10 Lesser-known Music Players for Windows and Linux (And a Few For Mac)

iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, maybe RealPlayer. Other than that, you don't see the average music listener using much else to manage and listen to their music. But what if you're no average music listener? What if your needs extend beyond simple playback features? What if you want multiple libraries? What if you're frustrated with the bloat and useless features of these players? Well there's a ton of things out there for you.

Maybe it's because I'm restless, maybe it's because I'm a geek, but I tend to change my main audio player at least twice a month. I dunno, I think the way we listen to music effects how we feel when we listen to it. For example, the way I react to music is much different when I'm listening to headphones versus a speaker system. The music effects me differently when I'm on a bus versus by myself in my room (and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this, right?).

The difference is (obviously) more subtle when doing something as simple as switching an audio player, but it's still there. The way I navigate and control my music influences my choices and changes the listening experience. Audiophiles will also tell you that different music players actually sound different from each other, as players often use different techniques to process, EQ, and produce sound. I, despite my decent ear, couldn't tell you the sound differences between Winamp and iTunes, but keep an ear out.

So, through my geekery and various audio explorations, I've come across quite a few music players that deserve more credit than they get. Most are for Windows and Linux, a few are cross-platform. Some are more well-known than others, and they all vary in features. All are free to download and use, and most are open source. So without further ado, in no particular order, here's 10 of 'em. Oh, and click on all of the thumbnails to see bigger versions, but you knew that.


1. Amarok (Linux, Windows(beta), Mac(beta))

Amarok is probably the most popular player on this list. It is (arguably) probably the most popular audio player for linux. It's got somewhat of a cult following, as fans of the player tend to get a little crazy about it, and for good reason. Amarok is incredibly full-featured, while still offering the user freedom to manage their music in any way they see fit. Whereas iTunes says, "Here's how I'm going to manage your music." Amarok says, "It's your music, how do you want me to manage it?" Amarok can create a library with your structure of choice, index what you have, browse and play music through a built-in file browser, music can be dragged-and-dropped into the playlist, there's crossfade, EQ, effects, analyzers, visualizers, plug-ins, lyrics fetchers, even an online music store, magnatune. Probably my favorite feature is the ability to fetch wikipedia information about the artist and display it in the side panel. I switch audio players a lot, but I was hooked on Amarok for a good 8 months or so, which says a lot. The screenshot is of Amarok 1.4.4, but version 2.0 recently came out for linux and a beta version 2 is out for windows and Mac. Amarok 2 sports a cleaner, easier interface and a ton of new features that I just couldn't cover in one article.


2. Songbird (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Songbird is often referred to as an iTunes clone (as it manages music and indexes data in much the same way, plus it looks kinda similar), but it is so much more than that. It's built on gecko, the same engine they use to make Firefox, so in addition to a music player, it's also a full-fledged web browser offering a ton of popular extensions and skins. It's got a ton of seamless music-web-integration features that make it an awesome tool for discovering new artists, scrobbling, playing web files, and reading media blogs. It's also got your set of EQ features, visualizers and playlist capabilities. You can even save bookmarks, blogs, pages, video, and your own music all to the same playlist. And, of course, it'll manage your iPod without blinking. A really great player that many are calling an "iTunes killer."


3. Exaile (Linux)

Exaile aims to be very similar to Amarok, though unlike Amarok, which is built for the KDE window manager, Exaile is built for seamless GNOME integration. In addition to having (almost) everything that Amarok has to offer, Exaile brings a ton of its own cool features to table. The interface is slightly different, and it includes a built-in shoutcast directory browser, tabbed playlists (allowing for multiple open playlists), iPod integration and scrobbling, and Guitar tab fetching. If you're a GNOME die-hard, or just want what feels like a cleaner, tweaked version of Amarok, then check it out.


4. VLC Media Player (Windows, Mac, Linux)

VLC is like the swiss army knife of media players, you can throw pretty much any media file at it, on a computer without any codecs installed, and it'll play without any problems. It's actually fairly well known and pretty popular in terms of video players, but there was a subtle feature addition in the recent 0.9 release: the inclusion of a simple media library, album art fetching, and updated playlist features. This makes VLC now a pretty darn good audio player. The EQ is fast and fantastic, the playlist is simple and effective, and while it's management features are lacking, if non-existent, for the many of us who have our own folder structure and prefer dragging and dropping 'a la Winamp, VLC is a really great choice. One of its greatest features is its stability. Especially for audio files, VLC will practically never crash. It can also drive more volume than any other player I've used, so if you've got soft speakers, using VLC will definitely allow you to get some more sound out of them (and potentially blow them, so be careful). It's got a fairly lucrative plug-in community, and it's audio features are extremely robust. It'll never get in your face, it's not flashy, but what it lacks in library management and looks, it more than makes up for in no-nonsense power and advanced audio features.

5. Freeamp/Zinf (Windows)

Freeamp (now called Zinf due to copyright issues) hearkens back to older versions of Winamp, and hit its popularity peak around the same time as Winamps' as an open source alternative to the popular player. Unlike Winamp, however, Freeamp updates very conservatively and acts very much like Winamp 1 or 2. So if you're disappointed as to the way Winamp's gone and want something simpler, Freeamp is a good choice. It's got the same simple library features of older Winamp versions and even some downloading features. Though the main focus of this player is no-nonsense music playback, the same philosophy that made Winamp so popular back in the day.


