If you are looking for an alternative music player which can also read Ogg Vorbis files and has an elegant, minimalistic GUI, Foobar2000 is worth a try. It features all the standard functions of other main players, like the possibility to import music folders and to create playlist, but it also supports advanced tagging and a useful converter to 9 music formats.

It's amazing how all these tools can fit into an installer file of just 1.6 MB, compared to the 36 MB for the iTunes download. The plus of this application is its fairly active community which develops add-ons in order to customize nearly every aspect of this player.

When you download these plug-ins, you'll get a .dll file that you have to add to the components folder of your foobar2000 directory and restart the program. Many users like it, others don't find a specific reason to leave Winamp for it. It's another good option you have, with the plus of conversion tools and many plug-ins.

Foobar2000 is a light, effective music player with a high level of customization, thanks to a personalized GUI and downloadable add-ons

Download foobar2000 0.9.5.6 in Softonic

Mac users are often regarded as very loyal customers, but that's because they have very good reasons, such as iTunes, to stick to Apple products.

iTunes has become one of the most widely spread music managers today. The release of the iPhone and the new iPod models has only contributed to increase this popularity, thanks to the seamless synchronization of contents between the computer and your device.

Now with iTunes 8, Apple continues to develop and improve this music software masterpiece with fresh new features that enable users to make the most of their multimedia library.

Managing your iTunes library is a piece of cake. You can view extended information about each track, edit their tags and rate them. Also, iTunes lets you comfortably browse through your library with the amazing Cover Flow system or the newly implemented grid view, which displays cover artwork sorted by album, artist, genre or composer. And for those of you who work in a LAN environment, the great news is that you can share your music libraries with your network mates.

One thing I particularly like of iTunes as music manager is its ability to create playlists. The Smart Playlist tool enables you to create almost any kind of playlist based on just about any criteria you set: artist, genre, date added, star rating or even the number of times you've played each song. Another great playlist is the so called Party Shuffle, which comes in very handy when you invite some friends over to your place. You can then leave iTunes working as a DJ and play music on its own, but if you drop by the PC at any time, you can freely add more songs to the list or rearrange them in any way.

Regarding playlists, iTunes 8 includes now an exciting new feature called Genius. Just like other popular music sharing tools, Genius learns from the tracks you play on iTunes and recommends you similar songs, either from your own library or from the iTunes Store. In this way you can easily build thematic playlists by grouping similar songs, and also meet new bands you may not know about. The only drawback is that Genius needs to gather information about your music library and send it over to Apple in order to work, something that privacy freaks won't be happy about.

However, if there's something where iTunes is not perfect yet, that's the player function. You may disagree here, but I think the iTunes player falls too short, especially when compared to its music manager side. It does have some interesting features, like the Smart shuffle function and crossfading playback, but I still find it too simple. I also missed the ability to control the player from anywhere with global hotkeys, which is great if you listen to music while you're working on the PC with other apps. Fortunately there are some plug-ins that cover this need.

In all, despite these slight flaws, iTunes is probably the best choice to manage your music collection –and that includes Windows users.

Download iTunes 8.0.1.11 in Softonic

When you extract audio from video there's usually an inevitable loss of quality but Pazera Free Audio Extractor extracts audio tracks from video files without any notable loss of sound quality.

Whatsmore, it converts to a huge range of formats including MP3, AAC, AC3, WMA, FLAC, OGG and WAV formats. Pazera Free Audio Extractor also works with most major video formats including AVI, FLV, MP4, MPG, MOV, RM, 3GP, WMV and VOB. Alternatively, you can just use it as basic audio converter so you can switch between formats fairly easily and with rapid conversion times.

The program is useful for either novice or advanced users. Novice users are able to use predefined settings (known as profiles) depending on the type of conversion you perform. This means that you don't have to worry about setting the correct compression ratio or encoding algorithm to use as it's all done for you. However, if you do need extra control, you can access advanced encoding parameters as long as you know what you are doing.

Pazera Free Audio Extractor is not the most attractive looking converter or audio extractor but it handles a huge range of formats in double quick time.

Download Pazera Free Audio Extractor 1.2 in Softonic

There’s a plethora of music players to choose from, among which iTunes and Winamp usually have the upper hand. However, if you are curious enough, you might find that lesser known alternatives like MediaMonkey offer a reasonable amount of features and tools to organize and equally enjoy your music library.

