Talk:Comparison of audio player software

Spotify

I have some issues with Spotify's treatment in this article. For one thing, it is primarily a streaming client and therefore not comparable with most of the other players (I don't know much about the other streaming clients on the list but I imagine similar considerations also apply). The desktop apps are compatible with local file playback, so it does have a number of features which are comparable to the others', but these features are not actually addressed:

• the local library can include various audio formats, but MP3 is listed as the only compatible format
• it is not included in the Container format ability section despite being able to play some of the containers therein
• in Extended features, ReplayGain tags are listed as not supported, which is true, but the feature represented (loudness equalization) is supported

Given there is already an article Comparison of on-demand music streaming services, perhaps streaming services' clients should not be included in this article - or if they are, they should be included only in terms of their local media playback capabilities as otherwise meaningful comparisons can't be made. Speedstyle101 (talk) 20:00, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

I think it makes sense to include Spotify. I use Spotify very similarly to how I use iTunes: I make playlists, and I play them, either in order or shuffled. As long as I have an Internet connection, the difference between local storage and cloud storage isn't noticeable. I made a list below of some iTunes features that I find useful. It's technically possible for a streaming service to do all of these things, but I'm not aware of one that does any of them. David.wasserman (talk) 18:57, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Winamp missing from some topics

Winamp is missing from the 'Scalable, composite and emulation format abilities' table and from the 'Protocol Abilities' table TimHare (talk) 02:34, 16 September 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by TimHare (talk • contribs) 02:31, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Dopamine

I'm currently looking for an open source music player for Windows that shows a good album overview and looks nice, and I found Dopamine. It is actively developed and published under GPLv3. Do you think it's worth adding? Can anyone imagine why no one talks about it and why it doesn't have a big community, but still gets developed? -- MissMercy (talk) 21:15, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

This article is missing many useful features

Is there any objection to adding more features to one of the tables? Here's a list of some things iTunes can do. I'd be interested in knowing if any other players can do these things:

1. If a song is too loud or too quiet, I can set a volume adjustment for that song, and iTunes automatically adjusts the volume each time it plays that song.
2. If I only like part of a song, I can, for example, set a start time of 1:20 and an end time of 4:55. Each time iTunes plays the song, it will skip the first 1 minute 20 seconds of the song, and stop playing when it gets to 4 minutes 55 seconds into the song.
3. It remembers how many times it's played each song.
4. It remembers the last date and time it played each song.

Also, one of the tables includes playlists based on criteria, but this isn't very meaningful, because it doesn't specify what criteria are available. iTunes can use 49 different criteria, including

1. comments
2. date last played
3. inclusion in another specified playlist.

David.wasserman (talk) 18:51, 2 February 2025 (UTC)