Best Music Player For Windows

I have a large music library. I don't and won't use a "service" like Spotify and/or Pandora. I never have, do not and never will believe in "Subscription" services, no matter who does it. I will NOT rent my music or my software. I will buy it, and use it how I please afterward. If that requires a little "creativity" on my part to make it possible, so be it. I paid for it, it's mine. Period. 1. I have a bandwidth cap on my home internet service. I will not use it up listening to music someone else's algorithm decides I should listen to. 2. My local library is mine, and is here and cannot be taken away or turned off because some corporate bureaucrat decides that a license should be revoked this month. The only people who do not or would not benefit from a music manager, are those under 25 who grew up in the now common "mobile" world where everything is streamed and short lived. They know nothing of cultivating a library or collections. Everything for them is NOW, later doesn't exist.

I rarely ever use Spotify, and I haven't used Pandora in years. 99% of my music is still bought and put into a good old-fashioned music player in MP3 format.

Particularly considering that you can dictate the quality of the recordings by paying attention to the bit rate of what you're downloading. A lot of the sound quality on those streaming services is truly awful.

Here's an interesting argument, posed by Bruce Willis, of all people. he's actually taking Apple to court over this one. He says he's spent over $10K on iTunes over the years and he feels that since he spent the money, he should be able to pass his music library on to his kids when he dies, just like a physical asset. Apple argues that his library is his and cannot be taken over by anyone else. EG: He hasn't actually purchased anything more than a personal license. When he dies, the license expires and no one else is allowed to access the library, even if it's physically stored on a computer or other device. This just doesn't sit right with me.

"The Google Play music player is currently available in select territories." :( Does it allow for storing in a DMR-free format that I could play on anything else than my smartphone/computer? I really do prefer using a media player when on the go. Having to pull up my phone to switch tracks / play / pause, etc, is to me an annoyance. As well as the mentioned phone battery consumption.

Streaming services are great for many things, but you're at the mercy of their available selection. It's why people sometimes watch bad movies on netflix: because they've seen everything good and there's nothing else left (they might still enjoy those bad movies, but I believe this reasoning is still present). If you know what you want to watch/listen to, dealing with a streaming service can be irritating. When you download your own music you can manage it how you choose.

Hrm, appears I either exaggerated a bit or spotify added alot of stuff in the past 3-4 months. But one that is *not* on there is Gabester And for indie stuff I have: The Horse Thieves, Alt-J, Damjan Mravunac (he/they did the amazing heavy metal instrumental soundtrack to Serious Sam 3), The Flashbulb, I Monster (probably not all that indie), Jenova 7 (don't think he's on spotify...), Mutemath, and Starfucker I'm not totally sure just how "indie" those are but those are the mostly kinda unknown groups I have in my library (also...when you google jenova 7....don't click the first link...whoever made that ruined the song with the video they put on it)

that's one of the things Google Play and Spotify premium services offer (download content to device to free yourself from the bandwidth issue). Also, the old catalogues for both are surprisingly robust. But, I understand the hesitation.

It's not a big collection at all. Although I prefer physical media, it's a rather small percentage of my collection. In reality, I only get the CDs from the bands I consider myself a fan of. That's just Dream Theater, Iron Maiden, Bad Salad, and Steve Vai. The rest is digital, but all DRM-free thanks to Amazon, self-publishing artists, or...other means.

Ha, I did say mostly applicable. The argument for owning, generally, is that, at some point, you could have very well bought what you're continuing to pay to rent (in the case of music, pay a subscription fee for). I am a dedicated music listener. Over my lifetime, it is very likely to be true that I would end up paying more to subscribe to either of these services over the long-term rather than pay up front to own. The free plans from Pandora and Spotify are really not worth much to me. If I wanted to use those services, I'd have to get a paid plan. And I would have to pay more for a data plan because of the streaming I would need to do while driving or in places where I do not have WiFi access. Nor are either of these services of much use when you're trying to discover new obscure artists or have those artists already in mind. Then there is the question of how long these services are going to survive in their present states, if at all. Subscription fee hikes and the complete disappearance of these services are all possibilities, especially if they don't figure out how to really make money.

