The free web service Chromus could change that again. The service combines Last.fm’s music database with the music found on the Russian social networking site Vkontakte. The result? A player that knows and plays nearly every song and album on the planet.

Here is how it works. You visit the Chromus website over at Github. Now type in a band name, artist, song or album after clicking on the search icon in the upper right corner of the screen.

Tracks and albums are displayed on a result’s page afterwards. You can now click on an album or track to start playing it right away on the site. If you select an album, all tracks of the album are queued in a playlist. This lets you listen to all songs of an album in full length online. All without a Last.fm or Vkontakte account.

You can select individual tracks with a click on the playlist entry. The player supports all basic controls from pausing and changing the volume to seeking and repeating the playlist.

Last.fm or Vkontakte users can sign in to their accounts to make use of scrobbling and music playback more reliable.

Chromus looks like a spin-off of the popular Google Chrome extension Last.fm free music player which provides more or less the same functionality. It is not clear if the two are linked in any way or if the author of Chromus has used the Chrome extension for inspiration only.

It is interesting to note that many non-English and non-Russian songs can be played as well. If you are looking for a free web music player that does not require you to register, and that does not limit your music listening experience, then you may have found it in Chromus. (via Caschy)

Installation is easy. Click through the dialogue boxes and launch the app. The user has the option of a number of different configurations for initial use, although the default setup will give you a single, integrated interface, not unlike many other media players.

Point the application toward your library of choice, or more than one library. Give it few minutes to scan through your files, and you’re ready to start listening. The basic module only used about 30MB of RAM for just playing music.

You have the choice of different module configurations. Below is an example of two separate equalizer displays; with a compact audio control interface and a file navigator. This is a great application that includes audio editing tools, lyric composer, different visualizations, video components, internet radio options, and yet it remains lightweight and friendly to use. All of this comes with a high degree of potential for customizing each module. And, this is just the basic application. This is the free version with no add-ons or plug-ins installed. If this application hung out at Muscle Beach, it would probably stop dead-lifting its 800-pound barbell just to carry your groceries home for you. It is that good.

For a relative unknown in the universe of media players, JetAudio stands out against the backdrop of form-over-function. This piece of software is all functionality. There’s nothing it can do that isn’t meant to directly enhance your listening experience.

At this site, you can share .pls files to broadcast playlists or access those created by others. While not as convenient as other streaming music services, the ability to integrate this functionality into such a feature-rich and robust music player is a real treat.

Even the lyrics component has its own integrated player controls which allow for scrubbing with a slider, incremental fast-forward and rewind controls all included with a text editor. Furthermore, the visualization system can integrate some of the great titles like G-Force or Aeon from Soundspectrum. The JetAudio free version also comes with a backup manager, called JetShell, for archiving your media files.

The paid version of the application includes a number of additional features that extend both the listening possibilities of the free version and its audio editing capabilities. All-in-all, we have only begun to discover the ways in which JetAudio can bring a more inclusive and flexible user listening experience. Yet, it seems as if we have found our new pet software addiction for at least a little while. JetAudio is a music player for music people. It has heart. It is rich in features and configuration options. It does something few applications of any kind manage to do by presenting the option for the user to re-think what is possible in using an application. Rest assured you have not heard the last from this little digital boom box.

Cantio is a relatively new service that is probably best described as a music frontend for YouTube. Guests who visit the website can listen to music and artist right there and use the search to find artists and music they like.

Registered users get additional features like playlist and favorites support.

Individual songs are played with a double-click. Users then need to pay attention to the small video window in the lower left corner of the screen, as it indicates if the music video could be loaded successfully. The video itself is shown in that small preview window while the music is playing in the background. A click on the video preview launches it in fullscreen mode in case you would like to watch the video as well.

Cantio offers artist and music pre-selections. A click on music displays the week’s most popular songs, a click on artist popular and hyped artists along with their discography if available.

Some of the information and charts are pulled from Last.fm. Search results can be displayed in list view with track names, artists and albums or in album view mode where the album covers are displayed.

Keyboard shortcuts have been added to make navigation and handling easier. Space starts or stops the current song, left and right arrows play the last or next song and up and down arrows increase or decrease the volume of the music.

The player controls are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Here it is additionally possible to use the slider to jump to a specific song position, enable repeat and song randomization.

Registered users have the option to create playlists which they can play over and over again.

Cantio does a few things better than YouTube. It filters results efficiently for instance so that only the right band, artist, album or song are listed in the search results.

