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

As far as open source multimedia entertainment centers go, Elisa is a very impressive effort although it requires a lot of processing power and RAM.

Elisa has an intuitive interface that gives a professional feel and can be used to view both TV streams and most major video formats. You can even access it remotely from another computer if need be. Elisa also makes a pretty good audio player and displays album covers and other band related images as it plays your music in the same way as iTunes does.

Indeed, some of the inspiration for it appears to have come from iTunes although unlike iTunes, it extends itself to photo viewing and even browsing the Internet. The latter two functions are not the strongest areas of the package, although the browser is mainly designed for watching videos.

If you've got plenty of RAM to spare and fancy doing all your multimedia functions under one umbrella, Elisa is a beautifully presented and free open source solution.

Download Elisa 0.5.10 in Softonic

The iPod is a great music player but it's also a bit picky when it comes to supported audio formats.

iPod Audiobook can lend you a hand in these situations by enabling you to convert a handful of audio formats to MB4, the audiobook format supported by the iPod. This means that you can convert complete music collections to this format and have them synced to your iPod via iTunes in the blink of an eye.

iPod Audiobook is very easy to use, with a wizard-style interface to convert audio files. Plus it supports multiple simultaneous conversions and is also seamlessly embedded into Windows File Explorer. This means you can convert files right from the context menu, without having to open the program itself. With such a nice interface and handy tools, it would be great to have more audiobook target formats to choose from.

iPod Audiobook is a format converter specially developed to convert from a wide variety of sound formats to the iPod native audiobook format.

Download iPod AudioBook 1.1 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

Choosing a multimedia player used to be a real no-brainer. However, during recent times the raft of new features and updates added to classic media players like Winamp, Windows Media Player, and even iTunes have left the apps increasingly bloated. Far from being the slick, well-oiled machines they once were, these programs have been stuffed with so much that they are in danger of ending up like a sluggish, overweight athlete still holding on to past glories.

For those looking for a fresh alternative to these ballooning apps, The KM Player could be your ticket. The application has a small desktop footprint and its minimalist interface, somewhat akin to the original Winamp 5, means that access and playback are quick and hassle-free. Like Winamp, the interface is fully skinable, and there are some nice aesthetic touches, such as the changing of colour on the player with every new track. There are all sorts of options to help you pimp your player, such as visualizations, plug-ins and playback options, but the beauty of KM Player is that these are turned on at your request rather than being forced upon you at the outset.

The application handles both audio and video, and supports a wide range of different formats, meaning that once installed, you should never need to touch another player. Video playback is particularly impressive thanks to the range of processing tools available that allow you to sharpen, change picture properties, apply filters and even make video captures from within the program.

Download KMPlayer 2.9.3.1432 R2 Beta in Softonic

For all those in agreement with the French government that proprietary formats are damaging to the legitimate spread of digital music, then Tunebite will be right up your street. Proprietary music is essentially locked, so it can only be played using a particular brand of player. This software can be used to make any music playable on whatever portable devices you have or to burn your own music CD. It works by creating a playlist in the file’s native player, (Media Player for WMA, iTunes for M4B, M4P) playing the list and recording each track as an unprotected file. It could be seen as the modern equivalent of recording radio onto cassette, although Tunebite will automatically separate the different tracks.

The installation of this program is a bit tongue-in-cheek with a notice to say that you may see a warning during the process, swiftly followed by a pop-up warning letting you know that a particular driver hasn’t been registered with Microsoft. Following the advice of the previous notice and ignoring the warning dialog lets you finish the process. You are then taken to the configuration wizard where you complete six steps to choose what file format you want to record in.

The interface is so intuitive that when you first open the program you should have no doubt as to how to get recording. The three main elements of the interface are clearly marked as the “songs to record” window, the “recorded songs” window and an unmistakable “GO!” button in the centre. To get started you can either drag and drop your music files or use the “add file” or “add folder” buttons within the program. From there, it’s a simple matter of clicking the “GO!” button and letting Tunebite go to work.