MediaMonkey automatically scans your PC for all types of music formats. If you have playlists from other programs, it’s good to know that the application also adds m3u files, sparing you the pain of having to recreate them. The file explorer view on the left lets you easily navigate your music collection by categories like artist, genre or rating. You can convert tracks into any format you wish, depending on what size or quality of sound you’re looking for. MediaMonkey also lets you analyze and adjust the volume of tracks to increase your listening experience.

MediaMonkey has made its reputation on its advanced tagging management feature. Every time a track is added, the program will verify its tags. You can automatically fill in missing details with info from Amazon or Filename. The program can clean up your tags, move information into the correct categories and synchronize tags for selected tracks. You can also rename and move multiple files thanks to the auto-organize function. MediaMonkey also supports Winamp plugins and visualizations plus skins can be applied to spice up the interface.

If you want to make your own mix CDs, you’ll be happy to know that MediaMonkey rips and burns CDs and DVDs. Create a virtual CD of your favorite tracks and let MediaMonkey do its job. Budding DJs will enjoy the auto-DJ mode, which mixes tracks for you and the Party Mode, which blocks your configuration but lets anybody play their favorite tune. MediaMonkey’s versatility doesn’t stop there. The music manager also lets you synchronize with your portable music devices like your iPod or iRiver.

If you feel like completing your library with a couple of fresh albums you can browse sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble or AllPosters and purchase tracks. However, unlike Songbird, where you can type in a URL, browse and save your favorite music blogs and sites, MediaMonkey only allows you to browse their selection of online stores.

We were disappointed with the web radio selection, which only features Shoutcast and Icecast, and were surprised to see no sign of podcasts anywhere in the application. However version 3.0 is planning on incorporating this to the application.

Despite these drawbacks, we recommend MediaMonkey to anybody looking for a solid alternative to iTunes or Winamp. This original music manager is more than capable of organizing a very large music library and offers advanced tagging management rarely seen in other music applications. While the browser and web radio are fairly limited, MediaMonkey allows you to rip your custom CDs and connects to most portable music devices. If you really take a liking to MediaMonkey, cough up a few bucks and upgrade to the Gold version, which will open up all of the program’s functionalities like finding missing tracks or creating auto (smart) playlists.

Download MediaMonkey 3.0.4.1185 in Softonic

FreeRip is a freeware Windows application that lets you save audio CD tracks to Wav, MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis or FLAC audio files. FreeRIP is also an audio file converter and it can convert audio files from one of the named formats to another.

Converting your audio CD collection to digital audio files to move to your portable digital audio player (including iPod), mobile phone, car audio system, or whatever, is a matter of minutes with FreeRIP. Just start FreeRIP, put audio CD in and click on Rip button.

FreeRIP is a CD ripper, this means that it can record digital audio tracks directly from audio CD to files onto your hard drive (this process is known as "ripping"). You can save tracks as CD quality WAV files or encode them to a lossy (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA) or lossless (FLAC) audio format.

FreeRIP supports extended tagging and ID3 v2 standard, so that you can add information to audio tracks like artist name, song title, lyrics and so on, and FreeRIP will store them in the audio file itself. It also provide access to FreeRIP CD Database, an Open Source, collaborative CD information repository. It also provides backward compatibility with well known freedb CD database.

FreeRIP lets you convert audio files from a format to another: its integrated audio converter helps you to convert as many files you want between the most famous audio formats.

It also includes a contextual search button to help you finding information, images, videos and lyrics about the selected track or artist. Find a song lyrics in few seconds: select the track, select "Search Lyrics ..." menu option and browse search results to find what you need.

Download FreeRIP MP3 3.091 in Softonic

LAME originally stood for LAME Ain't an Mp3 Encoder. LAME started life as a GPL'd patch against the dist10 ISO demonstration source, and thus was incapable of producing an mp3 stream or even being compiled by itself. But in May 2000, the last remnants of the ISO source code were replaced, and now LAME is the source code for a fully LGPL'd MP3 encoder, with speed and quality to rival all commercial competitors.

LAME is an educational tool to be used for learning about MP3 encoding. The goal of the LAME project is to use the open source model to improve the psycho acoustics, noise shaping and speed of MP3. LAME is not for everyone - it is distributed as source code only and requires the ability to use a C compiler. However, many popular ripping and encoding programs include the LAME encoding engine.

