The paid-for Gold version includes a party mode that locks the interface to prevent guests messing with your carefully curated playlist, built-in conversion for TVs and mobile devices, and MP3 encoding for ripped CDs.

It works well, but if you want full manual control you'll need a third-party plugin (opens in new tab).Īs a slightly trimmed-down version of a premium product, MediaMonkey's interface has a little more gloss than its open-source competitors, but at the expense of some features. MediaMonkey arranges your music library in a logical hierarchy, and its File Monitor ensures everything is kept up to date as you add, edit and remove files. You can also tag music during playback, which is a great option that avoids the need to preview snippets of tracks before labelling them with a mood or genre to generate playlists. It identifies tracks with missing metadata and searches for the information online, and like MusicBee, its superb tagging tool lets you tag files using industry-standard formats. MediaMonkey plays and organizes both music and video, and unlike some dual-purpose media players, it does an excellent job of both. It's not as feature-filled as MusicBee, but its thoughtful design and carefully curated feature-set earn this free music player a respectable second place. The app also features some unusual built-in tools, including an alarm clock function that starts playing at a certain time, a wind-down setting that shuts down your PC at the end of a playlist, and a voice remover for making your own karaoke tracks. Some of the highlights are a YouTube extension that lets you build playlists from multiple videos, an add-on for streaming music from SoundCloud (opens in new tab), and an extension for controlling the player remotely (opens in new tab). By contrast, AIMP's plugins include some real gems. (opens in new tab) Most music player extensions are extra visualizations and skins that, although cool, have little practical use. Your AIMP library can be built using files from multiple directories and ripped from CDs, with automatic track numbering and tag filling to help you get it in shape.ĪIMP supports a huge number of formats, and additional encoders are available as user-created add-ons. Like all the best free music players, AIMP makes organizing your songs a breeze – even if your collection is currently a sprawling mess of tracks in different formats and locations, with incomplete or missing metadata.

Free radio player for windows