Music Player suggestion for Windows?
 

A friend (not very tech savvy) asked me for a recommendation for a music player suggestion for his Windows machine (I think running Windows 7, but I am not sure). Something simple to use that he could combine lots of files in various formats (including WMP) and eventually sync his iPod.

Is iTunes okay on Windows (I am happy with it on the Mac, but I didn't know if it works as well on a Windows box).

I have no complaints about it on Windows. From what I understand the functionality is almost identical. Then again when I add music to my iPod I treat it as an external drive and copy/paste it over instead of synchronizing.

iTunes works pretty well, the biggest problem I have with it is just that it fails to follow a few Windows-standard ways of doing things (just in terms of keyboard shortcuts and other details of GUI behavior). Things only a power-user would really care about.

Um, how about Windows Media Player? Comes built-in with windows, and has played everything I've thrown at it effortlessly.


I constantly have issues with iTunes. For one thing, there's an upgrade every 3 or 4 days. PITA. But none of them seem to fix the glitch that songs played are mixed from one's ending to the other's beginning, no matter how many times I manually change that option. YMMV, but why bother? Windows Media Player for the easy Win.

Except media player doesn't easily sync with an iPod. Not that there aren't other solutions (see BtD), but if what his friend is looking for is a single-interface-solution, iTunes is it, and works reasonably well.

Winamp Pro- I use it to manage music for my iPods and my Android phone now.

Thanks everyone. I'll point him towards iTunes.

I have fvckton of music and need a good tagger and de-duper. I've been using MusicBrainz and Magic MP3 Tagger but they don't spot dupes.

I have been slowly going through, looking at the details of the dupes to decide which track to keep (usually, but not always, going with the higher bit rate). Tedious, but it is the only way to make sure I get the right tracks (I am fussy about sound quality).

Yeah, I'm fussy about sound quality, too - which is why I have little use for iTunes, or mp3's at all. Yep, I download 'em to my phone - but I rarely listen to anything that way. One of the perks, imo, of being so old is we like our sound not to sound like crap.