Download LAME (Lame Ain't an MP3 Encoder) 3.98.2 in Softonic

Audio/Video To EXE converts audio files and video executables and allows you to send them to another person without having a player and codec. In addition to this primary function, Audio/ Video To EXE also performs conversions between various media formats.

There are two types of conversion offered - EXE and multimedia formats, with a list of tasks and completed quickly. The only drawback of this free version is that you cannot select the sampling frequency and hence the quality of the resulting files. This is a great tool for sending small videos and songs by e-mail, ensuring that the recipient can play the file. Almost all audio/video formats [3GP, AAC, AC3, AIFF, ASF, AVI, EXE, FLAC, FLV, GIF, M1V, M2V, M4V, MOV, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, MPG, NUT, OGG, RA, RM, SWF, VOB, VOC, WAV, WMA, WMV, WV, YUV] are supported. You can even play and convert your executables without a player or a codec. It works as a standalone and the latest version adds M1V, M2V, M4V, and YUV support.

If you love to share clips with someone who's forever having problems with their media player, then Audio/Video to EXE is the answer to your prayers.

Download Audio/Video To Exe 1.5.3.0 in Softonic

REAPER (Rapid Environment for Audio Prototyping and Efficient Recording) is a powerful but sensible Windows application that lets you record, arrange, edit, and render multi-track waveform audio. REAPER provides an extensive set of features, but is a very small and lightweight application as the installer is less than 1 megabyte, and includes many effects and a sample project.

Basic features:

• Supports ASIO, Kernel Streaming, WaveOut, DirectSound for playback and recording
• Reads WAV, OGG, and MP3 files, records WAV files
• Lets you arrange any number of items in any number of tracks
• Supports audio processing plug-ins (DirectX and Jesusonic)
• Volume, pan controls and envelopes per track
• Multi-layer undo/redo support
• User creatable color themes

Advanced features:

• Unlimited bus support with collapsable bus views
• Item grouping
• Selection length granularity to ease in loop cutting
• An architecture that allows you to easily cut loops of many tracks simultaneously
• Support for plug-in generated media
• 64-bit floating point sample pipeline for high quality
• Advanced recording and monitoring options
• Options to build peaks for recorded files on the fly
• Controls for the user to specify where recorded files go
• Template support to make it easy to load a project template
• Input channel name aliasing

Download REAPER 2.55 in Softonic

There are a multitude of audio converters and rippers around but few free programs offer the simplicity and functionality of BonkEnc. As well as being able to rip music from a CD and turn it into an audio file, the program boasts a converter for changing the format of a file between a wide range of file types, including MP, Ogg, AVI and WAV.

BonkEnc queries and stores track information using the online free CDDB database, automatically adding this meta data into the file to make it much easier to search and sort your music collection. The application performs its duties quickly and reliably and although the user interface looks rather old-hat, it hides a huge number of options for ripping and converting music, which makes this one of the most powerful free rippers you'll find.

Download BonkEnc 1.0.9 in Softonic

One of the most challenging aspects of having a large music collection is being able to manage tag labelling.

If your tags are not labelled properly, it's almost impossible to organise them well. TagScanner is a powerful TAG editor with batch functions and special features that allows you to export playlists to HTML or Excel worksheets. What's most useful about this program though is the fact that it can edit huge numbers of tags at the same time and not just that, but it can import tag information from Amazon or Freedb. The information that's retrieved can sometimes be hit or miss in accuracy but it saves a hell of a lot of time. You can generate tag information from file and folder names and it can edit a wide range of music formats including MP3, OGG, Musepack, Monkey's Audio, FLAC, AAC, OptimFROG, SPEEX, WavePack, TrueAudio, WMA, MP4 files. In terms of tagging, it's also pretty impressive supporting ID3 1.0/1.1/2.2/2.3/2.4 tags, APE v1 and v2 tags, Vorbis Comments, WMA tags and MP4(iTunes) metadata. The player is basic but it does allow you to create playlists and export them for reference which is useful for showing others your collection.

A very powerful tag editor that will surely save you time although you may find that automatically retrieved tags are not 100% accurate.

Download TagScanner 5.0.525 in Softonic

With Last.fm, music fans have found a place to congregate and share musical tastes. The Last.fm player places the “social music revolution” onto your desktop, giving you access to thousands of tracks from all musical genres.

The beauty of the application is that it encourages you to find similar artists to the ones you’re accustomed to and also pushes you to interact with users who share the same tastes. Search results appear as a tag cloud, with the biggest elements being the most popular. With thousands of songs available on Last.fm, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll listen to the same thing twice. The player is streaming and you’ll have to be connected to the internet and have a Last.fm account for it to work.

