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Media Player Shootout

by: James Kendall

Whether you call them media players, jukeboxes, mp3 apps, music managers, or whatever - we all need a proggy to listen to our digital music with, so we decided it was time for the Online Music Blog ( http://www.onlinemusicblog.com ) media player shootout. For the sake of this article I am only going to discuss players you can get for free and I am not going to go into p2p apps.

So with that, lets dive right in. For my money there are are only 3 choices - Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media Players - but I'll talk a little about RealPlayer 10 as well. All of these applications share baseline features - playing various media files, cataloging digital media, etc. We'll focus on things about them that are different.

Back in the day, we had Winamp, and it was good. Unfortunately the original Nullsoft team has all moved on and instead of the hacker cred that Winamp used to have back when Justin Frankel et all were on the job it is now just another corporate media player with a hazy future.

Winamp lost a lot of momentum that it had when it released a ( very ) bad Winamp3 - but with the release of Winamp5 they seem to be back on track - it is useable, responsive, and has a lot of plugins and skins created for it.

The major problem is that for all of it's features it is not much, if any, better then the two dominant media players that are tied to successful music stores iTunes and WMP. Additionally you have to pay $14.95 to get the pro version that add features that iTunes and WMP include for free. One of the bonuses of using Winamp is the ability to tune into all of the cool shoutcast radio stations.

iTunes is, of course, is the digital jukebox front end for the iPod and the iTunes music store from apple computer. The iTunes music store was the first to get pay for digital music downloads right and it still has the largest legal downloadable catalog on the net giving the iTunes jukebox a hefty advantage.

If you are using a Mac then it is a no brainer - you should be using iTunes as you media player, but even if you are using Windows iTunes provides an attractive alternative. The iTunes store is superior ( imho ) to the Windows Media based stores such as Napster and with the legendary Apple ease of use in full effect iTunes makes a great Windows based Jukebox. Noteworthy is the Apple Lossless codec that allows one to rip CD's to the ACC format that sound as good as the CD itself to our ears. On the negative side, the iTunes jukebox feels heavy on moderately powered PC's compared to Winamp or WMP. It runs a little slower, seems to use more resources, etc.

Last (of yea, except for RealPlayer... ) Windows Media Player 10 is one of Microsoft's best pieces of software and is some much better then the last generation of MS media players. The jukebox itself is stuffed with features such as its ability to monitor changes to your digital media files and update itself, simple sync and burn, ratings, and the auto tag features are all very nice.

One of the changes in V.10 is the ability to rip files if the format and with ( or without ) the DRM of your choice. You also get the ability to listen to Internet radio streams with WMP, and although they tend to be more corporate then the hip shoutcast radio you can still find some good music. WMP also features a lossless ripping of CD's but I was less impressed with the results then I was with Apples Lossless.

And finally there is RealPlayer. The free RealPlayer 10 is better then previous version although that is not saying much imho. It still takes over your file formats by default, tries to force you register, runs in the background (phoning home ?) unless you can find the settings to tell it not to - all of the problems that it has always have. I say stay as far away from Real as possible even if you can use "Harmony" to use your iPod with the Real store. While I may be being over critical of Real's jukebox - I do think that there are other alternatives that are less intrusive and have better feature sets.

All in all I think that either iTunes or WMP is a solid choice and far and away the best media players available. Winamp is a okay too as long as you don't need to rip music or burn it back to a CD - but it is worth the download and install just to listen to Shoutcast stations from time to time. Personally I use WMP at work and iTunes are home, so take that for what it's worth. I think that I like WMP a little better, but not so much that I would take the time to switch my iTunes set up at home.

About the author:
This article was originally posted on Online Music Blog and was written by James Kendall of Copacetix Digital Creation.

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Media Player Shootout

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A Huge Concern Over Web: Music Download
by: Plaily Muzic

Internet has come to change everything that once relations used to be lied on. Since Internet had invaded homes, the daily life has never been the same again. Internet changed the family�s habits, the culture and the way someone sees the world. Music is just a part of this change.

Regarding to music, this issue is even more complicated. People now can prepare their own CDs by downloading music from the Internet. And this has become another problematic thing that has contributed to increase the piracy.

The music download problem lies on two issues:

- If people can have access to the most varied types of music, they can have a better idea of a particular artist�s material, they can find out singers they had never heard of and get their CDs even this. These actions may be a little bit illegal and sometimes reduce the profits of the big music companies, but, however, it increases the range where a singer is known. When this happens, both singer and his/her music records win a special recognition, which may lead to the hire of them for shows and (guess what?) profits.

- But if it is true that music download can be beneficial for an artist, sometimes it can also be harmful, speaking about profits of course. And this loss of money in general happens to already famous artists. People download their songs from the Internet because they already know that singer and because they like him/her.

The big music industry complex has a tough battle to face. Profits or recognition!? Profits and recognition depends on each other: you only have profits when you achieve recognition, but your recognition can be measured by your profits. How to solve the problem?

Well, even if this matter seems to be far from a solution, some measures are being taken by the companies. Some laws have been created and other demands are being done. Even if it is hard to supervise all the websites on the Internet that offer music download, some people have been being charged of piracy and arrested.

Janis Ian on her article states that the music download increases the profit of the music industries, instead of what these industries allege. According to Janis, when people downloads a music form he Internet and get to know that song, they buy the CD because they already liked it and have no way to regret buying that CD. She also states that this happens because most of people cannot pay for a CD just to �give it a try�.

Music download is a reality � no matter what.

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