Battle For The Best: Windows Music Player Part 1

Back in the day, I had Winamp and used it a lot. And then Phones became a thing, and streaming, and I forgot about my vast collection of mp3 music on the computer. I used AIMP and Foobar previously. But... I got this new computer, so which player am I going to use to listen to my tunes on here? Stay tuned to find out. 

I turned to MusicBee first. It has a somewhat  Complicated layout, you have to figure out where your music is, and have it scan your library for new music. But once you get it working, it has potential to be really great. You can import skins rather easily which is good. I liked the different tabs at the top. You can go to Playlists, Podcasts, Music Explorer, and Now Playing which gives information about the artist and album which is pretty neat. It has a built-in equalizer but I haven't used it yet. 

 Next I decided to try Winamp again. It is in the works to revamp the whole thing, but in the meantime, it looks and acts the exact same as it did in 2001 for me. That just makes me not want to use it. I'd like to see it when they finish the new one though, it will probably be pretty nice. I've never figured out how their local library system works. It has a bunch of built-in windows but I don't understand them, so I have always just dragged and dropped a folder into the playlist section. It is easy to download and install skins.

 

 

So then I decided to try out my old friend AIMP. I could never figure out the library aspect of this program, but you can drag and drop a folder in to it and it will play that just nicely. It's got some really nice skins, so it looks nice and clean too.  

I would have tried Foobar2000, but the basic version is so incredibly boring looking, and does all the things these 3 programs can do, and on top of that, is very hard to skin, so I decided not to bother. When you CAN skin it properly it can look really cool. But otherwise you could fuck up the software if you do it wrong. Credibility: I did it wrong.

I think I will uninstall Winamp. It's just not what I am looking for right now. I like MusicBee, if I can figure out how the library works and all the unique features it has. I also like AiMP for just dragging & dropping a folder into the playlist - but still need to figure out the library part. I will play around with these two for a while and when I pick which one I like the most, I'll post a new entry about it.