What music player do you use and why?

I use Spotify and Foobar. And here I'd like to share a nice tip with you. Sometimes I will transfer Spotify music to Foobar or other platforms for litening. You know Spotify music is of right protection, so to do that is required to download songs from Spotify via the help of DRmare Spotify Music Converter.

A 6th generation iPod classic rooted with Rockbox so it can play all kinds of lossless audio files.
The 160GB hard disc drive has been replaced by two 256GB SDXC cards in JBOD mode (Just a Bunch Of Discs).

Why?
- Portability
- Excellent pre-amp for such a small device
- 500GB of (mostly) lossless audio files
- The SDXC cards use a lot less battery power than the original hard disc - a full battery lasts almost a week
- You can easily tweak Rockbox to your own preferences

On my desktop:
Foobar since it accepts all audio formats and it is simple to use.
But I'm still looking for something else, I need more sorting options.

For large music library management, gMusicBrowser is my favorite for its scalability and dynamically empowering use of metadata, especially in the Linux environment. And there is no end to the customizability of the interface.

To access my server's content in a mobile setting, whether my phone, tablet, or Chromebook, I use an independent fork of the Subsonic server app called Ultrasonic which is incredibly powerful for libraries of 100,000 - 1,000,000+ tracks. With these tools at my command, I'm in absolute heaven.

Clementine

I finally got an opportunity to taste this thing. Some time ago when i was still a Linux user i gave advantage to Amarok (probably because of the name and the icon). Clementine is an open-source audio player based on Amarok. Since i've reviewed that one already, i really looked forward to compare it to its offspring.

Design:

-- Compared to Amarok, Clementine does offer some level of freedom in changing the interface but compared to other players like WinAmp or MusicBee that's still not much. It's tidy but still somewhat bland. Screenshot speaks for itself.
-- The biggest portion of the screen is used by playlist. That's fine, i can clearly see what's playing at the moment and all the info about the song. On the left hand side there's a list of all the artists in the library and clicking on it shows you all the albums and songs from that artist. At the top of that there's a search button which is pretty handy because scrolling through the library can be very tedious. More to the left are the sources from which you want to play your music. You can browse your library, your computer, play from online sources or sync your audio device.
-- And that's pretty much it. It's very basic but it offers everything you'd expect from an audio player. Aesthetically it can not compete against most of the players i've tried so far. Still, it looks better than WMP.

Functionality:

-- As i've said, Clementine can play your audio files (supports all common file formats, but i couldn't make it play m4a), stream from online services or sync your audio devices. The first thing i've noticed when using it is how faster it is compared to Amarok. Also it uses only about 70 - 75 MB of RAM when playing which is much less than Amarok. Overall, it's a huge improvement.
-- Building a playlist is simple and easy but not exciting. What i mean by that is, if you don't know what do you want to hear you will probably end up not playing anything. When i know how i want my playlist to look like i can make it easily and quickly. But if i want a playlist with songs that i haven't heard already but that still match some criteria (for an example, 50's R&B) it will be a problem to make it.
-- Clementine can rip audio cd's in various file formats. It also has an integrated audio converter and tag editor. Tagging works the same as in Amarok and it's pretty cool that you can get all the tags online. Spares me the typing sometimes. Other times it finds nothing and then i still have to type everything manually. There's also a cover manager which, to me, is useless. And, lastly, there are extras. If you've ever wanted to listen to your music with sounds of rain in the background, Clementine allows you to do just that. There are some other sounds effects that will be playing in the background constantly. It's not the most important thing ever but, sincerely, no other media player offers that, it's pretty original and i like it.

Stability:

-- Once again, compared to Amarok, Clementine is a huge improvement. It starts quickly and it doesn't take ages to update the library. It doesn't use too much working memory or processing power and for most of the times is works fine. I've had several occasions when it stopped playing for no apparent reason. I couldn't figure out what made it stop. Restarting solved the issue every time. It doesn't happen frequently though and maybe it's more about my laptop than the player itself.
-- Working with big libraries is a problem though. Unlike WinAmp, Clementine won't crash if you add more than 100 000 songs in the library but it will not work properly after that. Searching for songs becomes a burning issue and stability of the player declines.

Advantage(s):

-- It's kinda hard to come up with some advantages for Clementine without repeating myself. For Linux users this is probably the best audio player available. It's reliable and multi-functional. You won't need other software except maybe some burning tool to make audio cd's. Other than that, Clementine offers much more than Amarok and it asks much less in return. Considering it's a "clone" of another player, it turned up pretty original. Connecting it to websites is very easy. Whether you want to scrobble your music on last.fm or listen to your favorite podcast, Clementine can do everything.