Because the files are protected, they must be played through their own player, for example iTunes, and recorded in real-time. During our test, we happened to have another audio player in use as the recording began and as a result, the unprotected file was an incomprehensible mix of two tracks. This also means that if Tunebite is making a recording, you shouldn’t use your computer for other tasks such as browsing the net since every click sound that plays when you hit a link or even the Start Menu button will be recorded as well. With recording taking place in real-time you should plan for times when you won’t be using the computer, especially if you have a large music collection.

Tunebite is a solution to a problem that many music lovers face as control over their digital content becomes tighter and more restrictive. Protected tracks that have been paid for can easily be copied to any MP3 player or burned to CD for use in regular stereos. Admittedly, the method for recording is not ideal for everybody, but used properly, the results will be of the highest standard possible today.

Download Tunebite 5.1.120 in Softonic

The WhiteCap visualizer is a highly configurable add on for your media player with a wide range of impressive effects.

WhiteCap works with most media players out there, including the more popular iTunes, Windows Media Player or Winamp. The free version has a few limitations but you can still choose from a number of wave shapes and backgrounds. You'll only have one color scheme to work with though. From the settings menu you can adjust frame rate width and height and sound response scale.

If you pay for the Gold or Platinum versions of the program, you'll be able to save up to five presets.

Apart from the setup menu, which is really easy to use, I was well impressed by the effects themselves. The morphing wire frame effects really flow and manage to capture the essence and rhythm of different tracks really well.

Although the free version has its limitations, WhiteCap is an impressive visualizer for iTunes. Kick back and enjoy!

Download WhiteCap 5.1.2 in Softonic

aTunes is a fully-featured audio player and organizer, with some ripping and encoding tools included. It's written in Java programming language (Java 5) and has a wide array of features-

aTunes is compatible with Mp3 and Ogg formats and reads ID3v1, ID3v1.1 and ID3v2 tags.
Amongst other highlights are:

• Tag editor
• Show pictures of song: pictures inside ID3v2 tag, or in the same folder.
• Load / save play list in m3u format.
• Navigate through songs sorted by tag information or by folder.
• Filters for fast find what you want.
• Songs, albums or artists can be marked as favorites, and viewed through a special view.
• Full view with all controls.

It also features a Cd ripper tool, using cdda2wav, lame and oggenc. Just put an audio cd on your computer, and select "Import CD" in the "Tools" menu. You can select which tracks rip, and get track names from OpenStrands. Tracks are ripped at default quality. For Windows users, binaries are included. For other OS, binaries must be installed.

Download aTunes 1.9.0 in Softonic

According to some happy users, Spider Player is so good that it could even rival Winamp in the popularity stakes for basic players one day. It's certainly a very good looking player and not only that, it makes life easy where listening to music is concerned.

The look is obviously a key part for the developers and they've even included a "tuning" bar in the skin which allows you to change the tone of it according to the mood you are in. As with Winamp, I like the fact that you can also divide-up the player as you like. For example, when you open it, the main playback window, equaliser and playlist are all joined together. But you can split these up as you like and place them in various parts of your desktop for easy access. To control playback, you can simply drag and drop the status bar and it responds very quickly. There's also a pitchshifter, echo and reverb bar to play with.

One nice added little extra us that Spider Player also has a built-in ID3 tag editor and CD ripper that can burn in MP3, WAV, OGG and WMA formats. Once minimised, the player also sits neatly in your system tray so it's well integrated into your OS. This is one of the best Mp3 players I've tried outside of Winamp although it lacks the plugins of the former.

Download Spider Player 2.3.5 in Softonic

Replay Media Catcher is smart - it figures out the name of the video or MP3 file you've recorded, and names the file automatically. This makes it easier than ever to organize your recorded media. For MP3 files, the artist, album, song title and other information are added to the ID3 tags - this makes your recorded songs appear as they should in iTunes, Windows Media Player, or any other program that plays MP3 files.

Features:

• Record all kinds of FLV format Flash Videos
• Capture streaming MP3 files
• Automatically names songs and video files
• One click recording
• MP3 tag editor
• Works great for hard-to-capture sites using RTMP protocol

Download Replay Media Catcher 2.30 in Softonic

Morpheus is one of those age old P2P applications and, with support for Gnutella, eDonkey, Bittorrent and many others, probably the most versatile you can find on the market. The new version aims to turn the P2P client into the ultimate multimedia application. Does it succeed?

