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Comment by lpapez | Hacker News Reader

There are literally hundreds of simple (and open-source) music players out there, including Winamp you mentioned and its offspring. What is preventing you from using those? IMO, this is the same argument like when people say "modern music sucks" without ever searching for amazing new bands outside the mainstream.

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Oh I still have (32 bit) Winamp on my desktop, and it works great when I need it so far... The problem is that as Windows creeps towards 64 bit compatibility only, I'll eventually have to retire the original .exe(s) I've used, and change to something that might be a terrible experience.... Even online reviews and advice about what software to use is corrupted by brigadeers and marketers, so it's a wild west of who you can trust. I appreciate your advice, but you could just as well be a developer trying to encourage me to use your app that may have required in-app purchases (no offence).

Another tactic that developers now use is to have a fully functional app in the first-downloaded instance, but then the application slowly degrades as updates occur to encourage an up-sell. As a dev myself, I've directly seen this happen with apps I cannot specifically shame online.

I'm primarily referring to mobile apps. I have an SD card with my music library on it. The choice of apps there gets more complex... As phone makers remove SD card functionality, and headphone jacks, and limit out of the box music players, the ability to use my phone for music is also fading. I have had apps corrupt my locally saved music library as well in attempts to force me into buying streaming services perhaps, I no longer trust many services in app stores.

VLC is free and 64-bit. Not the most convenient for playing music but it plays everything. I use MAX Tray Player which is really old but still works. It's this great little program that sits in your taskbar off to the side so it doesn't take up icon or window space. I use it for internet radio and I made a skin for it to match my dark theme.

trayplayer.com

As for mobile audio I use Spotify but I have a library of mp3s on my SD card that I play with the default Samsung Music app which works just fine. No ads in that so far. If you haven't tried a modern BT 5.0 device, try giving bluetooth another chance.

I have VLC, but the UI is a bit clunky compared to other players. I really hope they sort that out because VLC plays everything well.

You can skin it and there's plenty available.

All of the stuff your talking about could be solved by not upgrading to the latest X. If you want headphone jacks, etc, etc just search for a phone that has it and that lets you add music to it. If you want a 90s experience you don't HAVE to buy the latest iPhone or download the latest app.

Most people don't have the medium.

I have 30Go of music files on my laptop, that I carefull update, and backup. I add to the collection once in a while.

But few do that anymore: no cd player in devices, and file systems are being abstracted away remember?

So they listen to music on youtube, spotify, soundcloud, etc.

They don't own the music, hence they can't chose the player.

YouTube music offered to import my personal music library (on my phone). I declined, because the last time I allowed that to happen on Google Play Music (now retired) it was covertly deleting music from my library, and carefully picking which songs to play every time I used it.

You simply can't trust free apps any more. Probably can't even trust many of the paid ones because making people buy the same thing multiple times is more profitable for opportunistic individuals.

Keep backups in multiple (independent) locations.

Free as in free beer apps no.

But FOSS apps are still there for you.

VLC is to this day the best video players, across all OS, and can read music.

It's as not convenient to play music though.

re:FOSS music players I liked foobar2000 for music, esp. if you wanted to play lossless formats like FLAC files

re:parent comment, i feel like the streaming "free" music app/services are more iterations on radio stations rather than iterations on music players since radio has ads, pseudo random playlists, requirement to be "connected" etc.

Maybe unpopular opinion, but in comparison w/radio, I tend to think streaming actually looks pretty good.

When I moved from Windows 11 to Linux, the first thing I looked for was an audio player as simple, fast, full featured, and with small UI that won't occupy a large portion of the screen. I ended running WACUP with Wine and haven't looked back. The compact and stackable UI of Winamp is still the best after all these years, and it just works.

That's one thing I missed about programs from years ago - they don't try to take over the entire computer but stay unintrusive as helper/companion.

I think GP is confusing 'I went to the store and bought this CD, and burned it to MP3, which plays for free on Winamp' with 'Winamp was free and now I have to pay for that same experience via streaming.''

With the right attitude, you can rip from streams and play it for free from Winamp. You can also buy a lot of music as an MP3.

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