Windows Media Player

Not much love is shown to Windows Media Player (WMP), and I understand it very well. When you got built in apps like Groove and in an era of streaming music, WMP does not stand a chance & I don’t use it anymore.

But I just wanted to pay homage to WMP, it was my go to player in XP, Vista and Windows 7 days until smartphones came in switch my habits of listening on PCs to smartphones.

I used to manage my music collection in folders hence my favorite view was always Library > Music > Folder…

It did the basics right, like picking up album arts and stuff.

Not a lot of people like WMP even in Vista/7 days, and I somehow want to understand why.

Conversation 4 comments

  • arunphilip

    07 March, 2018 - 3:14 am

    <p>Nice recollection. WMP 7 onwards supported music libraries, which reduced the need for players like Winamp if all you wanted to do was play MP3s and playlists. </p><p><br></p><p>I've used Windows Media Player from version 7 onwards (on ME, I think). I liked it because it offered advanced and out-of-the-box tag editing – things like album art, lyrics integration, lyrics synchronization, etc. as well as CD ripping. Sadly, with subsequent releases, some of these tag editing features were removed, after which I switched to MP3 Tag for tag management. </p><p><br></p><p>For me, the high point of WMP was in Vista because of the way it minimized into a little toolbar in the taskbar – something that sadly disappeared in Windows 7 (where you had to hover to get very simplistic pause/next/back controls). The UI in Vista and Windows 7 were also very clean and streamlined, as opposed to the slightly cartoony appearance of WMP in Windows ME and XP. </p><p><br></p><p>I was a bit miffed that WMP apparently disappeared in Windows 10, but Groove Music has grown to be a sensible replacement player, one of the few Metro apps that I use on a regular basis. </p>

    • irfaanwahid

      07 March, 2018 - 5:04 am

      <blockquote><a href="#250997"><em>In reply to arunphilip:</em></a></blockquote><p>Good points Arun. WMP still exists in Windows 10 (sitting at v12), although there is no new development in WMP since Win7 I believe.</p><p><br></p><p>Ripping music and burning CDs… those days!</p>

    • Mike Cramer

      07 March, 2018 - 10:34 am

      <blockquote><a href="#250997"><em>In reply to arunphilip:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>WMP is still there in Windows 10, and it runs as expected. In fact, a recent Insider build changed the online meta-data source for audio CD's so that (according to MS) track info and artwork displays faster and more reliably. I tested it on a CD for a little-known band, and it indeed works fine.</p><p><br></p><p>I never used WMP much, and mostly by accident. I had friends who used it a lot. Since the early 2000's I've always used Foobar2000 for playback and music library management, and MPC/MPC-HC + K-Lite Codec pack for video.</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    07 March, 2018 - 6:19 am

    <p>It was never really very full featured. It was there as the basic player.</p><p>I used Music Match Jukebox when I first started out (90s) and added Cyberlink and WinDVD players over the years (depending on which came free with my PC or DVD drive). Then I switched to VLC for video.</p><p>I then switched over to Linux in the early 2000s and used Amarok.</p><p>When I switched back to Windows in 2007, I used Zune Music on the PC, then with Windows 8 &amp; 10 the inbuilt music and video apps, as well as VLC for DVD playback – something Windows never really learnt to do, with the exception of Media Center.</p>

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