Morpheus has gone through a complete facelift and the new version brings a newer interface. The window is divided into 4 tabs: search results, my files, podcasts and Morpheus online, giving you an idea of what it considers important. A pane on the left side allows you to create playlists or keep track of searches and videos – although strangely not music. Morpheus lets you also sync all your downloaded files to import them automatically to iTunes. Oddly enough, the chat tool is now hidden at the top of the interface, next to help and preferences.

Morpheus wants to appear as a multifaceted app, not just a simple P2P program. It includes an embedded browser, Morpheus Online, from which you can check-out the internet or find new files to share while you’re downloading. This is particularly useful when you’re looking for new podcasts. By clicking on the podcast page button in the podcasts tab, you will be taken to Morpheus’ own podcast library. While it’s not as star studded as the iTunes library, it’s full of varied and original content. The podcast tab is wisely divided into podcast and episodes, so you can browse through what you’ve downloaded. However we were quite confused by the whole podcast downloading procedure. The progress bar is hidden in the file window of the My Files tab. Why didn’t Morpheus leave this in the podcast section?

Morpheus has also beefed-up its security. You can now select your antivirus application to automatically scan downloaded files. The program also includes solid parental control so you can enter hazardous terms into the block list to avoid your kids searching for violent or pornographic material. You can also add a password to make sure you control who has access to Morpheus. The application also introduces UDP technology to improve the performance of downloads and allow secure file sharing between 2 firewall protected PCs.

This new version comes with many interesting enhancements, but not enough to get us overexcited. Add to that the many drawbacks we found in the application. The interface for example is way too clunky, and it’s safe to say that lies in the two large ads at the top and the bottom of the program (which disappear if you buy the Pro version). The “My Files” tab has an additional file window at the bottom, which adds to the confusion in the interface. The one click burning function is something we were eager to try out but was nowhere to be seen.

However hard Morpheus tries at integrating cool features like web browsing or podcasting, we figure the application should only be used for what it’s good at i.e.P2P downloading. The program gives access to all the P2P networks, even Bittorrent, and the new version introduces safer and quicker transfer thanks to UDP technology. The other extra features in the application like the library structure or web browser felt a bit awkward, and therefore failed at turning the program into a true multimedia application. Let’s hope Morpheus gets it right in the future.

Download Morpheus Basic 5.5.1 in Softonic

ReadAIR is an AIR-based RSS feed reader that you can use instead of Google Reader to review the latest posts in your favorite blogs.

This app works in a very simple way: enter your Gmail address and password, and it'll automatically fetch all your feeds, as well as your shared and starred items. The interface looks like iTunes a lot, which makes the program seem kind of familiar and easy to use.

ReadAIR works generally fine. I especially liked the way feeds are displayed on the program's interface, keeping the original post's layout at all times and using a very visually appealing text font.

However, the program also has some major flaws: to begin with, I couldn't add any new feeds (the "Add" button simply showed a blank window). Also, the only way to move through feeds is by using the mouse, meaning there's no support for keyboard shortcuts.

ReadAIR provides you with another way to access your Google Reader feeds, though it still needs to improve to become a real alternative.

Download ReadAir 0.1 in Softonic

Most of us who own an MP3 player or play digital music on a computer will admit that it’s possible to get a little precious over your audio collection. There’s something very satisfying about having a hoard of music with the correct track and album names for each song. Not only does it look a lot cleaner in your player, but it makes it a darn sight easier to organize your collection and manage playlists. Ensuring that all the tags in your audio files are correct can be a thankless task, but there’s plenty of software around that will make a much quicker job of it.

mp3Tag is one of the better tag editors around, allowing you to edit the metadata (the information about a track’s name, size, album name, artwork, etc.) with a good degree of autonomy. The app lets you rename files based on this tag information, replace characters or words from tags and filenames, import/export tag information, and create playlists. It carries out its dutiesdoes the job very well too. For instance, the program has a much cleaner interface than many of its rivals and is smaller to boot, making it very quick and responsive.

