4 ms·

You're underestimating Winamp and related own-your-music music players. I have real-world usage data on quite a lot of music players and websites, here's the to

You're underestimating Winamp and related own-your-music music players. I have real-world usage data on quite a lot of music players and websites, here's the top 30. The number is how many songs played in total on that website (I run something similar to last.fm scrobbling) This data is from the past 5 years or so, not sure to be honest. 1 YouTube 14,244,087 2 Spotify desktop 2,751,012 3 Monstercat 1,171,321 4 Pandora 895,765 5 VLC media player 892,006 6 iTunes 854,311 7 SoundCloud 724,019 8 YouTube Music 640,801 9 Deezer 501,474 10 Winamp 289,216 11 Foobar2000 251,726 12 Vk.com music 134,319 13 Aimp3 123,306 14 Musicbee 113,652 15 Google play music 89,827 16 Epidemicsound 87,573 17 Spotify web player 81,590 18 Media monkey 70,611 19 Amazon Music 55,691 20 Clementine 29,750 21 Tunein radio 24,413 22 Google play music desktop (community) 22,910 23 Media Player Classic Home Cinema 15,654 24 Pot player 11,348 25 Plug.dj 8,144 26 Tidal web player 7,770 27 Jriver media center 5,200 28 Digitally Imported di.fm 4,636 29 SiriusXM 2,397 30 Dubtrack.fm 1,031

madmax108 5y ago
Pleasantly surprised to see Clementine in the list (though a bit disappointed with how low it is in the list). Great app, and I used it a lot because it had seamless last.fm scrobbling (Man, those were the days!). I was one of the early users of it back a decade ago, and funnily found out about the "clementine" fruit after googling why my music player has an "orange slice" as it's icon. :D
- azeirah 5y ago
  I tend to add whatever users request. There have been music players in the past that were requested but I was never able to add support for. The most notable request is... windows media player! I still don't know how to get real-time 'now playing' data from WMP! I'd imagine WMP being very high up on this list as well otherwise. Two others are the Amazon desktop app and the pandora fm desktop. I'd imagine my application could theoretically be used to scrobble to last.fm too for alllll music players you have on your desktop, but it'd be a bit of development work to add that There are many people coming from WMP asking me what music player they should use, my most common recommendations are Foobar2000, AIMP3 and clementine, by the way! There's a lot of really great music software out there that's just being ignored by the mainstream. It was kind of surprising to me though that YouTube (not even YouTube music, mind you) is the most popular "music player", although relating it to my own experience this makes a lot of sense. It's not even a real music player, playlist randomisation is broken, and there's a whole lot of other stuff missing and broken when it comes to playing music (no seamless transitions, ads, GEMA/DMCA/whatever based on your location, uploads removing videos etc) Accessibility is by far the most important thing here. Even Spotify doesn't even come close despite being second place
  - ngcc_hk 5y ago
    For classical music nothing beat YouTube. Other I am not sure but I expect you are right.
    - smolder 5y ago
      Except perhaps in the audio quality department... I don't know how much things have changed, but I recall youtube doing a bit of compression on the imported audio.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
If this data was captured by something like scrobbling, then this isn't an accurate representation of the landscape because it's opt-in only.
- ChrisLomont 5y ago
  Opt-in does not mean the data is inaccurate. It could be wildly off, but most likely it is in the ballpark, and there is a chance it's completely indicative of the relative usages by various platforms. If you can provide better data or evidence where this is incorrect that help.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    It's accurate about tech-savvy people that listen to a lot of music. It's not accurate about music listening by all users everywhere. I'd wager most people use streaming platforms nowadays over downloading music locally.
    - Strom 5y ago
      > I'd wager most people use streaming platforms nowadays over downloading music locally Yes and this very same data shows that the top 4 most popular options are streaming platforms.
    - ChrisLomont 5y ago
      >It's accurate about tech-savvy people that listen to a lot of music. It's not accurate about music listening by all users everywhere. What evidence do you have for this? > I'd wager most people use streaming platforms nowadays over downloading music locally. Agreed. The above data has around 90% streaming. Why are you claiming it is wrong when it says what you claim is the truth?
NavinF 5y ago
What’s #3 Monstercat? That seems to be a record label, not playback software.
- azeirah 5y ago
  monstercat.com has a music player, that's where the count comes from. My software is meant for twitch streamers, and monstercat is especially well-suited for streamers due to how they license their music to be safe for streaming under the DMCA.
raflemakt 5y ago
Musicbee is such a great music player/library program. A pity it's not open source and available on Linux.
- sound1 5y ago
  Absolutely! You can still run older version of Musicbee under WINE and it works without much issues. Now a days I use Guayadeque player and quite happy with it.
entropie 5y ago
No MPD? I use it for over a decade. Looks like iam still a nerd.
- azeirah 5y ago
  I think that's mostly due to my target audience. This data comes from twitch streamers who want to have music playing during their streams. I'm sure some of these people use MPD, but given what I've read after googling it seems like you need to be a technical person to set it up.
  - entropie 5y ago
    If you kind of familiar with linux its really not hard and works kind of of the box. But it is really mighty and still simple. A very large number of (good) clients for every platform due to its simple protocol. I really like the client-server approach. Very recently I used an icecast [1] output (mpd can have multiple audio outputs you can switch or use parallel on demand) on my headless server to automatically cast the stream to the inbuild chromecast of my onkyo receiver to listen to audiobooks. Homeassistant uses its own MPD integration to check the state is changing (play/stop), when it changes to play it sends the shoutcast url to the chromecast. Also stuff like this on the terminal makes me happy: # mpc search artist moloko | grep -i doctor | shuf | mpc add 1: https://icecast.org/ https://icecast.org/
mvkel 5y ago
This is what’s typical of a saturated market. Top 98% are streaming services with the remaining 2% being battled over by thousands of niche apps

