If you're unfamiliar with it, Pandora is a music streaming service where you tell the program what songs, artists, or genres of music you like and it'll create a custom radio station for you based on your preferences.

Using the Music Genome Project, Pandora will analyze the musical content of the song or artist you vote that you like, and it will play other music that shares some of the defining qualities.

Unlike the web-based version, the Pandora Pokki app doesn't require you to create an account to enjoy music from your desktop. You must also be located in the United States to use the service however. If you do want to register and have Pandora remember your music preferences, the process is free and simple.

You can create stations based on a song, music genre, or specific artist. If you don't like the music comes up on your station, just click the thumbs down button and the app will take that into consideration for future suggestions.

The advertising on the side of the Pandora app can be annoying. You also won't be able to avoid radio ads in between certain songs. Also, if you're interested in listening to specific songs, you're probably better off opting to giving the Spotify desktop app a try.

Pandora is a great music streaming and discovery service, made even better by its integration into the Pokki platform.

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Uploading songs to your Google Music library on an individual basis can be a serious drag, as well as a complete time-waster. Much like the 8tracks Uploader for Macs, Music Manager lets users easily and quickly transfer songs to their Google Music Library in no time at all.

You can tweak the settings on Music Manager to automatically upload new music it detects from iTunes, Windows Media Player, or other storage media.

In addition to uploading songs, the program also provides a list of songs it was unable to upload, as well as a reason as to why the upload didn't work. Unfortunately, if you do encounter an error in uploading, Music Manager doesn't actually suggest a solution. You might just be out of luck, which could be frustrating.

If you want an easy-to-use method of uploading songs to your Google Music library, Music Manager is the way to go.

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The program's interface is suspiciously similar to that of iTunes, which makes us wonder why is it that developers weren't able to come up with a more original design. Similarities to iTunes don't end here, though: as you'll see, you can organize your library, play your favorite songs, edit tags, listen to podcasts, synchronize contents with your portable music device and even buy music online. Some people may find this resemblance somewhat uncomfortable – like a cheap imitation – but it's also a way to make the program look familiar and be easy to use from the very beginning.

Leaving comparisons aside, Esmas Player goes a step forward and also enables you to organize photos and videos, and also features extended functionality such as a disc burner, a DVD player and support for online TV channels and radio stations. During our tests, however, I had the impression that some of its functions were not properly implemented or at least not as easy to use as I expected. Also, though the program's language can be set to English, both the installer and documentation haven't been translated from Spanish yet.

In all, Esmas Player works fine as an all-in-one multimedia organizer, but it still needs some improvements in usability – as well as adding the necessary distance between iTunes and itself in order to avoid odious comparisons.

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The mufin player is another attempt at an alternative to iTunes. Its unique selling point is the similarity tool, which analyzes your library to create playlists of music that relate conceptually to one another.

The playlist creation on mufin player does seem much better than iTunes' Genius feature, as it actually looks at the music itself, not just the meta data. The downside of that is the initial scanning of your library can take quite a long time if you have a large music collection. Importing with mufin player also takes a little longer because of this.

mufin player's design is great, although if you don't like orange, there are no ways to customize the interface's colors. The controls in mufin player are chunky and look cool. The side bar is really clear, but there is nothing innovative about it.

Unfortunately, mufin player has no equalizer, and does seem a little heavy on resources compared to iTunes. It is also difficult to see which playlist you are currently viewing. mufin player will also recommend tracks from its online database, and you can listen to excerpts from these. However, sometimes a "there are currently no similar tracks for this piece" message will pop up, which isn't very helpful.

The playlist creation feature in mufin player is impressive, but overall don't expect iTunes to be losing any sleep (or users) over it yet.

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Appearance

In terms of appearance, Nightingale is attractive, but not very innovative. It's got a nice slick and easy-to-use interface, and can be customized with feathers - Nightingale's equivalent of skins. These must be downloaded separately,and there aren't very many of them, but the job is made easy thanks to the app's built-in browser.

Options

Unfortunately, Nightingale doesn't seem to get very far in the options race. Although it supports music and video, it has a hard time with anything else. It can't handle podcasts or streaming media natively, for example, and has a limited selection of tools for customizing or modifying your music. When you compare it to an app like VLC, for example, Nightingale looks really bare.

Extras

One area where Nightingale does stand out, however, is extras. Given the built-in browser, it's really easy to get extra content for the app, from album artwork to skins and add-ons. There's not a huge number of any of these (3 skins, about 26 add-ons), but they add some nice functionality, like Icecast and Last.fm support.

Overall impression

Nightingale looks good, but relies on add-ons for almost all functionality beyond basic music and video playback. If it's your first dealing with a media player, you might well be impressed with its slick looks and ease of use, but for the rest of us - and we're the majority - it just feels like Nightingale is all style and no substance.

Nightingale is a good-looking player, but in terms of functionality, falls well short of the mark.

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If you're tired of dealing with all the big name audio players like iTunes, Audacious might just be a good option to try out.

One of the nice things about Audacious is that it's quite lightweight, meaning it won't steal your computer's resources from other tasks. It has a convenient drag and drop feature for folder and song organization, as well as an easy to use search feature. Just like with iTunes, you can also create and edit your own custom playlists.

If you're more concerned about the sound of your music listening experience, Audacious lets you tweak sound settings. You can also alter Audacious' appearance with Winamp classic skins, with which it's compatible. Additional plugins will let you do anything from fetching song lyrics to setting a timed alarm to wake up to.

Audacious doesn't really bring anything new to the table, but it's a good alternative for those who don't want to deal with iTunes' additional features that are unnecessary to actually listening to their music library.

With an easy to navigate interface, Audacious is a nice, no-frills audio player for Windows PCs.

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SkiniTunes is a nicely designed alternative to the iTunes Mini-Player that improves the way iTunes works as music player. Far from the typical dull gray iTunes interface, SkiniTunes features an eye-catching customizable interface that displays all the information you need: artist, song, album, timeline and album cover art if available.

SkiniTunes also includes the necessary controls to manage music playback, as well as a special tool to rate the song that's currently playing directly on the player's interface. Extra utilities include access to information online about a specific song, finding lyrics on the Web and displaying album cover art as your avatar in Live Messenger.

On the downside, this program is only a lite version of SkiniTunes Pro, which features extended functionality. And this, despite the fact that I really liked SkiniTunes, is always a bit disappointing.

SkiniTunes is a colorful customizable desktop player that enhances the way iTunes works as a music player.

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If you're looking for an alternative to the big name music players like iTunes, give Aktiv Player a look. A versatile audio player for Windows, Aktiv Player will let you both listen and organize your audio files into a true music collection.

Built around an embedded SQL database engine, users can customize Aktiv Player's interface, although many of the options have a bit of an outdated appearance. Icons on the left of the interface are available to help make navigation easier.

Aktiv Player has a "Dynamic playlists" feature that essentially is a hybrid between iTunes' shuffle feature and Pandora's song choice personalization based on your evolving music preferences. The more music you listen to, the more Aktiv Player will be able to customize the shuffled songs to your liking.

Apart from that, the player is a bit bare bones with stand-out features. It has all the basic music player controls, but doesn't really go above and beyond.

If you're looking for a new audio player to test out, Aktiv Player is a good, but basic, choice.

Download Aktiv Player 9.2.0 in Softonic