Five Best Desktop Music Players (2023)

Everyone has a favorite desktop music player. For some of us, it's the one that just plays our music fast, with no fuss or hassle. For others it's a tool that organizes your playlists, syncs with your smartphone, makes your music collection easy to dig through, and looks good while doing it. This week we're going to look at five of the best desktop music players, based on your nominations.

Earlier in the week we asked you which desktop music player was the best. Which one really brought the thunder in all of these areas, but was still fast, flexible, and functional. You offered up tons of replies, but a few stood above the rest. Here's what you had to say:

The polls are closed and the votes are counted! To see which desktop music player you voted as the Lifehacker community favorite, head over to our Hive Five Followup post to read more and discuss the winner!

MediaMonkey (Windows)

MediaMonkey seems like an impossible combination of jukebox and library organizer. Sure, you can use it to just play your tunes, organize playlists, and sync with your mobile devices, but if your music library is a mess (like mine is), you can also use MediaMonkey to clean it up without a ton of effort. The layout and UI is customizable, and the player is snappy and fast even under the load of many-thousand song libraries, which is more than we can say for some of the other programs in the roundup. MediaMonkey does the basics too: It'll rip CDs, download podcasts, support file types like OGG and FLAC in addition to MP3, AAC, and others, and it'll automatically update your library based on changes to your library folders—so you can copy in new music without worrying MediaMonkey won't see it. If you like auto-generated playlists seeded by songs you own or like, MediaMonkey can do that too. It can convert file types on the fly if you need it to, stream media via DLNA to other devices on your network like a TV, receiver, or wireless stereo.

Those of you who praised MediaMonkey specifically called out its customizability, customizable hotkeys, watch folders, and more. Even those of you who noted that you don't care for it as a music player love it as a music organizer, and turn to it to keep your files arranged, properly tagged, and easily searchable should you want to find something you downloaded a long time ago. Plus, MediaMonkey is free—although $25 gets you MediaMonkey Gold, which adds on some more features.

Winamp (Windows/Mac)

Winamp has been whipping the llama's ass for over 15 years, and that's not a bad thing. it's has come a long way since its early Nullsoft days, back before it was picked up by AOL, and in fact we were just reflecting on how far it's come. Some of the changes were good, some not so much, but overall it's still an amazing jukebox and media player that's relatively lightweight, fast, and customizable. The interface can be as minimal as a shade at the top of your display with tiny playback controls, or as blown out as a full-screen jukebox UI that features search bars, library information in multiple windows organized by artist, album, and song name, a full web browser, and more. It all depends on what you're looking for. Winamp handles all the tasks you'd expect from a media player: It can rip CDs, support crazy file types, sync with mobile devices either via USB, or wirelessly through its well-crafted native Android app. Winamp still has the features you loved about it if you've used it for a long time too: Skins, themes, ShoutCast radio support, visualizations, and more.

Many of you praised Winamp for keeping up with the times and adding more streaming music sources to its app, while others noted that its Android app and its beta Mac client show that the developers behind it show no signs of slowing down on it. Winamp is definitely more bloated than it used to be (adding things like AOL music, video support, etc) back in the old days, but it's still flexible, functional, and completely free. There are a few extra features available in the $20 Winamp Pro version, but the free version is probably enough for most people. Winamp has been straightforward, easy-to-use, and a solid app for years—almost a constant compared to other apps that have come and gone since.

foobar2000 (Windows)

foobar2000 is one of the most flexible, customizable, and tweakable music players available, and it doesn't shy away from that fact. foobar2000 calls itself an "advanced" freeware audio player, largely because it's lightweight, can play virtually anything you throw at it, and while it's powerful and flexible, it can be a little daunting to get used to at first. More than a few people have given up on foobar because they'd rather spend more time listening to their music than tweaking their media player, but if you're the type who wants a personalized listening experience and a tool with just the tools you like (and none of the bloat you hate), foobar2000 is worth a look. The learning curve isn't as steep as some people make it out to be. It does all the things you would expect from a media player: It supports gapless playback, has tons of customizable hotkeys to control playback, supports CDs and crazy file types, and more. Perhaps most interestingly, foobar2000 supports ReplayGain, which does an amazing job of making sure your music is all played at the same relative volume and loudness.

