What Media Player Do You Use and/or Suggest?

I recently had to uninstall my favorite media player: MusicMatch Jukebox.  I’ve had that same install since 2004 and absolutely loved the program.  But, sadly, it was getting buggier and buggier, and, of course, it was no longer supported.  not because it was old, but because Yahoo bought MusicMatch and proceeded to amke ti a piece of crap as they discontinued support for pre-Yahoo versions.  Yahoo ruins everything.

I used to use RealJukebox until it melded back into RealPlayer, and I haven’t seen a version that truly rocks my socks.  (I’m willing to be convinced that it’s better now.)  Everything else just seems to suck.

I downloaded Songbird, which is all right, but I think it’s not quite ready for prime time.  It crashes easily, doesn’t dig the add-ons as much as I would like (and is thus reduced to really basic functionality), and doesn’t even play or rip CDs at the moment.  How annoying is that?

I’m currently using the Creative media player that came with my MP3 player, but it isn’t as robust as I would like, either.  I do like that it plays video and music.

Windows Media Player… meh.  I suppose I could use it.  It’s better than it used to be, that’s for sure.

iTunes is a big fat NO.

What I want is to find another program as awesome as MusicMatch JukeBox.  I would prefer one that also played video.  I want something with lots of functionality, that plays and rips CDs (to MP3), that organizes tracks well and will batch process them (like updating the meta data).

What do you use to organize and listen to your media?  Suggest stuff to me, please.  My music library will thank you.

10 thoughts on “What Media Player Do You Use and/or Suggest?

  1. if you haven’t looked at RealPlayer for a while, i would check out the current version. the Download This Video thing is pretty cool, and the weird message center crap is gone.

  2. What have you got against iTunes? Other than it eats memory like Crunchy Cheetos and leaves orange smears all over your desktop. Also, if you are running Vista, sometimes iTunes will actually uninstall your sound drivers. But hey, at least it makes you update it every fifteen minutes! So there is an upside! I miss version 5.1.

  3. For MP3s I use Quintessential player, which is free, doesn’t take a lot of memory, and has a lot of user-made free skins (which are not just graphics but which can reorganize/resize the whole player interface, more (or sometimes less) conveniently) up for grabs at the website.

    Unfortunately it doesn’t do videos, but for playing audio in the background it’s great. (I used to use STP player, a tiny freeware program from Europe, but it hasn’t been updated and doesn’t work so well with XP.)

  4. Perhaps simply a reinstall of your MM version will work until you find and are comfortable with something else?

    Sorry your MM died on you. Sorry Yahoo won’t support it. If we had known they would’ve pulled such a stunt, I’m sure my boss wouldn’t have sold them the company. But water under the bridge and all that but I’m still bitter.

    1. I don’t think I can find the version of MM I had, and the exe file is long gone. Also, I had the pro version, and I’ll never be able to find the code for unlocking the pro stuff again. Too many years ago.

      Sorry to hear your boss sold out to yahoo! I’m sure he made money off of it. But he should have known it would be the end of people calling his product awesome.

  5. I was going to say Winamp for audio and VLC for video, but I was beaten to it. I don’t need anything fancy though. As long as it plays my files, I’m happy.

  6. The only media player I’ve ever used for music is Winamp. It’s free and it does everything I need it to! I use VLC Player for video, but I’m pretty sure Winamp can play video, and I think it rips CDs but I use CDex for that…

    Good luck. :)

  7. I like boxee. It’s a bit buggy still, but it’s interfacing with Hulu and other sites makes it pretty freaking awesome. You need to use it on ubuntu or mac right now though. If you need an invite, email me.

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