If you find that you have a lot of different audio formats on your machine that you want to keep in check then mp3Tag is perfect. It supports virtually every major audio file type, so you can edit tags for Ogg, Musepack, and AAC/MP4, besides just MP3s. tThe program isn't just a tagger, as it also includes cutting and joining functions that perform pretty well.

Perhaps the biggest boon though is the inclusion of a link-up with the online FreeDB database to import tags from the appropriate album, spelling a swift end to those MP3 albums you get with track names like ‘track01’, ‘track02’, ‘track03’, etc.) While the data returned from the FreeDB is sometimes erroneous, it’s generally pretty good (though probably not quite as quick as the import tool in Tag&Rename).

It’s fair to say that mp3Tag is one of the clear leaders in its field, and considering it’s a freeware app, it’s well worth downloading if you want to clean- up your music collection. Tag editing is very quick and once you’ve given your audio the mp3Tag treatment, you should find it so much easier to organize your tracks.

Download mp3Tag 2.41 in Softonic

If you're looking for an intelligent alternative to iTunes then you might find that BBox surprises you in more than just a few departments.

Bbox does the lot from organising your Mp3's to automatically tuning radio stations. Even better, it features a simple CD burner and allows you to edit Mp3 tags so that your collection is perfectly organised by genre, artist or era. Best of all in my opinion, is an integrated search tool which allows you to search for artist info on the internet directly from BBox. The music player comes with all the standard features you expect - equaliser, track list editor and a nice little function that allows you to customise the fade ins and fade outs of your songs. Although this program is packed with features, it never feels bloated although describing them all would take a while. In addition to the above, it also integrates fairly well into Windows shell, supports all those useless multimedia keys on your keyboard that you never use and even allows you to download additional information via the Amazon.com website.

As a feature rich, intelligent and intuitive alternative to iTunes, BBox is definitely a contender worth trying.

Download BBox 2.0.0.440 in Softonic

The big news at the end of Steve Jobs’ Keynote at the WWDC, was the release of Safari 3 for both Mac and Windows. Observers were quick to note that Apple’s aim was to stake its claim to a bigger share in the browser market. As Steve Jobs also pointed out, Safari will be the iPhone’s browser, so offering it for Windows feels like a natural step to take. Overall, a number of improvements were made to this latest version of Safari. However, it’s fair to point out that this is still a Beta and a number of issues can still arise until the official release. Let’s take a look at Safari 3 Beta.

Apple hails Safari has the fastest browser, both in terms of launch time and html and JavaScript performance. We did find however that it took much more time to load under XP than Vista. The classic dark grey interface will be immediately recognizable to users, but its Mac-ishness might slightly put off new users. It certainly stands out from the rest of your applications. We really liked the new tab functions, and how they can be smoothly dragged around your interface. You can also drag a tab out to view it as a separate window, or move tabs from window to window.

By clicking on the RSS tag in the URL bar, you can get a view of all the posts in a feed, which you can present chronologically and get a detailed or a title view. We were also impressed with the “Inline Find” function. Click CTRL+F to reveal the find bar under your bookmarks bar. Once you type a word in the find bar, the whole page will immediately turn a shade of grey except for the word itself. If there is more than one iteration of the word, you can scroll through them thanks to the arrow buttons on the find bar.

Safari claims to be one of the safest browsers around and supports SSL 2 and 3 and TLS as well as the basic set of proxy protocols like HTTPS or streaming proxy (RTSP). We found the name of one of the security features, “Safe Browsing”, misleading. Instead of actually upping the security of your Safari it instead limits the features of the browser by disabling history, autofill or searches. Perhaps it should have been called "Private Browsing" instead. Another element that left us frustrated was the search bar. It effectively works with Yahoo and Google but as of now doesn’t let you add any more search engines.