Disadvantage(s):

-- Visual appearance is still something that could be worked on. I would really like to browse my library by multiple things at once too. Compared to players like AIMP, Media Monkey or MusicBee, Clementine still doesn't offer that much, so for Windows users there are still better options.

Why do I use it?

-- It's my player of choice for Linux systems. It works and learning how to use it is not a scientific project, like with some other players.

foobar2000

I have never used foobar2000 before, but some people have recommended it, so i tried it. I've been using it for two months now and i gotta admit i like it. It not a media player that i'm looking for, but it's great at what it does.

Design:

-- First thing that i noticed about foobar is the icon. It's ugly. That murky gray alien face doesn't look like it has anything to do with music. If you set it up as your default player, all mp3 files will get that icon. I think i can safely say it's the ugliest icon i saw among media players. But okay, once you get over that and click on the icon foobar asks you how do you want the interface to look like. It gives you some schemes which were of no significance to me so i clicked just whatever. You can change that later anyways. One of the coolest things about foobar is that you can create scratchbox and create your own interface de novo. It doesn't have limitless options but it's flexible enough to satisfy everyone's needs. As usual, i'm attaching my screenshot to show you what have i done with it. It's still quite primitive though.
-- Media library is very basic. Foobar is trying to be as minimal as possible. Finding songs is a bit annoying because you have to open the search box from the tab every time you want to find something. At least it's very fast at finding songs. Overall, foobar is not the prettiest media player, Media Monkey and Music Bee look much better, but foobar is not even trying to be that. It's simple and handy and if you don't like it, it's your problem.

Functionality:

-- Foobar can, believe it or not, play audio files. It plays all file formats that i've tried (mp3, m4a, flac...) but it does have its limits. It doesn't recognize cue files, if that's a problem for someone... You can build playlists, save them, load them... Import songs to library. Yes, it does have a library too. What else? Oh, it can tag your audio files! You can even collect tags online if you want. Is that all? No, once you click right button on the name of the song you'll see how much foobar can do. It offers integrated audio file converter which looks very basic at first, but once you start messing around with it you'll realize it can do a lot. It can split your file (so useful if you end up downloading whole album in one file!). By the time you find out there are preferences too, you will be able to edit many things that you thought were impossible at first. Without going too much into detail, i'll just conclude by saying that foobar can do much more than it seems at first but a lot of things are almost hidden and you really have to mess around with it and click on everything to see what will happen.
-- Audio quality is fantastic. It's loud and clear. It also has many options on correcting the sound if you want to boost the bass or something. It's worth experimenting. I felt like i was hearing some of the songs for the first time. Some of the songs that i've never liked sounded so good i changed my mind.
-- Foobar is fast as shit. It opens as soon as you click on it and it immediately updates your library, unlike Windows Media Player which takes ages to realize there are new things. Considering how small and simple it is, foobar might actually be the most compact media player i've seen. Editing certain things can be a bit complicated. For an example, i couldn't find how to add the year column in the library. It took me some time to realize i have to manually add it in the preferences box. It works but, damn, why does everything have to be hidden? Couple of more buttons on the main tab wouldn't hurt anyone.

Stability:

-- Not only is it fast but it's also indestructible. It passed my crash test easily. No matter how slow your computer is, foobar will use barely 15 MB of RAM and it works flawlessly even when many other apps are running. I didn't try adding my entire collection to the library for one reason only - even with some 300 albums in the library it's already starting to look unpleasant and i had to use the search option much more than i would prefer to. But i think foobar could handle even more than 100 000 songs. All respect in that regard.

Advantage(s):

-- Simplicity, stability and audio quality are its best advantages. Foobar is not for cataloguing music, it's for playing music. If you can accept that, you got yourself possibly the best audio player available.

Disadvantage(s):

-- Design. Even though you can edit and change it a lot, it's still just unpleasant to look at. Not that foobar was made to be looked at, but still... It's also not very handy. Most of the options are nearly hidden and it would help if at least all the options could be found on the menu bar. I was blindly clicking on everything to recall how could i convert wma to mp3. Also, fuck that icon.

Why do I use it?

-- I use foobar to preview my audio files. I sometimes listen to music on it instead of other players because it just sounds so good. If it could only do cataloguing the way WMP can do... But that wouldn't be foobar then, i guess. I highly recommend it.

Media Monkey

Before writing anything, i should note i'm using a free version of Media Monkey, not the Gold one. I have 4.1.19.1859 version, if that means anything to anyone...
As with other reviews, this is not going to be any professional opinion or anything like that. I'm just sharing my experiences using all the popular media players.