It remains to be seen if the service will be online in one year’s time. Revenue seems to be solely generated by Flattr donations currently.

Cantio should be compatible with all modern web browsers. Just head over to Cant.io to give it a spin.

In their listening, many people grow partial to a particular music player. Quite a few prefer iTunes, but programs like WinAmp, VLC and even Windows Media Player have healthy followings that are loyal to the program. The idea of using another program for any reason is simply unacceptable. After all, once a user has spent a few months getting used to the navigation and features of a particular program, it can be very difficult to adapt to a different system.

This is all very well and good until someone introduces other computer tasks to the mix. Having other windows open blocks your media player, causing unneeded inconvenience where there should be ease of access. Some keyboards include control buttons to circumvent this problem, but they are fairly uncommon these days and can be difficult to set up for a particular program.

All of these problems certainly hold true for the internet as well – or almost. Unlike with other program windows, some web browsers allow you to install add-ons that provide a music player interface, allowing you to control what you are listening to without disturbing your web experience. This tutorial will outline one specific program that has been mentioned in passing here but that has never been fully considered – FoxyTunes for Mozilla Firefox.

To download the latest version, simply navigate to Firefox’s online add-on store here. Download the necessary files and then sit back and let your computer do its work. Restart Firefox, and when it opens back up you should see your new controls along the bottom of the window.

That’s right, they are absolutely tiny. This is a change from previous versions of the application, which put a larger bar across the bottom of the window. That did not sit well with users with smaller screens, who lost out on much of their viewing area. If you need a larger interface, however, you can get one by following this link to FoxyTunes’ own website where you can apply skins to make the interface larger.

Because there are many, many different music players out there and because users of those players are not very willing to try something else just to have these controls in their browser window, FoxyTunes allows you to choose exactly which player you would like it to control from several choices.

Clicking on the arrow that points down beside the default Windows Media Player icon brings up a list of all supported players, and there really are quite a few. Select yours, then open that music player and start something playing. You will notice a display appear to the left of the control buttons that lists the artist, song, and album for you. From there, use the navigation controls to skip forward or back, pause and play, and even control volume, right from Firefox.

I want to walk you through the upgrade process for Banshee 2.0 on Ubuntu. You don’t have to be using the most recent beta release of 11.04, but you really can’t go back any further than Ubuntu 10.04. With that in mind, let’s see what Banshee 2.0 will bring you and how you can get it installed.

New Features

Here is a list of the new features offered in 2.0.

Artist/Album Browser Track Actions: Finally you can right-click on an artist or album and select an action to act upon the selection. From that list you can Add to play queue, Play after, Add to play list, write to CD, edit track information, and more.

‘Play After’ Queue Options: From the Play After menu option you can insert a track or an entire album after the currently playing track. This makes listening to must on the fly very easy.

User Interface Improvements: Several changes have been made with a goal of having a clearner and user-friendly UI. These changes include:

• Removal of active source titlebar.
• Search now beside volume button.
• Smaller icons.
• Hidden counts for libraries.
• Name group-separators..
• Seek slider and search area can be resized.
• Podcast episodes now shown in grid and include descriptive lines.

Ubuntu One: The Ubuntu One Music Store is no longer an extension, but a part of the core Banshee application. No more enabling this feature. SoundMenu extension also enjoys this same change.

Subtitles: Support has been added for embedded and external subtitles.

Enhancements

There have been a ton of enhancements that are now available in Banshee 2.0. Some of these enhancements include:

• Support Amazon Cloud Player browsing and downloading
• Remember sources’ column configuration
• ‘Shuffle by’ respects user-selected artist/album
• MultimediaKeys: Support Pause, FastForward, Rewind, Repeat and Shuffle
• Album grid has tooltips for ellipsized text
• MusicBrainz cover art search supports CDBaby and Jamendo
• Allow to clear the play queue while in Populate mode
• Add a new ‘Recently Played’ default smart playlist
• Blank track editor spin buttons when 0
• Remove Home and Photo folder import sources
• Improved write-metadata-to-file performance
• Many improvements and fixes to the F1 user guide
• Add support for handling u1ms:// links
• AmazonMp3.Store: amazon.ca support
• Daap: Keep a list of recently used remote servers
• Windows build (alpha-quality) now available
• Mac build (beta-quality) has been updated

Installation

The installation of Banshee 2.0 is actually quite simple, if you follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-add-repository ppa:banshee-team/banshee-daily
3. Issue the command sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

You will notice, during the installation process, the Ubuntu One extension will be removed, this is normal and must be done, since this service is now rolled into the core.