Takes all kinds. There's Zero cell service, of any kind, for 15 miles in any direction of where I'm spending Jan and Feb this year. While I can stream in the house thanks to a fiber connection, that's it. There's no radio either (well, maybe AM since I haven't tried it), so if we want some tunes on the way to the ski hill or most of the way towards the natural hot springs for a soak, it's a dedicated MP3 player loaded up with files. Or, if I ever buy a new car that has USB media then that. Then you get to toss in the Other major hiccup, there's a large number of people who aren't interested in buying/owning an expensive phone or the more expensive plan. I have better things to do with $1500/year than pay for a data plan/subsidized phone. My parents don't have a call phone at all, but dozens of USB sticks loaded up with music for their Subaru. And then it's a simple use thing. I know my wife always grumbles about connecting her phone to the car for streaming (it's an '01 VW Jetta, no bluetooth), but it's a non-issue to flip the on button to the Sansa Clip that lives in the ashtray. Heck, we leave that running when doing stop and go errands. No annoying talk radio, commercials, or having to listen to the same music every day. Even Pandora starts to repeat after a couple hours (we turned that off and went back to MP3's on our 27 hours of driving from GA to MT a few weeks ago).

Actually read through the comments and didn't see anyone mentioning this... I download music still for a few reasons. 1. Like Netflix, any of these companies like rdio, spotify, decide when I get my music and what it is to some extent. If they stop carrying a group, or never carry them in the first place then I wouldn't get to hear them. Even with mainstream groups there are various recordings you never get to hear unless you search them out in some format or secret store. 2. Im not always connected. Sometimes I go camping. Sometimes I go driving where 3g isnt. Sometimes I don't want to have to bother paying Comcast, At&t, etc, their blood money. (I almost always do). 3.I own my music. No I don't mean if mister lawyer walks in he would give me deed to all things music. I mean if I want to delete them I can. If I want to copy my harddrive and give it to my friend, I do. If I want to put them in storage and listen to them in 5 years, I can. No matter what happens in the corporate world of music. Those are some of the reasons. There are more.

Yep, still have to download and manage my songs on a music player for my smartphone. The simple reason being I travel a lot in the inner city - constantly going in and out of the train underground. I also go in and out of busy skyscrapers where coverage gets spotty at times. It's just so much easier for me to make my playlist and not worry about it. I guess I'm also an edgecase.

I still live on mp3 and FLAC files because: 1) I want complete control of my playlist. Streaming forces ads, unskippable songs, or random songs; but if I'm not out to "find new music" then I pretty much just want to hear what I've got. Also could be listening to audio books, comedy sketches, etc. that I'll add to a playlist even though it's not music. 2) corporate offices block any sort of streaming service. YMMV but my main client who is pretty technologically inept still blocks everything from youtube to spotify to steam to torrents etc. for all their employees. Tethering to my 4g to waste bandwidth when I have the files I want to hear doesn't make much sense. And at their open floor plan (hear HR and sales on the phone from anywhere you sit) office, headphones are a must. 3) my playlist is cherry picked - out of an album I typically like a couple songs, so I don't need an overkill, bloated "management" application to organize music. Winamp got bloated so I'm on foobar2k.

I just don't get streaming; it goes over my head. Seems too new and ephemeral and abstract... I prefer the "physical" mp3 (or even cd)... plus, how do you listen to music when there's no wifi or decent data connection?

There are several reasons why downloading > streaming (assuming both are free): Downloading generally has a higher bitrate. Streaming songs can disappear if the label or artist revokes the rights to them. No risk of that with downloaded files. Downloaded files don't use data, so you can listen to your library without being dependent on a connection or eating into a data cap. You can edit the metadata of local files, no such access for streaming ones.