Design:

-- Media Monkey looks sort of like WinAmp / MusicBee hybrid. It's nothing spectacular. It offers three basic skins that you can choose from. The dark one is my favorite, but they all look ok. You can edit the look of the library freely. It's nowhere near as customizable as MusicBee but i'd say it still offers everything you'll ever need. If you got used to WMP or any other media player, you can easily make Media Monkey look like it.
-- Browsing through library is not easy and i don't like it. You can browse genres, artists, albums, years, or pretty much everything you want but it all looks crammed to me. When browsing through albums i can only see seven songs per album. If an album has more than that i have to click on (show all xx tracks) and then it extends it. That means i can't simply scan all the songs with my eye, i have to click on "show all tracks" all the time and, not to mention, that button is so small that i often miss it and start playing another song, deleting my current unsaved playlist forever. It's a simple thing, but constantly annoying. Other than that, i just couldn't get that feeling of excitement when exploring my music library. It works much better in WMP and MusicBee.

Functionality:

-- Media Monkey is one powerful player and i think it plays all audio file formats that i've tried. Those include flac, wma and my most hated m4a. Plenty of extensions and codecs are available online for download, just in case you encounter some exotic file format that doesn't work. The sound quality is satisfying. I'm not picky when it comes to that, but it's nice when a media player uses the full potential of speakers and makes you feel satisfied even with the cheapest equipment. Media Monkey does exactly that, i have no complaints about how it sounds.
-- Besides playing, MM has an integrated tag editor, CD ripper and a burner. Tagger is okay but not my preferred choice. It serves the purpose if you have to update some of the tags but if you add to the library couple of completely untagged albums, you're doomed. Ripper is alright and burner i didn't try. Yet.
-- To me, one of the most important things about media players is building playlists. I do that a lot. I love browsing through library, searching for songs that have something similar and then creating a playlist on a specific topic. To do that, it's very useful when you can just have a short preview of a song, without interrupting the current playlist. And this is where Media Monkey fails for me. Using it does have it's learning curve, but i don't mind that if i have a feeling of accomplishing something. With this player, i can't even tell you how many times i gave up listening to something because i wanted to add a song on a playlist, misclicked and ruined my playlist. It doesn't help that browsing is so tedious. No matter how much patience i had with it, i simply couldn't get the feel for it. Automatic playlists are different story though. Monkey collects all the info about what you're listening and offers you a lot of statistics about your listening habits. That's ok if you use it continuously. My most played song was "We Stole This Riff" by The Residents which i accidentally clicked on 14 times because it's the first on the list.
-- MM has many extensions available, including Last.fm scrobbler. Installing that, however, is way more complicated then it should be. On Amarok or MusicBee i only had to enter my username and password, and it worked. On Media Monkey i had to do full installation and configuration. If you want to mess with it, be my guest, i lost my patience very quickly.

Stability:

-- With 230 albums in the library, using Media Monkey was almost pleasant. Everything was visible and navigating was simple. It uses only about 35 MB of RAM and even my poor old laptop could handle it easily. In that sense it's much better than Amarok. But what about the ultimate stability test? Can Media Monkey handle 100 000+ songs like it claims it can? Well, yes it can. The most i've tried is 200 000 songs. It worked. I never had it crashing and it was playing songs smoothly. The memory usage was 277 MB though, which would cause my laptop to die from exhaustion, but my computer had no problems. Unfortunately, at that point using Media Monkey became almost impossible. Whatever i clicked on, it took couple of seconds to load and on fast scrolling the screen would freeze a lot. Sometimes when i clicked on a song the player didn't respond on first and when i clicked on something else it started playing the song i clicked before. In short, it was working but not smooth at all. Media Monkey can handle 200 000 songs but not as good as Windows Media Player can.

Advantage(s):

-- Stability and multi-functionality are its main advantages. For every average music consumer, Media Monkey is all you'll ever need. It would be great if it could have a converter too, but it doesn't really need it, since it can play pretty much all audio formats. If you can get around some of its flaws, Media Monkey is a fantastic audio player that will reveal you a lot about your own music taste that you weren't aware of. I didn't know The Residents were my favorite band, apparently.

Disadvantage(s):

-- Library. To me, it looks like my mentor's office - everything is there but finding it is like playing a lottery. It creally punishes every wrong click and navigating through huge libraries is not a pleasant experience. Instead, it's tedious and tiring. I couldn't feel that joy of exploring my own collection that i feel using MuscBee or WIndows Media Player.

Why do I use it?

-- I don't use it for most of the times. I have it installed both on my computer and laptop and it's there just in case.

MusicBee

MusicBee, what a cute name for an audio player. But, damn, what a beast is hiding behind it...