Once the above commands are run open up Banshee and you should now see a much-improved interface as well as a far better performing player.

One thing that you cannot do with Grooveshark is to control the music player with your keyboard’s media keys. If you want to skip a song you need to go to the web page and do that.

That’s where the Windows desktop player WinGrooves comes into play. It basically is a 1:1 copy of Grooveshark in your web browser, with the benefit that it fully supports keyboard media keys and customizable hot keys that work everywhere.

The program seems to be using the Internet Explorer rendering engine (correct me if I’m wrong). Adobe Flash needs to be installed on the system as well.

Wingrooves displays the standard Grooveshark layout after it has been started. Users can use the search to find a song, tune into one of the stations or log into their Grooveshark account to access their personal music collection or playlists. Groveshark ads are displayed in the application which is remarkable, considering that this is the main source of revenue of the service. Members who pay a small fee can remove the advertisements to support the service further.

You can then minimize the application and music will continue playing in the background. A click on the options button in the main interface displays all hotkeys that are configured. They all make use of Ctrl-Alt and another key and can be changed in the menu in case you like to use different keys.

Users with media keys can ignore those keys outright and use the media keys on their keyboard instead.

WinGrooves is only available for the Microsoft Windows operating system. No additional compatibility information are provided. It looks as if the program requires the Microsoft .NET Framework to be installed, but it is not clear which version it requires.

The interface is divided into a header area with playback controls, search options and information about the current song, and a main area that is divided further into tabs.

All that is needed to find songs is to enter the name of a song or artist into the search form. The program displays a list of hits in an extra search window. A double-click on a listed song adds it to the current playlist.

Playlists can be saved and loaded at anytime, with an additional option to import GrooveShark playlists (under Tools).

The Last.fm tab can be used to find similar songs or artists, display the top songs, albums or artists or top songs by geographic location, tag or genre.

There are additional options available, like linking to the user’s Last.fm account to display songs related to that account. Users who want to do that need to supply their last.fm username and password in the Options.

Local songs and folders can be added and included in the search which means it is possible to use the music player even without Internet connection.

Several plugins are already available to search for and display lyrics of the current song, sync the playlist with other devices enable or disable the web remote server.

The player displays biographic information about the current artists as well as album art and related information directly in its interface.

GrooveWalrus is an interesting music player for users who like to tap into two of the largest music databases and local files at once. The player is available for download at the official project website. The Python source code is provided there as well. The player supposedly runs under Wine for Linux or by running it from the source directly. (via)

The developer of AIMP has just released a first beta of AIMP3, and boy does it look good.

One of the biggest changes in AIMP3 is a completely revamped interface design wise. The controls have remained the same more or less though. New users find many controls in the upper left corner of the play window to configure the extensive settings of the music player.

Major changes that are mentioned on the (Russian) project site are:

• New style of program and project as a whole
• Full support for translucent texture covers
• Own audio engine (the system audio output)
• Completely reworked music library
• Full support for ReplayGain

All changes are visible on this page. It is best to use a translation service like Google Translate to navigate the website, unless Russian is one of the languages understood.

The audio library can be filled with music from local hard drives, remote drives, removable drives and playlists. It furthermore offers access to IceCast, ShoutCast and custom Internet radio stations straight from the interface.

The core features are all included in the beta, from recording Internet radio over the cover art downloader and LastFM Scrobbler to the tag editor and alarm clock. Users who spend some time using AIMP3 will find a lot of features that may be very useful for them.

AIMP3 is available for download at the developer site. The site links only to file hosting sites for the download. A scan at Virus Total reported a clean file except for one hit that is likely a false positive.

Users need to select English as the language during installation for an English software interface.

Tapin Radio has been designed to be an easy to use Internet Radio player and recorder. The program is available as a portable version and installer, both of which are offering a wide selection of Internet radio stations for selection.

The program will automatically check for updates on startup and download updates that are found immediately without user interaction.

A selection menu with built-in search is available in the radio player. Users can either enter a search term, e.g. for a genre or station name that they now, or pick one of the available categories. Either way, a listing of radio stations is displayed in the lower half of the screen.

A double-click on a station connects to the stream, and music begins to play in the player. The player offers basic controls. It is possible to change the volume of the music and to stop it. Stations can be added to the favorites to open them faster whenever the program is started.

