Saturday, February 18, 2012

Winyl is a great replacement for a desktop music player.

winyl - logoThere are a lot of options out there for music players. We have talked about a few music players for your computer and music players for your mobile devices. Winyl is a great replacement for a desktop music player.

What you get with Winyl is a very lightweight player that lets you easily manage your music collection without bogging down your computer. That means you can still do other things while your music is playing; especially a netbook.

What you get with Winyl

There are a few cool things you will notice about the layout. First, there is not the usual menu bar. Winyl replaces the menu with an icon. You can click on the icon to get to the menu options. It makes for a much cleaner look.
winyl-main menu
The same change goes for audio adjustments and the cover art display. The cover art does not auto download, so you may need to find it elsewhere on the web. Here is a screen shot of the equalizer popup window that shows up when you click on the music note at the top of the right sidebar.
winyl-eq
Other than that, the layout is pretty self explanatory. You have your library in the middle.

The right sidebar either displays the cover art
winyl-cover art
or the playlist and genre options.
winyl-playlists
There is a star-based rating system similar to iTunes.
winyl-stars
There is a smart folder option in the right sidebar. There is an option to choose random playlists based on 25 most played songs or 5 random albums. This helps mix up your music. I know I have many gigabytes of music and mostly listen to a few albums. Using a random play option, you may play some golden oldies you downloaded and forgot about.
winyl-smartlists

Why Winyl is so great

The main reason you would want to use Winyl is that you are probably not super happy with iTunes or Windows Media Player. If you were not in the market for a new player, you probably wouldn’t have read this far. ;-) Being tethered to a service can be a problem for those people who may not acquire their music in the legalist of ways. Is iTunes looking and collecting information for big brother? Who knows for sure.

Skins

Also, there are different skins. The skins can change the look to make you feel more at home when switching from iTunes or Windows Media Player. Here is a look at a couple of the skins. You will see what I mean.

Luna Black Skin

winyl-luna black skin

Windows Media Player Skin

winyl-wmp skin

iTunes Skin

winyl-itunes

Conclusion

When you are searching for a music player, you have specific needs. Most people seem to like simple over fancy. The other reason is, a lot of people are looking to break away from iTunes or Windows Media Player for one reason or another. Winyl offers a great transition application because of the skin options that are pretty close replicas of the applications you are looking to break free from.
What are your reasons to look for a new desktop music player?
Download Winyl

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