Design:

-- Attached screenshot shows you approximately how the interface of MusicBee looks like the first time you open it. I changed the colors only. It looks a bit minimalist and it took me some time to find everything. I was satisfied with the way it looks but in case you aren't, you can change pretty much everything. Every window, every tab, every color, every font, its interface is fully costumizable. Radical changes are certainly going to take a lot of time and patience. I would even dare to say it gives you too much freedom. Every change requires restarting the program, so that's a bit tedious. I had no patience to do that, so i just changed the skin and left the original design.

Functionality:

-- MusicBee can play every file format that i care about. Those include mp3, m4a, flac, ogg and wma. Allegedly it plays other formats too but i haven't tried everything. All the basic options are there, libraries (yes, you can actually have more of them), playlists, equalizer, reproduction modes and so on. Sound quality is excellent. While the song is playing MusicBee will grab all the info about the artist, album and song from the internet. Not only that, but it will search for similar artists too and if you already have some of those in your library it will notify you about that. I gotta say, all those options are a bit excessive to me. You can see very detailed statistics about listening habits, make auto playlists and read everything from Xbox Music. There's also an integrated scrobbler, which is very simple to use, so if you happen to have a Last.fm account MusicBee will do the entire job for you.
-- Tag editor is included and it's usable. Doesn't beat the TagScanner but it's powerful enough for most needs. MusicBee can convert audio files which is really useful. In my personal opinion, it's not better than AIMP's converter. Still, it's pretty awesome that this lightweight software enables you to do pretty much everything you need with your audio files.
-- Speaking of everything, MusicBee can rip CD's and burn them, with all the options that you will ever need. Sometimes it even gives too many options. I ended up trying everything and wasting so much time just exploring what else can this thing do. It's pretty addicting and amazing at the same time.
-- Building playlists is very easy once you get used to it. Navigating library is not as simple as with Windows Media Player but i dare to say this is because i have way more experience using WMP.

Stability:

-- I added about 100 albums, all fully tagged into the main library and it looked beautiful. MusicBee downloaded photos of artists, sorted everything the way i wanted and it was working perfectly. Then i decided i want to try to add more albums. I imported my entire WMP lirary (MusicBee can import library from WMP or even iTunes). At first i thought the process was successful. I could browse through the library and it was then that i noticed how ugly the library is starting look like. It was a complete mess. After some 5 minutes MusicBee finally crashed and i had to restart it. When the program started again, my entire library was gone and i had to import it again (which i didn't do because the first time it took me couple of hours). Even though some people claim MusicBee can handle large libraries well, my experience is different.

Advantage(s):

-- All-in-one and fully functional. When you get used to MusicBee you will certainly fall in love with it. It's very light and doesn't waste much of RAM. With MusicBee you won't need a separate tag editor, cd ripper or burner, last.fm scrobbler or file converter. It is also constantly updated.

Disadvantage(s):

-- Using MusicBee has its learning curve. At moments i felt like it gives too many options and sometimes it can be too complicated. Changing the design, though possible, is not simple at all and i had no desire to waste my time doing that. Also, when your library contains fully tagged and well organized albums it will be easy to use and navigate. But once you start adding albums that have some tags missing (for an example, i can't find the release years for every album) it will become a mess. Stability in cases where library has more than 100 000 songs is a problem, but it's not as bad as Winamp in that sense. Also, if you plan to use MusicBee offline, it's not going to be nowhere near as exciting.

Why do i use it?

-- I have an old and barely functional laptop. If i turn on WMP or Amarok, i won't be able to do anything else on it. With MusicBee though, i can listen to music and tag at the same time. When i hear something interesting that calls my attention, i don't have to open the browser and google the song because MusicBee finds all the info for me. I don't have to have 5 programs installed do to everything i need with my music files. In cases like this, i think MusicBee is a perfect choice and i highly recommend it. If you don't mind spending some time learning how to use it, it might become your new favorite music player.
-- On my computer though, i still don't want to use it because of two main issues - it's much less exciting when used offline and it can't handle large audio libraries.

MediaMonkey is hands-down the best media player for libraries w/more that 100k songs, for sure. But I would also argue that it is the best media player, period, for music junkies. It also has a great companion app. It can be overwhelming and has a learning curve though. It's a total hassle to get to run on Linux, but stellar for Windows. I easily, wirelessly, sync 160 gigs to my Android.

Now i'm actually tempted to show you screenshots of every media player giving me fuck off when i tried playing m4a file. Not even the trick with renaming the file to mp4 didn't work. Maybe it's problem with my Windows? O.o

I personally use Clementine on Linux and Play Music on Chrome OS. I suppose that if I were a Windows user, I would use foobar2000 (I’ve had the occasion to use it via wine, notably to extract DVD-Audio images using https://sourceforge.net/projects/dvdadecoder/ ).