Tapin Radio keeps track of opened stations which offers another option to launch previously played radio stations in the player. The Internet radio player can also load a stream url directly from the file menu.

About recording Internet radio. A click on record in the main interface, or the selection of Recording > Start Recording in the menu records music from the radio station that is currently playing in the music player.

The options contain recording settings. Tapin Radio for instance records only mp3 streams by default. Wma, aac and ogg streams need to be enabled in the recording options before they can be recorded. It is not really clear why that is done, and the developer should consider enabling the recording all all stream types automatically.

Songs are automatically recognized if the radio station adds meta information to the stream. If that is the case songs are saved individually in the format artist – song.

Tapin Radio’s biggest strength is that it is easy to use. It takes less than ten seconds to find a radio station and start playing it in the player. The ability to record what is playing is a nice bonus.

Advanced users may prefer an all in one solution that programs like Winamp, AIMP2 or Windows Media Player offer. It may take a tad longer to find and play a radio station, but the additional functionality makes more than up for it.

It would be nice if Tapin Radio would support the recording of multiple streams, and options to play and record different stations.

Users who want to test Tapin Radio find more information and downloads at the developer website.

Before we dive into the review we are going to establish some criteria. Instead of looking at the usual like supported formats, we are going to look at the player’s resource usage and feature set as a whole.

AIMP2

aimp2

What the developers say:

AIMP is a full-featured music player designed with sound quality and wide, customizable functionality in mind. Over twenty audio formats are supported. Audio is processed in 32-bit for crystal-clear sound. The player features a 18-band graphics equalizer with extra built-in sound effects. You can extend the existing functionality adding Input, DSP and Gen plug-ins from Winamp. All local and global hotkeys are customizable. Full Unicode support. You can convert AudioCD to MP3, OGG, WAV or WMA. Similarly, you can grab sound from any audio device on your PC to MP3, OGG, WAV or WMA formats.

AIMP2 is a very compact music player that comes with a lot of extras build in. The player supports skins, plugins, hotkeys, comes with multiple interface languages, a tag editor, cover art downloader and full playlist support. In addition to that it can record Internet radio, be configured to automatically shut down, and integrate several Winamp plugins into the player. The resource usage of the player ranges from 5 to 12 Megabytes of computer memory.

XMPlay

xmplay

What the developers say:

XMPlay is an audio player, supporting the OGG / MP3 / MP2 / MP1 / WMA / WAV / AIFF / CDA / MO3 / IT / XM / S3M / MTM / MOD / UMX audio formats, and PLS / M3U / ASX / WAX playlists. A load more formats are also supported via plugins. When XMPlay was first released in 1998, only the XM format was supported, hence the name “XMPlay”.

XMPlay is probably the underdog in this overview. The developer has not updated the music player since December 2009 (but plugins related to that) which does not necessarily mean that development has stopped. There is only that much one can add to a music player, and once that’s done there is virtually no need to update the player, unless other variables change.

XMPlay is a portable application. Like AIMP2 it supports some Winamp plugins, skins, and all the bells and whistles that someone expects from a media player. It’s memory usage is among the lowest of all music players in this guide. It uses roughly 6.5 Megabytes of memory.

Winamp Lite

winamp lite

What the developers say

Not quotes, as Winamp Lite appears to be more of a side project

Winamp, the granddaddy of music players. For this review, we have downloaded and installed Winamp Lite, the least resource intensive but also least feature rich of the Winamp editions. Interestingly enough, it also means that Winamp Lite is the least feature rich music player in this test. It provides basic music playback with everyone would expect, as well as plugin and theme support.

On the resource side, Winamp Lite uses more than 20 Megabytes of memory while playing music.

Foobar 2000

foobar

foobar2000 is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats.

Foobar 2000 for a long time was known as a lightweight highly customizable music player. To our surprise, it used the highest amount of computer memory of all test participants. The mp3 player used more than 32 Megabytes of memory during music playback.

It does however offer a lot more than just music playback. It supports visualizations, audio ripping, a music tagger and converter and more. Having said that, players like AIMP2 have a similar functionality with a lower footprint.

Contenders

VUPlayer

vuplayer

1by1

1by1

1by1 is a small and versatile audio player for MP3 and dll/plugin supported audio formats like WAV, OGG, MP2 or CD Audio. Without the need for a playlist it plays multiple files from a directory or a whole disk. You can simply start your tracks in an explorer-style file view, load them through the command line (e.g. if associated with file type) or drag them over the window.

