woah there, don't settle for WMP! there are many players out there that are far superior
there are so many options. personally, i swear by
foobar2000. it's the most powerful and versatile music player out there. the only problem is it's not an out-of-the-box app, it takes a lot of setup and has a steep learning curve. but if you take the time to learn it, it's amazing.
MediaMonkey is a close second. it's also quite customizable. if you're compulsive about tagging, it's the best app around. i use MM for most of my tagging, and foobar for playing.
AIMP2 is a very lightweight, portable alternative to WinAmp. if you like that style of player (modular, skinned), then definitely try it out. its library support is crap though.
MusikCube is a good one to try. it's got no album art support, but it's wicked fast, and does a very good job managing a large library.
Trout is one of the newer players on the scene (find it over at DonationCoder). it's still under heavy development so it's not perfectly polished, but it's tiny, fast, and very good at what it does.
last but definitely not least is
Billy (by Sheep Friends). this wonderful, wonderful app is the slimmest imaginable. it does not even use ID3 tags, but relies on tidy directroy structure and file names to keep things tidy. it has a great setting that lets you open a full directory of tracks by just double-clicking on one, making it super easy to play a single album. plus, if you load your whole library into it, its live search feature lets you simply start to type and the filter is applied as you go. i can literally hit a hotkey to run Billy, then type a word or two to filter 5000 tracks down to the song i want, and hit enter to play - the whole process takes about 2 seconds. imagine your whole music library at your fingertips! i also use billy all the time for trying out newly downloaded music and listening to single tracks. for lightweight, fast music listening, there simply is nothing better than Billy!