6. Audacious (Linux, Mac (third-party port))

Audacious is fantastic. If Freeamp is like older Winamp, then Audacious is similar to new Winamp --at least on the outside. It's got a strikingly similar interface and for basic playback it works in much the same way offering simple drag-and-drop smart playlist creation. Its features differ greatly, however. It's got a really advanced audio playback engine (It was originally a fork of BMP) which is considerably more powerful than GStreamer and offers a ton of features. It's got the ability to use different output systems for playback, voice removal, transcoding, fast EQ, alarm, gamepad support, streaming, scrobbling, LADSPA support, and a pretty strong skinning and plugin community. It's also got wonderful metadata editing features. A lot of it's feature focus is on offering things that no other player has, and that's what has made it probably the second most popular player on linux. I always find my way to audacious when I'm looking for a simple and powerful player with that one niche feature no one else has.


7. Floola (Linux, Mac, Windows)

Floola is the iPod-lover's best friend, offering a complete and total replacement for iTunes. Though it doesn't support iPod touch or iPhone, the rest of us get a billion iPod centric features that truly liberate you from the vice of iTunes. Floola allows you to add and extract songs to and from the ipod from any computer, anywhere. It can automatically convert videos and movies to the right format as well as music, and it's got easy and powerful automatic podcast managment and sorting. It can manage, import, and export playlists, fetch album art and lyrics, even on older iPods. It can manage notes, synchronize to google calendar, add photos effortlessly, even automatically add web videos to the iPod by simply copying the url of the video. It can fix a broken iPod and recover files, search for duplicates, use system notifications, and even export your songs to HTML. Oh, did I mention it plays and manages music? Probably my favorite feature is the fact that it's just a standalone app/exe/executable, so you can put it directly on your iPod (or anywhere, really) and use it on any computer, with any Operating System. Of course, it's not all that useful if you don't have an iPod (or a motorola phone that supports iTunes), but for iPod owners, this is not just a great management and playback app, it's a must-have tool.


8. 1by1 (Windows, Linux (with WINE))

1by1 is the ultimate in minimalist music management. In fact, it doesn't even manage music. Dubbed, "the directory player" by it's creator, 1by1 has a simple, tree-based, two panel file browser. double clicking a music file will play it and all tracks in the folder. For those who like to manually manage their music with a folder structure of their own, 1by1 is the perfect counterpart. It also works well with those who use iTunes since iTunes automatically sorts your music by artist in a fairly neat folder structure. Like Floola, it's portable and can be put on a flash drive and carried anywhere. What's more it's tiny --just 100kb! It still has your basic features like gapless playback, crossfading, and audio enhancement, though it lacks an EQ. It's got almost no resource usage, and can read filenames directly or pull and display track metadata. it can rename files while playing them, and edit and delete directories while in use. It supports bookmarks and playlists (though you'll never use that), and can remember past places. All in all it's for the person who just wants to play what's in a folder. Simple, no-bullshit music playback.


9. Minirok (linux)

Minirok is one of my favorite players. Think of it as the bastard child of Amarok and 1by1. It's written in Python and is based largely on Amarok code, though almost everything in Amarok has been stripped out in favor of the same minimalist 1by1 playback philosophy. In the left panel is a tree-style file browser, and the right panel is an Amarok-style playlist that can be edited, cleared, and switched around. One of Miniroks' unique features is the ability to generate metadata from a filename. It can perform searches from the tree view and the playlist, and music can only be populated from drag-and-drop. Playback works and feels similar to Amarok, though most advanced audio options like EQ have been taken out. It's got global key bindings and custom shortcuts to be totally manageable from the keyboard or system tray, and it can also scrobble. Other than that, it's really just meant to play music. If you find yourself using Amarok or Exaile, but not using the library, and instead using the "Files" tab, you'll probably find Minirok to be a much cleaner, nicer app.


10. Aqualung (linux, Windows)

Aqualung is very much its own thing. It's got a few similarities to other programs, but on the whole it's unique. The interface is customizable, offering inline player and playlist or separation of the two. it's got a music library and good CD importing features. It's got all your advanced EQ effects, and it has tabbed, customizable playlists as well as keyboard shortcuts, streaming radio, podcast support, it supports a wide range of formats, and, like Audacious, can output to multiple drivers. It supports LADSPA by default and can be controlled completely by the command line. The interface feels very unique, with nothing really standing out as similar to another player, and the tabbed playlists are done very well. It seems like it's meant to be customized by the user, there's a bunch of different skins and making your own is pretty easy. The different windows can be put together into one big player or made as small and unobtrusive as you like. This player really follows none of the rules and is a good choice if you're looking for something different --from everything.


Well, there you have it. 10 lesser-known music players. If you're a geek you probably already know many of these, but there's hundreds more of them out there, and I encourage you to go hunting for something you like. After all, why shouldn't your music player be as unique as your music?