QuuxPlayer

quuxplayer

QuuxPlayer is a sleek audio player that allows users to import and organize music already on their computers as well as access a multitude of online radio stations. The program combines an intuitive interface with useful features, making it a nice alternative to other popular audio players

MooPlayer

mooplayer

Moo0 AudioPlayer is a very simple audio player.

It is very small and simplified for easy use. If you are looking for a lightweight audio player, this may be the one for you. Also, it includes skins in various colors to suit your liking.

Not basic music players, still worth mentioning

Jaangle

jaangle

Jaangle (formerly Teen Spirit) is a free music player and organizer software. It categorizes your mp3, ogg, wma, avi etc collection and displays it in easy to browse, user interface. It has a quality audio – video player and also an integrated tag editor.

Musicbee

musicbee

If you are looking for an application geared toward managing extensive music collections, easy to use and with a comprehensive feature set – MusicBee is that application. MusicBee makes it easy to organize, find and play music files on your computer, on portable devices and on the web.

Atunes

aTunes

aTunes is a full-featured audio player and manager, developed in Java programming language, so it can be executed on different platforms: Windows, Linux and Unix-like systems, …

Currently plays mp3, ogg, wma, wav, flac, mp4 and radio streaming, allowing users to easily edit tags, organize music and rip Audio CDs.

Which music player are you using? Let us know in the comments.

A playlist option however is not available on those pages, only the ability to play songs of the artist in the Radio on site.

The Google Chrome extension Last.fm Free Music Player improves the listening experience on Last.fm. It will automatically intercept clicks on play buttons on Last.fm. The page is scanned for music and all songs found on it are displayed in the player’s interface.

This works on all pages containing a play button to play songs.

last fm free music player

The music player acts as a playlist on Last.fm. The music plays in the background and continues to play even if the Last.fm page is closed in the web browser.

The player offers basic controls that include controlling the volume, pausing playback, shuffling or repeating songs and scrobbling.

All songs that are played in the music player seem to be full length songs. We tested some songs in Internet Explorer and Chrome without the extension installed and noticed that they were cut after 30 seconds. The same songs were offered as full length songs in the Last.fm Free Music Player.

That alone should be reason enough to use the music player when playing songs on Last.fm.

The ability to play full length songs, the playlist feature and the fact that music can be played in the background make Last.fm Free Music Player an ideal player for Last.fm users. Google Chrome users can download the extension directly from the Google Chrome Extensions gallery.

In this article I will show you some of these cool extensions, where to get them and how to add them.

Where to find the extensions

Most extensions will be found in your package manager. In fact, that is where I recommend you getting your extensions from, because it will ensure the extensions will work properly. So if you fire up your package manager and do a search for “banshee” (no quotes) you should see plenty of extensions. Now, let’s take a look at some of the better ones.

Figure 1

How to enable them

To enable an extension you only need to click on Edit > Preferences to open the Preferences window and then click on the Extensions tab (see Figure 1). To enable a specific extension just click on the check box associated with the extension and close the window.

Ubuntu One Music Store

Naturally, if you are using Ubuntu, you are going to want this extension. I was surprised to see how seamlessly this worked with Banshee as Rhythmbox has been proclaimed as the “official” player for UOMS.

DAAP Sharing

If you have anyone on your network running a DAAP-enabled music player (or DAAP server), you will want to be able to listen to their tunes. Do so with the DAAP sharing extension.

Alarm Extension

If you want to use your PC and your music as an alarm, this is exactly what you need. With this extension you can set numerous preferences for an alarm time as well as a sleep timer.

Liveradio

If you are a fan of internet radio, you will want to add this extension which allows you to listen to live365, shoutcast.com, and xiph.org.

Streamrecorder

If you are a fan of, say, podcasts and you want to record them off live streams you can do so with this handy little extension. This is truly a “what you hear is what you get” system. Streamrecorder allows you to record using different encoders to fit your needs/likes.

Coverwallpaper

This is a fun “toy” that will change the desktop wallpaper to the cover art of the song you are currently listening to in Banshee. The only downfall to this is that the artwork will be rather pixelated when stretched to fit your desktop.

Final thoughts

People will fall on one side of the fence or the other on these extensions. To many Banshee is nothing more than a music player. But to some, Banshee is much more. Have you found an extension for Banshee that you can not live without? If so, share it with your fellow Ghacks readers.

