single folder (music_directory) and use symbolic links to retrieve other resources.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to use with various outputs
See More
Top
Con
Poor tagging support
Does not support enough tag types.
See More
Top
Con
Requires a refresh every time you add music
MPD won't automatically refresh it's library - if you add music to your music folder, you will have to manually tell MPD to refresh or else it won't add the new music.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
59
12
Resonic
All
11
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Portable version available
See More
Top
Con
No playlists
Or not yet, at least in the forums they say they're working on it
See More
Top
Pro
Clean interface
See More
Top
Pro
Fast
See More
Top
Pro
Lightweight
About 8 MB, and about 11 MB with the integrated Soundfont for its MIDI playback synthesizer. Native application, no dependencies (no .NET runtime).
See More
Top
Pro
Has a waveform seekbar and analyzers
Has a big single-click waveform seekbar and three real-time analyzer visualizations by default.
See More
Top
Pro
Pure sound
See More
Top
Pro
Supports all formats
WAV, BWF, RF64, AIFF, AIFC, FLAC, APE, ALAC, WV, TTA, DSF, DFF, MP3, MP2, MP1, M4A, MP4, AAC, MPC, MP+, OGG, OPUS, SPX, WMA, WMA Pro, WMA Lossless, MP4, WMV, AVI (certain codecs), MID, RMI, KAR, IT, XM, S3M, MTM, MOD
See More
Top
Pro
WASAPI/ASIO support
High-end audio cards can be easily used to their full potential without any additional software due to WASAPI (Player and Pro) and ASIO (Pro) support.
See More
Top
Pro
Most actions can be done with a single click
Most actions can be done without having to double-click. Things like navigating folders, playing files, seeking audio, changing volume are all done with a single-click.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (32 and 64-bit)
License:
Proprietary
Release Date:
March 21, 2019
Portable:
No
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
$0 - $80
36
8
DeaDBeeF
All
16
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
7
Specs
Top
Pro
A lot of plugins
DeadBeef has a lot of different plugins users can use to customize the interface, controls, and options.
See More
Top
Con
shuffle mode doesn't play an entire huge playlist (over 25 days)
See More
Top
Pro
Lightweight
DeadBeef uses few system resources, making it great for low end systems and for those requiring a media player that uses as few resources as possible.
See More
Top
Con
GTK-App
So there is basically no integration into non-GTK desktops.
See More
Top
Pro
Extremely customizable
DeaDBeef has support for title formatting scripting, like foobar2000, which allows you to customize group patterns, the converter output, the window titles, etc. to your needs. DeaDBeeF also has a Design Mode, which allows you to add new widgets to the interface and move/delete existing ones.
See More
Top
Con
Terrible GUI
stop reinventing (ugly) guis. play music and get out of my way.
See More
Top
Pro
Uses GTK2 or GTK3
Users are able to choose a GTK2 or GTK3 build of the application to use within DeaDBeeF.
See More
Top
Con
Fails when opening a CUE file
Doesn't work even after 30 minutes of tweaking. Not as good as Audacious.
See More
Top
Pro
ALSA plugin allows bit-perfect pipeline to DAC
See More
Top
Con
Ubuntu's sound menu buttons don't work
DeaDBeeF shows up in the sound menu; however, clicking the next/previous buttons doesn't do anything.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports single-album CUE files
See More
Top
Con
Not as many options as other players
When it comes to options DeaDBeef may not have as many as other more prominent music playing applications.
See More
Top
Pro
Smooth and easy
See More
Top
Con
Clunky
I've seen people showing lyrics - but I can't figure out how to make that work. It's very difficult to use the 'design' function (unlike Guayadeque) to re-arrange and design the interface beyond something like a music list and artwork...
See More
Top
Pro
Offers a ReplayGain scanner out-of-the-box
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
233
36
Dopamine
All
11
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
2
Top
Con
When track ends, next alphabetical track plays automatically, even when playlist empty
This app will continue to play unrequested music until you press the stop button.
See More
Top
Pro
Beautiful
Can play FLAC too.
See More
Top
Con
Doesn't support Album titles that are shared among different artists
"Greatest Hits", for example, will be treated as a single, huge album with different artists' tracks and a single album cover that will be wrong for most.
See More
Top
Pro
Light, easy to use and looks good
See More
Top
Pro
Fetch artist biography or lyrics
See More
Top
Pro
Play by folder possible
See More
Top
Pro
Can use your Windows 10 theme
See More
Top
Pro
2 visualizer to choose from
See More
Top
Pro
Can display lyrics
See More
Top
Pro
Miniplayer mode
See More
Top
Pro
Built-in equalizer
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
FREE
33
9
aqualung
All
4
Experiences
Pros
4
Top
Pro
Gapless playback
Aqualung offers continuous, gap-free playback of consecutive tracks. Your ears get exactly what's in the files – no silence inserted in-between.
See More
Top
Pro
LADSPA plugin support
You can use any suitable LADSPA plugin to enhance the music you are listening to. There are many different plugins out there, including equalizers, spatial enhancers, tube pre-amp simulators, etc.
See More
Top
Pro
JACK Audio Server support
See More
Top
Pro
Multiple skin support
There's support for multiple skins in aqualung; changing them is possible at any time.
See More
Hide
Get it
here
5
2
Built By the Slant team
Find the best product instantly.
4.7 star rating
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now - it's free
{}
undefined
url next
price drop