Have a look at Slacker Radio. I've been using it for over a year. I'm in Ontario the service is working 100% here.

spotify is crap that has almost none of the music I listen to (and no indie music of any kind) and pandora gets stuck in a rut playing the same 100-200 songs over and over and over (this is with around 15 stations being shuffled....albeit they do overlap genres)

I live in the Bay Area, and my employer pays for my AT&T phone. AT&T is crap in the Bay Area, and I frequently can't stream anything. When I get out of the BART tube, I usually can't get a decent signal for at least 5 or 10 minutes (and by then I'm underground again). When I go on vacation, I frequently go to places with no connection at all. So, I subscribe to Pandora. I also buy music and convert to MP3 to upload to my phone and save to the USB drive in my truck. Also, I may be older than the average Lifehacker reader, and my musical tastes don't change as much as they used to. Much of the music I listen to now, I've been listening to for years. I don't buy much new music, because well... get off my lawn.

The way copyright laws in the US are, even if you purchase music, you still are just licencing it. I only download what isn't available on Spotify or Google Music. And when I do, I add it to Google Music so it's stored in the cloud and accessible everywhere. The sound quality is as good as it would be if stored locally as long as it's over a good connection, and if I'm worried about connection quality, I can just make it available offline ahead of time. I have a HUGE collection of music and I've lost the whole thing and had to rebuild it before. Even with multiple backups, it's a waste of storage and still doesn't provide the security of having it in the cloud.

Google Music All Access lets you save locally to mobile devices (Android, and I think also iOS; don't know about WinMo). My main use for the service is to generate a radio station, then "Save Queue" and "Keep on Device" so I have music for the car. You can save any song or album in their library the same way. I'm pretty sure Spotify premium lets you save albums locally, too.

Hmm ... I can understand the bitrate thing. I used to think it was a big deal when I downloaded music on Napster. I've realized that (like skim milk), if I only drink (sorry use) one format, I don't ever notice the difference. I'm definitely not an audiophile, but I can respect that position quite a bit. The part that gets me is the ownership thing. I've been on both sides of this issue so I feel quite the hypocrite, but I just don't understand the ownership as an issue here. Let's say the worst happens and Spotify shuts down. Either (a) something will replace it of comparable quality and cost or (b) I'm using one of the wonderful usenet articles on lifehacker and boom; I'm in the same position as you in like two weeks with a proxy through Germany. I understand the importance of ownership in a lot of areas, but here ... access to a treasure chest of media seems fair to pay for when its netflix, why not with Spotify? As for the player/service/something ... I'm pretty sure lifehacker has some great recommendations for format converters as well. You guys helped me get Audible books onto my mp3 player. Now DRM, that is an area where ownership rights should be fought for bitterly. Plus a physical library or collection seems so annoying to cultivate. I have to care about it being organized because I paid for it. I'll save that headache for things that are really and truly mine in every sense of the word like family photos. Great discussion here though.

I'm not anti-subscription services. In fact, I use Spotify, but only as a means to discover new artists and such. I will never use Spotify as a primary source of music until/unless: - They manage to plug all of the holes in their library (songs missing), or - They let me upload my own songs to their server, so I don't have to copy them to every device I use Spotify on - They find a way to pack Spotify into a device the size of my Sansa Clip, where I don't have to pay a separate monthly fee to use it. I'm not really into keeping a phone in my pocket when I go to the gym, plus phones don't have physical buttons to navigate with.

Lots of people. I don't really like Spotify, Pandora, or any similar alternatives. I'm a musician, so I'm really into music, really specific music at that. I'm not the type of person that enjoys turning on Jango and listen to random songs that are similar to what I like. I like certain bands, and certain songs, and I want to listen to those and those alone. Not saying I'm not open to new music of course. I'll hunt new music from time to time, and if I find something I like, I'll buy it and add it to my collection. Also, I despise the idea of using my precious mobile data to stream movies or music. Sure, Youtube is fine, but if I want movies or songs on my phone, I rather have them directly in my SD card. Hell, I even prefer having the actual CD rather than a digital-only copy. I do what I can to get the physical media, but if for some reason it isn't available, I avoid iTunes. I like my music DRM-free. On top of that, I don't live in the U.S. or in Europe, so many online services like those aren't available, or are very limited.