XMPlay is still mostly unknown to the majority of Windows users can be explained with the dominance of the other players that are available. Who needs yet another player if there are many available that do their job just fine?

XMPlay on the other hand is different than most. Its developer has concentrated the efforts on producing a lightweight portable music player that is packed with features and compatible with all popular music formats that users might encounter.

Version 3.5.1 of XMPlay has just been released, reason enough for use to take another look at this music player underdog.

XMplay is a music player that can play popular music formats like mp3, ogg or wma automatically with the option to add other formats as plugins. Those plugins are for instance provided to add Flac, Realaudio or Midi support. Plugins are also available to extend the player’s functionality. There are several plugins for popular archiving formats for instance that can be used to play music right from the archives without unpacking them. Themes are also available for the player to change the looks of it.

What you can do with XMPlay:

• Net streaming – All supported file types (including MODs and archives) can be streamed from FTP and HTTP servers (inc. Shoutcast/Icecast/Icecast2), optionally writing a copy to disk, FTP directories and HTML webpages can be scanned for playable files
• Gapless output – Gapless playback of all supported formats, crossfading
• Track information – Displays file/format information, messages/tags, and instrument/sample texts, open webpages from the texts
• Library – A database of your tracks, with directory monitoring, for quick and easy access to the tracks you want to play
• DSP – Automatic gain control (and Replaygain), 9 band equalizer, reverb, plugin support
• Keyboard shortcuts – Fully customizable shortcuts, including global hotkeys
• Integration – Open files/folders from Windows Explorer, drag’n'drop files/folders/shortcuts/URLs, monitor the clipboard for playable URLs, drag’n'drop tracks from XMPlay into other programs, icon customization

The music player is divided into different panels, more precisely in side panels that can be slid into the main panel in the center of the player.

The support site for the player hosts a guide that explains the ins and outs of the player. XMPlay is a solid alternative to the popular audio players that are usually installed on Windows. Its main advantage are its portability and low resource usage along with providing access to all the features and functions one would expect from a software player.

XMPlay 3.5.1. can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with all 32-bit editions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 to Windows 7.

In this tutorial I will first introduce you to Aqualung and then I will show you how this unique tool can help to organize your music.

Features

Aqualung offers a number of unique features:

• Audio CDs can be played back and ripped with on-the-fly conversion to WAV, FLAC, or OGG, or MP3.
• Subscribing to RSS and Atom audio podcasts is supported (with automatic download.)
• Almost all sample-based, uncompressed formats (e.g. WAV, AIFF, AU etc.) are supported.
• OSS, ALSA, JACK, PulseAudio, sndio driver support.
• Exporting to external formats from Playlist and Music Store.
• Gap-free playback.
• Convert sample rates.
• Tabbed playlists.
• Comment support.
• Control running instance from command line.
• RVA (relative volume adjustment) control.

As you can see, there are features that make Aqualung more in line with serious listeners than your average player. But even though Aqualung has a bevy of features, don’t expect it to have the interface of, say, a Songbird, or an iTunes. Instead of such a UI, Aqualung keeps everything on the simple side. It’s easy to use, and quick to navigate.

Installation

Aqualung can be found in just about any Linux package management system. You can fire up Synaptic, search for “aqualung” (no quotes), and have the application installed in no time.

Managing your music

Now comes the fun part. Aqualung can do the standard playlist just fine. But what Aqualung also does is Music Stores. A Music store is a database of music you have assigned a title. The philosophy behind the Music Store is that it allows you to have more than one music library from which you can listen to music or create playlists. Think of the Music Stores as Master Playlists. So let’s say you have more then one user that uses one machine. Each user can have a Music Store from which to populate play lists and so on. So how do you create a music store? Simple. Let’s walk through the process.

Music stores

Figure 1

Aqualung works with two windows: The main window and the Music Store window (See Figure 1). If you right click on a blank spot in the Music Store window a menu will appear. From that new menu select Create Empty Store. When you do this, a new window will open where you configure your new store (see Figure 2).

Figure2

The information you need to fill out for your new store is:

• Visible Name: The name you want to give your new store.
• Filename: This store will create an xml file and you have to set the location where this file will be stored.
• Comments: Any comments you wish to add to the store.