We experienced a number of crashes while testing Safari, particularly on XP, and noted that the browser does use up a significant amount of memory at start-up, around 60 MB to be exact. Also, we found that some popular pages (like Google or Digg!) do not render properly with Safari; a case of not being totally standards compliant perhaps? While it’s great to finally open up Safari to the PC crowd, the unstability of the browser makes you wonder if it wasn’t rushed out for the WWDC. Some interesting features, but on the whole, Safari is no match for the fully armed Firefox on PC yet.

Download Safari 3.1 in Softonic

If you're an iTunes fan, but not a big fan of the amount of memory it tends to use, then this could be something to make your life easier.

ITunesControl simply displays a popup which enables you to see exactly which song you're listening to without having iTunes fully expanded. It appears at the centre-bottom of your screen with a small image of the album cover if available. The biggest bonus for most users however, will be the fact that it allows much greater control of iTunes via the keyboard which is great if you don't have a multimedia PC keyboard. The controls are basic but better than nothing. However, you may experience problems when iTunes updates according to some users. The program is liable to crashes after an update but the developers claim that simply reinstalling iTunes should solve this problem as long as you restart your computer in between.
The program is also a big bonus in that it has a very small CPU footprint so it won't hog your PC's memory usage unlike iTunes tends to.

A useful little utility especially for those on slower machines although it could have been given a nicer look and may crash after updates.

Download iTunesControl 0.40 in Softonic

If I told you that your computer could recognize songs just by listening to them you probably wouldn't believe me. If you use Tunatic though, you'll manage to do just that.

To make the application work the inbuilt microphone of your computer needs to be working or you need to have a microphone installed. Just run your media player and let the computer listen to your tracks. You'll have to click on the interrogation mark in the application window for the program to search its database. It lists the title of the song and the artist's name as soon as it finds it.

Obviously Tunatic doesn't get it right all the time, and depends hugely on the database of songs that is being maintained by the developers. It is still quite a surprising tool and can find certain songs really quickly.

Once Tunatic finds a song, it will also let you search iTunes for it, let you look for the ring tone, or search Google to find the lyrics.

Tunatic may not work all the time, but it is a really clever way of finding title's of all those unnamed songs in your library. Worth a try.

Download Tunatic 1.0.1 b in Softonic

Zune™ software is your one stop for music and entertainment. Manage and view your songs, videos, and pictures. Rip and burn CDs. Create playlists. Edit track and album information. And Zune software can automatically import your existing files, including your music and video from iTunes® and Windows Media® Player.

Browse Zune Marketplace to discover new tunes and find old favorites. Plus, Zune works with Xbox™ 360! Access media right in the Xbox dashboard, or listen to music while playing games. And don't forget, Zune works with...Zune!

Download Zune software 2.3 in Softonic

The social music website, Last.fm has become a firm favourite with music fans the world over because of the way it lets users discover music which the site deems likely to interest them. Because of this popularity, software developers have been quick to try to produce applications which make use of the website's open database - making for an interesting mixture of traditional offline and web-based software.

Local.fm is one of the more popular 3rd party applications developed to get some Last.fm style functionality on your PC. It works by scanning your music library and using the Last.fm database to create playlists of songs stored on your computer, using the 'Similar Tracks', 'Most Tagged Tracks' and 'User Tagged Tracks' queries. Enter your chosen track's details, or a Last.fm username and tag and Local.fm scans your music library to see which songs are available locally to create a playlist.

Unfortunately, while Local.fm is a novel and interesting idea, it has several downsides which limit its usefulness. Firstly, the playlist function is only compatible with Winamp or Windows Media Player, which is a great shame for iTunes users. The user interface, though not particularly complex, wasn't always completely clear and could definitely be improved by features like autofill.

The aspect of the program which needs to be changed most is its dependence on artist and track information being tagged in a way which exactly matches the Last.fm library. Even though I'd just spent a lot of time fixing the tags on my music library, I returned plenty of 'song not found' errors for tracks which are certainly present in the folders I've determined. A more fuzzy approach to song matching would probably fix this problem.

Local.fm is an interesting idea which is let down by several technical issues. While it's not perfect yet, it's definitely one to watch.

Download Local.fm 1.4.0.4 in Softonic