Yesterday, much like many of you out there no doubt, I got my hands on a beta copy of the new Windows Media Player 11. Though no big Microsoft fan, for reasons far too endless to note, I have to say that I am by in large impressed with this new version. From visual appeal to ease of usage, they seem to have really pulled out all the stops in creating it.
Let it be noted that I have well over 140GB of music stored on my PC, so finding a music player that can handle such a large amount of music has been an ongoing task. Winamp is okay, but it always seems to be a bit lacking. It’s always been able to smoothly store and retrieve my MP3’s, but yet indescribably leaves me wanting more. iTunes has done a much better job at being my MP3 workhorse, but being an Apple creation, it never seems to fully mesh properly with my Windows OS. It too smoothly stores and retrieves my MP3’s, but in addition displays the artist’s album cover, which is a must for me. I won’t even mention the MusicMatch player, as once my library surpassed the 40GB mark it simply sputtered and took far too long to load a single song. As for Windows Media Player 10, it simply lacked a multitude of functions and capabilities that typified other music players such as iTunes and Winamp. That’s why version 11 is so nice, as it finally brings Windows Media Player up to speed with what others have been doing for so long. Typical Microsoft right? It not only retrieves and stores my music library effortlessly, but it’s display is better than even that of iTunes. It even offers an online music buying experience called URGE as an alternative to the iTunes store.
To follow is a glimpse of the new Windows Media Player 11 for you to see and thereby determine if it’s right for you. Everybody is particular about their music, and especially so when it comes to playing it. Features and tasks, bells and whistles, are what makes a person use a specific music player in the first place, so sit back and relax as I go over those that typify this new release from Microsoft.
When installation had finished it had automatically sought out and entered my music library into it’s database. Okay, no big deal, but this meant “playlists” as well. It stored for retrieval the individual playlists available for specific albums. Not necessarily a great leap forward for mankind, but again, it’s a nice feature to have available. For some albums, like those by the Avalanches for instance, it can really only be played as a whole, as the tracks were “spun” that way and not meant to be pulled out as separate pieces.
As you can see in the picture below, all of my album playlists are displayed and readily available, a feature just not found anywhere else.
To boot, they can be sorted by category, i.e. those for the weekend, recently played, or those that you wish to play at night(you know, for the ladies, or the gents, as the case may be). You can then even rate these playlists, thereby providing for the 4 and 5 star rated playlist selection.
Now make no mistake, we’re just getting started here. It’s these next features that made me a firm convert to this updated music player. When you select a characteristic on the left it displays the information in a way that can only be described as making complete sense.
After selecting “Artist,” for instance, select the “Tile” view option for the best feel and look of your music.
What happens is miraculous, though oddly uncomplicated. It displays the music, by artist in this case, and shows an album cover, the rating, the total number of songs, and the total length of time it would take to play all of those songs. Even more, interestingly enough, is that each tile will display CD cases based on the volume of music by that selection. Notice in the picture below that the artist that I have 7 albums of is denoted by a stack of CD cases as compared to others that have a mere few songs or so. Pretty fancy heh?
It gets even more impressive when you select an artist. To use as an example, I’ll select the aforementioned artist that I have 7 albums of.
See how cool it is? The albums are all lined up just waiting to be played. It lists them by their name, and also shows the individual track names, lengths, ratings, etc.. My music has never had it so good, and as I’ve already made plain, it’s sad because it just makes sense. It’s as though it should’ve been this way all along, and anything less had to be due to negligence rather than technical inability. Either way I tip my hat towards Redmond, WA.
When you casually play an individual song, it’s just as nice an experience, showing, the album cover, rating, length, etc..
As far as burning CDs with the new Windows Media Player 11, it’s pretty simple it seems. Now I’ve always used either NERO or Roxio when it came to burning either MP3 or regular audio CDs, but at face value I would use this platform if it’s as simple as it looks. It would definitely be convenient if I was able to listen to a certain album for instance, and with a simple click and drag and drop be able to burn it for a friend without skipping a beat. Playing and burning simultaneously? What year is this, 2006?
The usual MP3 sync function is also present for those with portable media players. Nothing particularly fancy here, it’s pretty straightforward.
The last feature that really sets the new Windows Media Player 11 apart is the inclusion of a new online music store function called URGE.
After installing some “necessary” software, which I’ll have to go back and take a look at considering to what lengths some of these companies will go to garner a little data, it’s apparently “ready to go.” According to the site, Urge.com , it is described as follows:
“URGE is a digital music service from MTV Networks that makes it easy to enjoy, explore and get the music you want for your PC or portable music player. URGE gives you complete access to over 2 million songs, 18 music genres, countless styles and exclusives from MTV, VH1 and CMT. URGE gives you hundreds of playlists and radio stations, music feeds, blogs, interviews and feature stories from leading music voices.”
As for song costs, it appears comparable to iTunes at 99 cents per track. However, it packs a bigger punch upon further inspection with unlimited downloads costing a measly $9.95 per month or $99 per year. The low prices make you wonder what music they have to choose from. With MTV, VH1, and the CMT as the operators of URGE it’s probably a cheesy top 20 assortment. But, who knows, maybe they’ll have decent tunes after all.
All in all, I must say that I have been highly impressed so far with Windows Media Player 11, only time will tell if our relationship works out or not. Now it’s time to go back and undo that “necessary” URGE software.
UPDATE:
I’ve come across a couple of other features that I’ve found to be pertinent and cool enough to add to this review post-publication.
The first lies in the search feature. Previously, I had illustrated it’s ability by selecting a specific trait, i.e. “artist,” or “album,” for instance. Well, by chance I did the same thing by selecting “Library” as a whole as shown below.