Once you have filled out this information, click OK and your store will appear in the Music Store window. Now you have to add music to your new store. To do this right click the store listing and you will notice a number of possibilities. You can:

• Add the store to a playlist.
• Build/Update store from file system.
• Add new artists to store.

and more.  Since there are no files in this music store it might be best to select Build/Update store from file system. When you select this entry a new window will open offering you two choices:

• Directory driven: Follows directory structure. Artists are added on an album basis.
• Independent: Recursive search from the root directory. Artists are added on file basis.

The best choice is Directory Driven. Using this will ensure a better organized store. This, of course, helps to have a fairly well organized file system. If your file system is organized in the iTunes fashion (where all files are randomly named and placed in directories like F00, F01, F02, etc) you might as well go with the second option.

Figure 3

The difference between the two is better understood by looking at the sample shown in Figure 3. In Figure 3 you can see the top portion is a Music Store that was created using the Directory driven choice, whereas the bottom portion was created using the Independent choice.

Now, how do you use this? Simple You can go through any of the music stores and add music to a play list by either double clicking the song or right clicking the song and selecting add to play list.

You can also have multiple play lists open at once. To do this follow these steps:

1. Go to the main window.
2. Right click on an empty spot.
3. Select New Tab.

You now two tabs open where you can have two playlists.

Final thoughts

This tutorial really only scratches the surface of what you can do with Aqualung. In later articles we will deal with some of the other features that help to make this application unique in a world of same ol’ same ol’.

The player can be extended with plugins that are offered on the developer’s website and with many Winamp plugins which can also be loaded into the player. Some music formats need to be added with plugins (like Flac or Realaudio). The player comes with many build in features like volume leveling or auto amping that make it a perfect choice for users who want a compact lightweight music player.

XMPlay was recently updated to version 3.5. The developer has added several new features to the music player including crossfading support, track ratings, aiff support, better search or playlist enhancements.

The new version of the music player can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with most Microsoft operating systems including Windows 7.

Upon first launch the program will display a directory browser that can be used to select the folders that contain music on all connected hard drives. All discovered files are automatically added to the library based on their ID3 tags. The library itself comes with several subfolders that sort the music collection by genre, rating, composer or artist automatically which makes it very easy to access specific music faster than usual. Specific information from iTunes and Windows Media Player (like ratings) can be imported into MediaMonkey.

The tagging features of MediaMonkey come in handy at this point. Most music collections contain at least a few files that are not tagged properly and MediaMonkey offers the tools to correct these issues automatically. The music manager makes this easy as it will list all files with improper tagging in a Files to Edit folder in the library. These audio files might appear in other folders as well depending on the ID3 tags that are missing (it will be listed in the genre if the genre is set but not in the album folder if the album is not set).

Files to Edit will sort the music with missing ID3 tags into different folders that specify what is missing (e.g. missing genre, unknown album art). A right-click on any folder or one on selected files will provide the option to automatically tag the music based on file information or by searching for the information on the Internet. The Internet option makes use of various Amazon stores to find the information needed to properly tag the audio files.

It is also possible to manually edit the tags for a specific audio file or multiple files to fine tune the tags or edit specific tags that could not be identified by automatic tagging. This in combination with the auto renaming features can turn an unsorted improperly tagged music collection in a properly tagged and named collection in no time.

New music can be added to the software program by adding new locations that should be searched for music, by ripping audio CDs, using the build in file monitor or syncing devices like Apple’s iPod or other mp3 players with the music manager.

Adding new locations will simply repeat the steps outlined above and add any new music that is found in those locations to the MediaMonkey library. MediaMonkey comes with the option to rip audio CDs and use the information offered by FreeDB to tag them automatically. The build in file monitor is only available in the Gold version of MediaMonkey. This handy feature will monitor specific locations on the local computer system and spring into action if it discovers new music which then gets added to the program.

Another option offered is the ability to convert music into different music formats using build in

• the MP3 converter
• AAC/M4A converter
• OGG converter
• WMA converter
• WAV converter
• FLAC converters.

MediaMonkey Gold is not only a tool to properly maintain a music collection. It comes also with all the media playback capabilities – and then some – that one would expect from a all-in-one audio manager.