And in that two weeks? I listen to music pretty much constantly in my waking hours. I don't want to be without because comcast accidentally cut the physical cable for my neighborhood again, or because I'm driving and what do you know, I lost coverage. I have a rather large collection that would take over 2 weeks to recreate, I'm also pretty anal for no good reason at the way music is tagged and covered. It makes me upset looking at other people's libraries with no names or totally wrong song names (weird, I know). Just because you don't see music as really and truly "yours" doesn't mean others don't. I would be fine losing basically anything else from my computer outside of my music. There are memories in the collecting process, there's memories in the songs, and there's memories in the archival process even.

How do you know all the songs you want will be there in the next Spotify though? All the streaming services seem lacking in many songs already. You can't be assured that all the songs you want will be available. Also, paying isn't much of an issue, lots of people already have their collection and aren't buying multiple cd's a month (have you heard most of the new music these days? ughh). I might buy 4 or 5 cd's a year. So ya 40 -50 bucks a year on a hobby is really nothing.

I purchase albums or torrent, and put everything onto my Zune HD. No fucks given. I don't have enough monthly data on my cell phone to stream (and I don't make nearly enough money to contemplate giving AT&T any more than the $80/month I give them now), and the battery life on my Nexus 5 sucks, so a dedicated MP3 player is a must for me. Plus, the last time I really tried to use Pandora the sound quality was atrocious. Ain't nobody got time for that.

I was a Spotify user for a long time, then recently switched to Google Play (because of brand loyalty, I guess, I like Google's direction, or did until they started trying to cram Google+ down my throat but that's another thread.) I use the subscription service because if I want to listen to Styx last night and Social Distortion tonight and tomorrow night I feel like Oliver Mtukudze I don't have to hunt through a library looking for it, I'm not limited by what I already have, and I don't have to hunt it down somewhere to buy it, especially when I'll probably not listen to those cuts again for a year. If someone says "hey you gotta check out so and so" I can listen to some so and so and if I like it listen to some more and if I don't forget about it. The interesting thing about the subscription services is that the obscure stuff is mostly there, what's missing are the classic catalogs, like Zep or AC/DC, that still make bank. I can live with that, I can hear that stuff just by turning on the radio in the car. There's another reason, though: I play in a band. When someone says "hey let's learn Downhome Girl by Old Crow Medicine Show" I don't have to go "huh?" I just dial it up on Google Play and learn it. Granted you can use YouTube for that in most cases (and that's where I turn if something's missing from Google Play) but YouTube requires some futzing to find a good version to listen to. Spotify did to some degree as well, I find Google Play to be superior in that regard.

I still buy/download music because the amount of crap music out there. Using Pandora or the like you still have to listen to the crap. With my own music I just make playlist after playlist. I probably have 100 playlist to use depending on my mood or activity. I use Pandora for parties or when I want a wide mix playing in the background. I'm not against streaming apps or trying to put them down, I just prefer my own music.

If tomorrow the license agreement between Google Music / Spotify / Rdio... change and some songs disapear from the catalog, I won't be able to listen to them any more, even though I could listen to them today. If the license agreement changes "in the physical world", no one will come into my house to take my CDs / audio files to stop me from listening to those songs. As for the sound quality, when I'm driving and listening to music on my decent car stereo, yes, it's kind of the same to have a lossless file on my phone, or to stream the same from GMusic. At home, with fine audio components, it's a VERY different story. This is not pretentious audiophiliac Kool-aid; when the weakest link in your system is the quality of your source, you can actually hear the difference. I won't frown upon streaming services. I am quite happy that Google Music is now available in Mexico (about time, guys!). But I don't think I'll give up my private collection any time soon.