Those of you who called out foobar2000 almost all rallied to the fact that it's extremely light on system resources, well-developed, and has a wealth of plug-ins and add-ons that extend its functionality. Many of you mentioned that it supports incredibly rare file formats, and it can handle massive music libraries without choking. It's completely free. If you're the type of person who likes to start from scratch and build essentially the ultimate music player that's just right for you, foobar2000 will get you there, and you'll be happy with the end product.

MusicBee (Windows)

In contrast to many of the music players that have tons of options, tweaks, and toggles, MusicBee starts you off with a super-lightweight but still customizable utility that you can load up from there pretty easily. A little effort gets you things like song lyrics, album art, artist info, and so on. You get a wealth of built-in skins and customization options to get you started, but none of them slow the player down or make it feel bloated or slow. MusicBee can also handle large libraries, podcasts, less-popular file types, CD ripping, and more. You can use it to organize your library, tag your songs, and download additional data about your tracks. It supports syncing to mobile devices as well, and much more, all in what's often described as a "deceptively simple interface."

Many of you praised MusicBee specifically for being so deceptively simple: Out of the box it's fast and easy to use, and you won't spend a lot of time just getting it to work and play your music. However, the more time you sink into it and into exploring its plug-ins and added features, the more rewarding you'll find the app to be. Some of you noted it's a perfect replacement to show people still using iTunes or Windows Media Player what a lightweight and customizable player can be, others pointed out that even while other tools offer way more features, MusicBee is the perfect balance between features and usability. It's completely free.

Zune Music (Windows)

Well, color us surprised. The actual device is long gone, and the Zune Music service is now Xbox Music, but many of you nominated and voted for the Zune Music desktop player. Whether it's the player's gorgeous interface, podcast organization and downloading options, auto-generated backgrounds, seeded and custom playlists, or unique look and feel, it's earned a lot of love from many of you, and even though it's possible Microsoft will pull downloads for it tomorrow, we have to agree: Just because an app isn't in development anymore doesn't mean people shouldn't use it if it's great at what it does. The Zune Music Player is indeed good at what it does. It supports a ton of file types, and while it's not the most flexible or customizable, it's fast and can handle large libraries, and in full-screen mode, it's fun to use.

Those of you who praised it specifically notes that you liked the fact that it's "not an Excel homage" like so many other players, according to reader sab0tage, and the auto-generated backgrounds, downloaded artist art and information, and other visual cues won over many of you. It's free, and it's still available, but we're not sure for how long. If you want to give it a try, grab it now and save the installer in case you ever need to reinstall.

That's all she wrote! Now it's time to put them to an all-out vote to determine the Lifehacker community favorite:

Honorable mentions this week go out to the two media players that come with every Windows or OS X machine: Windows Media Player which, as many of you pointed out is bundled with Windows, works just fine, and while it's not the most robust or powerful, it's very effective, easy to use, and while you won't find yourself fiddling with custom audio settings or plug-ins, it gets the job done. In fact, while it's a bit dated, one of our former writers had a good defense of it here, and it's still an interesting read. On the flip side, we should also give a nod to iTunes, which was surprisingly distant from the top five, unlike the last time we asked you guys this question.

If you're looking for a solid, cross-platform alternative player that works in Windows, OS X, and Linux, many of you rallied to the banner of Clementine, a richly featured desktop jukebox app that supports music stored at Google Drive, internet radio from Spotify, Grooveshark, and more. It's also a podcast catcher, supports copying and syncing music to USB devices, the list goes on. If you're looking for an alternative to the names above, take a look.

On a personal note, I'm bummed that AIMP didn't make the list this time around, since it's a more than solid player that deserves a little more attention. Similarly, I'm saddened the Linux users didn't turn out in large enough numbers to get any Linux players like Amarok or Tomahawk into the top five. Maybe next time.

Finally, although Google Play Music is a webapp, a number of you mentioned that you use it as your primary music player—partially because it just works so well in a web browser, but also because you can upload all of your music to it, generate and seed playlists with it, stream genre or song-based radio using it, and buy music through it all in the same app. Just shows you there's a trend towards cloud-based players.

Have something to say about one of the contenders? Want to make the case for your personal favorite, even if it wasn't included in the list? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Don't just complain about the top five, let us know what your preferred alternative is—and make your case for it—in the discussions below.

The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it's not because we hate it—it's because it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com.

Title photo by audio-collage.