Although slightly bulky, the Last.fm player interface is sleek and accessible. We like the shiny control icons and the “now playing” window. This is where you’ll find all artist information like album cover, a small description of the artist, related tags and artists and top listeners. The menu bar on the left includes your recently played tracks, recently loved and recently banned, although to listen to these you’ll need to upgrade your Last.fm account (€2.50/month). The last 10 stations you’ve listened to are automatically saved in your history file.

The social experience is central to Last.fm and becomes pretty addictive. By listening to tracks you create a profile of yourself, the music you listen to and the artists you like. Last.fm then connects you to other users that have similar tastes, whom it calls neighbours. In the Last.fm player, you can connect to neighbours' stations and listen to their tunes. The lists of the friends you made on Last.fm will also appear in your player. If you have the Audioscrobbler plug-in installed, Last.fm can also track all the songs you play in your favourite desktop music app (like iTunes) and connect you with even more neighbours.

Most of us here at Softonic have Last.fm connected all day, simply because it doesn’t require you to have your own music library, it’s free and provides an endless flow of new tunes. In line with modern evolutions in online music, this web music application mixes streaming and social tools to give you an exciting music player. No music fan with access to Internet should be caught dead without it.

Download Last.fm Player 1.5.2.38918 in Softonic

MakeItOne MP3 Album Maker, as its name clearly states, enables you to create complete albums out of several MP3 files.

This simple tool takes as many songs as you want to include and joins them into one single MP3 file (the album) which you can also tag from the program itself, adding the artist's name, track title and even album cover art. The program features support for drag-and-drop and is extraordinarily fast.

But that's not all. Besides generating single MP3 files from several tracks, you can perform exactly the opposite task: split a single MP3 file into different songs, which comes in especially handy if you have complete albums saved as just one MP3 track. Simply open the file with MakeItOne MP3 Album Maker and the program will automatically split the file and name each track accordingly – provided the file is properly tagged. The process is as quick as the joining one and the results are just perfect.

The only drawback I can find to this tool is the total absence of configuration options. Being able to select a new bitrate or more naming templated would have been great.

If you need to join or split MP3 files this tool is probably the easiest and fastest one, although files may need further editing to rename them.

Download MakeitOne MP3 Album Maker 3.40 in Softonic

Floola is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model supporting iTunes).

It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation under Linux, Mac OS X and Windows (Windows Vista is supported).

Floola supports all most common used features including podcasts. Take a look at the feature list to see what you are missing!

Download Floola 3.5 in Softonic

Free MP3 CD Ripper is a powerful and easy-to-use CD ripper that helps you transfer all of your CD albums to MP3 format, which can then be used on portable devices.

Free MP3 CD Ripper can also rip to various other formats including WAV, WMA, OGG, FLAC and APE, although the speed of the conversions differs slightly according to which format you've selected. Alternatively, you can rip to MP3 and then use the inbuilt audio converter to rip to these formats, although this is a much more time consuming process.

The useful thing about Free MP3 CD Ripper is that it allows you to retrieve info about your albums from CDDB databases, saving you a hell of a lot of time when labeling your music. The program thus automatically labels your MP3 collection with ID3 tags.

As a way to verify whether your tracks have converted properly, there's a built in CD player that allows you to preview CD tracks after the CD ripping process. It's very easy to use and you'll be prompted whether you want to use it by Windows as soon as you enter a CD. The info retrieved form the CDDB database can be very hit and miss but generally it finds the right info.

If you're looking for a comprehensive CD ripper then there are better solutions out there, but as a simple and functional application, Free MP3 CD Ripper does the job.

Download Free MP3 CD Ripper 1.0 in Softonic

Even if you’re extremely careful about downloading only music which is compatible with your player, there comes a moment when you need to convert audio files from one format to another. And if you have never used this kind of software before, you may feel a little bit lost at the beginning: which program should I use? Will it have support for this or that?

Free MP3 WMA Converter is probably one of the best answers one could give to these questions. In spite of being quite plain both in aspect and functionalities, this little app does its job and does it well. So don’t let yourself be fooled by its simplicity and spare us five minutes to take a deeper look.

The process of installing Free MP3 WMA Converter follows the standard steps and includes the possibility of also installing Pando, a free tool to share large files through e-mail. But you can simply skip that point if you’re not interested in it.