Well, what’s cool about this “discovery,” if you will, is that notice how it brings up all the results regardless of the trait per your search query, as well as those for the online music store, URGE.
When I typed “disco” as my search query I had 4 artists 17 albums and 71 songs come up as the results for my library, with 36, 280, 2196, respectively for URGE. The results obviously aren’t genre specific, they include the search query by either being in the name of the song, the artist, or album.
I selected the results for “artist” and, as you can see in the picture below, then selected one of those songs to play.
When it then loads and begins to play, you’ll notice that it displays 4 descriptions of that track, genre, artist, album, and year. Well, you can then even select one of these while the song plays to thereby bring up results for that search as well.
The second thing I wanted to address is the ability to find album info, i.e. covers, track titles, etc.. I have always used a killer program called Tag & Rename, which has always been the best at it because it uses Amazon.com’s extensive music database as it’s reference source, so never really cared about such an ability, but it seems many do. To find such info with Windows Media Player 11, simply right click the desired album and select “Find Album Info.”
After a few seconds of searching, it will find a list of matches. From there you simply select the proper album per each track
Though fairly simple and convenient to use, I think I’ll stick with the program Tag & Rename. It does a much better job.
Moreover, I hope you find these updates useful in your choice of switching to this new music player update, Windows Media Player 11.
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One thing I must ask before ever using it. Is it bloated? Does it studder playing music does it make the screen freeze forever to add all the songs on to the media player or to load playlist? Does it have buy stuff on it or li nks and popup of other crap does it report back to MICROSOFT?
Amen my brother like I said I have in excess of 140 GB of tunes and so far it handles em’ impeccably far better than iTunes the only other music player ever really capable of loading that much music into its library. Songs and playlists load nice and pretty like egven iTunes would sometimes hesitate for a bit every now and then. Time will really tell I guess how it holds up. As far as reporting back to Microsoft so far I havent noticed anything but with that too time will tell. Just gotta get your firewall up to snuff which in your case Shawners I know wont be a problem. And as far as “buy stuf” crap and “popups” so far ZILCHO other than that URGE stuff but it’s a mere tab that so far is minding its manners.
I tried this yesterday and i was pretty horrified. The whole corporate feel and multitude of “stores” and invitations to commerce made my head spin. I rolled it back to version 10.Try the latest development build of Quintessential Media Player for true happiness 
http://quinnware.com/development.php
“corporate feel?”…its a box with your songs loaded in it basically it doesnt leave permanent scars…….”multitude of stores?”…..theres only one URGE or whatever it doesnt appear unless you purposefully click on it maybe your just “clicker happy.” Bottom libne is nothing is going to work as good if they dont have access to all the Windows OS data that microsoft does it just meshes well. It doesnt freeze it doesnt lock up on me and thats with a catalog of more than a 140GB. iTunes was the only one that came close. But I also expect a lot from my music player I want to see the album covers I want track lengths ti tles the whole deal. If just want a Quintessential Media Pla yer then geeze just use VLC LAN or MS’s BS pla yer.
Whatever Dude QMP Development Build is not the old QCD player. But let me not hijack your thread. Suffice it to say I didn’t let WMP11 install Urge and it kept nagging me to “Accept” or “Decline” it anyway. I have msn radio and just to get to that I had to wade through lots of promos for almost every kind of digital store you can think of. And the obnoxious Urge logo stays on the skin even if you don’t install it. I’m not against subsc ription services – like I said I have msn radio AND Rhapsody which I love. I just don’t want my day to day pla yer constantly pushing ads down my throat. WMP10 kept that to a minimum so I like it better so who cares.
May wait for a lite version of this? I use foobar and does what it needs to do. Im not at my PC all the time where I can listen to every artist every song and like looking at every album cover art. So far this is just for the music masses who work at home or in a office with their PC. Play in the background as your doing stuff. I like something that doesnt go by the TAGS but file names and be done right. I may give it a go and see what its like. Every detail of a song is of least importance. Burn the cd or mix cd for car. This may come in handly as creating a playlist and burning it. The only thing i was worried about if it kept advertising stuff with popups load your pc down where songs skip or the visualization would perform badly. I do alot of DVD burning and downloading so my ram hard drive is maxed to the brink alot of times.
I was just saying that there is no corporate push to buy stuff. Been runinng it al day and the closest I’ve come to getting even a hint of solicitation was when I purposefulyl sought out what URGE was all about. Otherwise that URGE tab just sits there as a simple tab minding it’s own business. Yeah Im a big tag gay use that beauty of a program “TAg & Rename” to set up albums properly as I get them. Tags are vitally important for me so that I can keep a good handle on such a large amount of music. I guess the real thing about it that turned my head was the way that it will line up all the albums of a specific artict and you can scroll through them effortlessly all the while viewing the album cover track lengths and of course song names. So far so good here. Also no nasty Microsoft data submissions as of yet have my firewall set to alert and deny any outbound connections it may attempt to make if any. So far have had none. As far as advertising stuff I HAVE SEEN NONE. I think its because they hope you wil subscribe to URGE and thats where they pounce on you. They dont want to pounce on you too soon and sour your experience.
Interesting and I will probably update however I doubt it will take over from Itunes for me. I think using the browse button Itunes have made searching around your music collection perfect. Burning and ripping CDs also works well though to be honest I rarely do this anymore. Futhermore the program is stable and its look perfectly fine on a Windows PC though some extra skins would be nice. The only thing I don’t like about Itunes is there seems to be no program that can search and add album covers automatically for free. How good is wmp 11 for finding CD covers?
If you’ll notice WINPlayer 11’s browse feature is way better than iTunes so much so that it makes the browser in iTunes look like kids play;.
Updated story to answer those unanswered questions such as your TFos fan………..enjoy.
Viva La Winamp!
Winamp? Ay dios mio amigo.