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I've had music players on Android (e.g. MixZing) that also have a feature to suggest music you might like based on what's in your library. I believe iTunes does something similar ("Genius"? Or that might be something else), but I've had too many frustrations with iTunes in the past.

Are there any high quality media library applications for desktop (Windows & Mac) that do this?

Key criteria are:

  • Standard desktop music player / media manager features like ripping from CD (yeah, some people still like to buy CDs...), looking up media tags, browse by artist/genre etc, search, playlists...
  • Some feature that scans your library and/or playing history and offers recommendations based on what other people with similar tastes are getting into
  • Not iTunes. Minimal bloat.
  • Bonus points if it can also create automatic playlists of your existing music based on recent listening (what MixZing calls "MoodPlayer")

I'm interested in both Windows and Mac, so bonus points if one app runs on both; but a good Windows option and a separate good Mac option would be great too.

So basically, something like WinAmp but with a recommendations feature for discovering new music (and available to download - WinAmp's in legal limbo at time of writing after being ditched by AOL, not expected to be resolved until late 2015).

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My suggestion may be obvious but in my opinion the best solution is still Last.fm scrobbler. I use it as a Winamp plugin, works as it should. I have the scrobbler run in background so I don't even notice anything.

Then last.fm shows my play statistics, recommendations, live gig dates based on what I listen to, lists people with similar tastes to check out what else they listen to, etc. If you used Winamp in the past it even enables importing media library statistics.

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  • Cool do you know how to get a version of WinAmp that works with the last.fm scrobbler? Last time I checked WinAmp had been stuck in legal limbo for a year and looks likely to still be stuck for another year
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Commented Jan 31, 2015 at 13:07
  • I didn't know about that. I usually use ninite and check Winamp or you can go directly https://ninite.com/winamp edit: I have ver.5.666 and AFAIK they still host this version.
    – galingong
    Commented Jan 31, 2015 at 14:40
  • Cool, this seems like the best option right now (but with development basically static I think Nightingale will become better, once its bugs are ironed out)
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Commented Jan 31, 2015 at 20:27
  • I will also check out Nightingale - I'm OK with Winamp, but would ditch it anytime for a better/more lightweight one. Anyway choose the player you like best, the important thing IMO is having a last.fm plugin to track your taste and browse for new.
    – galingong
    Commented Feb 2, 2015 at 10:30
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+50

Have you checked out Nightingale?

Some notable features are:

  • Plays MP3, WAV, Ogg, FLAC and many more
  • Supports OGG Theora and other formats, depending on the platform
  • Uses the system's gstreamer on Linux
  • Customizable with many add-ons
  • Can look just like you want it to, thanks to feathers
  • Powerful library organization and browsing
  • Fast full text library search
  • Integrated browser
  • Media Files shown in the browser appear in Nightingale Media Player

It's a port of SongBird, which is no longer in development.

It offers many addons, which I'm pretty sure will get you all the features you want.

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