Once installed on your system, the program allows you to choose the interface language, a nice feature for non-English speakers. However, it wouldn’t be really necessary, as Free MP3 WMA Converter is incredibly simple to use: first, select the files you want to convert; then, choose the target format; finally, click on the “Convert” button. Easy as pie! Plus, the conversion itself is surprisingly fast. The program even displays a neat progress bar so that you can control the whole process in detail.

If there is a drawback to Free MP3 WMA Converter, it’s the range of supported formats. Only six of them (AAC, APE, MP3, Ogg, WAV and WMA) but at least they’re the most used and popular ones. Besides, the program features separate conversion options for each one of them, so you can always achieve the quality of sound you wanted. Another thing this program lacks is having a wider choice of options, such as volume normalization, a built-in tag editor or other similar extra functions that can be found in most conversion tools.

In short, if you’re looking for an audio file converter and don’t know where to begin, just give Free MP3 WMA Converter a chance. It may suit your needs, as long as they’re simple enough.

Download Free Mp3 Wma Converter 1.7.3 in Softonic

Some music players are so complex that you spend more time fiddling and customizing them than enjoying your music.

If this sounds like thinly veiled criticism of iTunes then it is a little bit I guess but the point is that some people don't want online stores, most played lists etc, etc. QuuxPlayer is a simple and straightforward player that has you up and running in minutes and includes a 30 band equalizer.

However, the big draw of QuuxPlayer is Wireless Gamepad support which means that you can control it in a unique way from just about anywhere in the room as long as you in range of your receiver. The look and feel of QuuxPlayer is certainly unique in comparison with other similar efforts. However, the developers already seem to be going against their philosophy of keeping it simple by adding automatic lyrics download, control locking for child management and an automatic directory monitoring service for updates amongst many other things.

That said, QuuxPlayer definitely occupies a unique position in the world of music players and if you've got a gamepad, you should definitely give it a whirl even if controlling music in this way is a bit odd.

Download QuuxPlayer 2.0.6.13 Standard Edition in Softonic

DSpeech is a TTS (Text To Speech) program with functionality of ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) integrated. It is able to to read aloud the written text and choose the sentences to be pronounced upon the vocal answers of the user.

Features:

• Save the output as a Wav or Mp3 file.
• Select quickly different voices and combine them
• Integrates vocal recognition system
• Configure the voices in an independent way
• Dynamically change speed, volume and frequency of the voices during reproduction
• Capture and reproduce the content of the ClipBoard
• Compatible with all modern vocal engines SAPI 5 compliant

Download DSpeech 1.55.3 in Softonic

FairStars CD Ripper is a free powerful software for ripping audio CD tracks to WMA, MP3, OGG, VQF, FLAC, APE and WAV formats files on-the-fly. Free CDDB is supported(Querying & Submiting). It supports normalization when ripping, and also support ID3 tag. FairStars CD Ripper also supports playback with its built-in player.

Download FairStars CD Ripper 1.24 in Softonic

Songbird plays the Web. Play any MP3 on the Web without leaving the page. Songbird can view Web pages as dynamic playlists that it can play, save, or automatically download every day.

Songbird plays your music too. Songbird has all the features you expect in a desktop media player. And Songbird constantly improves. Like Firefox, Songbird's features may be improved with user installed and contributed cross-platform extensions.

Soon, Web page authors will be able to publish playlists and transfer MP3s into Songbird to build digital music stores like eMusic, music subscription services like Yahoo! Music Unlimited, virtual jamming services like Ninjam, playlist sharing services like WebJay etc.

Download Songbird 0.7.0 in Softonic

CUE Splitter is a freeware tool that can split a single big audio track, mostly an album or a compilation, into the relative individual audio tracks, using informations contained in the associated "CUE" file. Sometimes you can find a big compressed audio file (for example MP3, APE, FLAC, OGG, WAV, WMA, etc...) equipped with a small "CUE" text file that contain informations about tracks title, artist and length. Usually these couple of files are generated by programs like EAC, CDRWin, BPM Studio, GoldWave or similar.

With CUE Splitter you can obtain splitted audio track files without burning any CDR or decoding/re-encoding any audio data! Moreover audio files are automatically named using a user-defined "file mask" string, it's tags are filled with informations extracted from "CUE" file and, optionally, an M3U playlist file can be generated (option enabled by default).

Download CUE Splitter 1.2 in Softonic