• Play: Play CDs and digital audio files (popular formats like MP3, AAC/M4A, OGG, WMA*, MPC, APE, FLAC, WAV, etc supported) or use MediaMonkey in combination with Winamp to use Winamp as the player. Music volume can be adjusted automatically and the equalizer and dsp audio effect plugins allow to fine tune the playback.
• Multiple Music Collections: Ability to filter large music collections into smaller collections like Rock, Classic Music and Podcasts which can be customized with their own playback settings.
• Playlists: Playlists can be created by dragging and dropping music, using the auto-playlist option or auto-dj to automatically create mixes.
• Burn: Option to burn music to CD.
• Visualization: Display visualization on the computer screen while playing music.
• Reports and Statistics: Ability to create statistics and reports that can be viewed in the program and exported into xml files.
• Customization and Plugins: MediaMonkey can be customized and extended with plugins and new skins that are offered on the developer’s website.
• Virtual CD: Ability to catalog the CD audio collection to keep tracks of CDs

Users interested in MediaMonkey can download the free version right away from the developer’s website:

Ghacks Giveaway:

We are giving away ten 25 licenses of MediaMonkey Gold to users who reply to this article. Please tell us which feature excites you the most (if any).

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Raju from TechPP is also offering MediaMonkey Gold today. Go over there for another chance to win this excellent music manager.

SPlayer uses binary codecs. The player was able to play all formats that we threw at it including video formats such as avi, mpg, mkv but also audio formats like mp3. Even better is the fact that it can also play movies from DVD, Blu-Ray or remote locations.

The player uses a basic interface much like the new Windows Media Player lite does in Windows 7. The controls only become visible if the user moves the mouse cursor into the interface. It is then possible to load movies or music, configure and control playback settings and various other options.

We had to use Google Translate to translate the Chinese information on the developer’s homepage into English. The homepage does contain a table comparing SPlayer to various other media players including KPlayer and Real Player (but unfortunately not Windows Media Player, Quicktime, VLC or a MPlayer variant).

Some of the features that speak for SPlayer are that it is Open Source, uses GPU acceleration, has a low installation size, rather low memory and cpu footprint and uses binary codecs to playback videos. The only problem could be the non-English homepage which could make it difficulty to get support or questions answered.

SPlayer is available from the developer’s website. It worked fine in Windows 7 Professional and is likely to work in other Windows operating systems as well.

Probably the most noteworthy is the automatic recognition of music that gets added to the music player. It is possible to scan folders on the local hard drive for music. Album art and additional information are automatically retrieved by Jaangle and displayed in the player. This does include band and artist information which are usually not provided by many music players.

Jaangle can also display song lyrics, tabs, reviews and user comments if available. Extensive tagging options are supported to edit or add tags to songs or albums. This includes the usual information such as band name, genre or album but also lyrics, tabs and comments.

Another interesting feature is the search which offers several advanced search parameters. It is possible to perform a basic search, advanced search (artist, title, album, location), display the latest additions since a specific date, by rating or by lyrics, comments or personal information.

A major drawback of the music player is missing Internet radio support; Something that most players are offering. Samer of Freeware Genius points out that it is also missing mp3 player support, audio podcast subscriptions and CD ripping capabilities. Jaangle can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with most Windows operating systems including Windows XP and Windows Vista. It is an interesting player for users who do not need the missing functionality.

These information are then used to search various video services including Youtube, MyVideo, Vimeo or Discogs. The information are then displayed in the main interface that resembles a desktop music player. Results are shown in a song and album list. It is therefor possible to check out a specific album of an artist or band using Semsix.

Semsix displayed quality levels for each song that is listed in the interface. Green dots indicate a good quality while gray dots indicate songs that have not been found by the search engine. A click on an album at the top will only show the songs of that album in the results list. Songs can be added to a playlist which can be saved for later use. All songs that have been found can be played right away on the site. A video of the song will be shown during playback as well.

A site logo on top will indicate the source of the song. Other possibilities offered by Semsix are switching to simple view which will display all songs that have been found in a list, a build in lyrics search engine and web radio capabilities.

All these features make Semsix an interesting option for users who want to listen to songs from specific artists or albums online. No registration is required to use the service.

The developers of Google Chrome have added jumplist support recently and it was only a matter of time when other developers released versions of their software programs with jumplist support as well. The latest beta versions of the popular software music player AIMP 2 are also offering jumplist support.

Users who install the latest beta version of AIMP 2 in Windows 7 will notice the jumplist menu when right-clicking the icon in the taskbar. The jumplist provides quick access to recently opened songs in the music player.

There does not seem to be any other features yet but this might change in future releases. The changelogs suggest that the developers are still working on improving compatibility with Windows 7 which could mean additional feature support. Users who are interested in downloading the latest version of AIMP 2 can visit the developer’s website to do so.