madmax108 5y ago

Pleasantly surprised to see Clementine in the list (though a bit disappointed with how low it is in the list). Great app, and I used it a lot because it had seamless last.fm scrobbling (Man, those were the days!). I was one of the early users of it back a decade ago, and funnily found out about the "clementine" fruit after googling why my music player has an "orange slice" as it's icon. :D

azeirah 5y ago
I tend to add whatever users request. There have been music players in the past that were requested but I was never able to add support for. The most notable request is... windows media player! I still don't know how to get real-time 'now playing' data from WMP! I'd imagine WMP being very high up on this list as well otherwise. Two others are the Amazon desktop app and the pandora fm desktop. I'd imagine my application could theoretically be used to scrobble to last.fm too for alllll music players you have on your desktop, but it'd be a bit of development work to add that There are many people coming from WMP asking me what music player they should use, my most common recommendations are Foobar2000, AIMP3 and clementine, by the way! There's a lot of really great music software out there that's just being ignored by the mainstream. It was kind of surprising to me though that YouTube (not even YouTube music, mind you) is the most popular "music player", although relating it to my own experience this makes a lot of sense. It's not even a real music player, playlist randomisation is broken, and there's a whole lot of other stuff missing and broken when it comes to playing music (no seamless transitions, ads, GEMA/DMCA/whatever based on your location, uploads removing videos etc) Accessibility is by far the most important thing here. Even Spotify doesn't even come close despite being second place
- ngcc_hk 5y ago
  For classical music nothing beat YouTube. Other I am not sure but I expect you are right.
  - smolder 5y ago
    Except perhaps in the audio quality department... I don't know how much things have changed, but I recall youtube doing a bit of compression on the imported audio.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

If this data was captured by something like scrobbling, then this isn't an accurate representation of the landscape because it's opt-in only.

ChrisLomont 5y ago
Opt-in does not mean the data is inaccurate. It could be wildly off, but most likely it is in the ballpark, and there is a chance it's completely indicative of the relative usages by various platforms. If you can provide better data or evidence where this is incorrect that help.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  It's accurate about tech-savvy people that listen to a lot of music. It's not accurate about music listening by all users everywhere. I'd wager most people use streaming platforms nowadays over downloading music locally.
  - Strom 5y ago
    > I'd wager most people use streaming platforms nowadays over downloading music locally Yes and this very same data shows that the top 4 most popular options are streaming platforms.
  - ChrisLomont 5y ago
    >It's accurate about tech-savvy people that listen to a lot of music. It's not accurate about music listening by all users everywhere. What evidence do you have for this? > I'd wager most people use streaming platforms nowadays over downloading music locally. Agreed. The above data has around 90% streaming. Why are you claiming it is wrong when it says what you claim is the truth?

NavinF 5y ago

What’s #3 Monstercat? That seems to be a record label, not playback software.

azeirah 5y ago
monstercat.com has a music player, that's where the count comes from. My software is meant for twitch streamers, and monstercat is especially well-suited for streamers due to how they license their music to be safe for streaming under the DMCA.

raflemakt 5y ago

Musicbee is such a great music player/library program. A pity it's not open source and available on Linux.

sound1 5y ago
Absolutely! You can still run older version of Musicbee under WINE and it works without much issues. Now a days I use Guayadeque player and quite happy with it.

entropie 5y ago

No MPD? I use it for over a decade. Looks like iam still a nerd.

azeirah 5y ago
I think that's mostly due to my target audience. This data comes from twitch streamers who want to have music playing during their streams. I'm sure some of these people use MPD, but given what I've read after googling it seems like you need to be a technical person to set it up.
- entropie 5y ago
  If you kind of familiar with linux its really not hard and works kind of of the box. But it is really mighty and still simple. A very large number of (good) clients for every platform due to its simple protocol. I really like the client-server approach. Very recently I used an icecast [1] output (mpd can have multiple audio outputs you can switch or use parallel on demand) on my headless server to automatically cast the stream to the inbuild chromecast of my onkyo receiver to listen to audiobooks. Homeassistant uses its own MPD integration to check the state is changing (play/stop), when it changes to play it sends the shoutcast url to the chromecast. Also stuff like this on the terminal makes me happy: # mpc search artist moloko | grep -i doctor | shuf | mpc add 1: https://icecast.org/ https://icecast.org/

mvkel 5y ago

This is what’s typical of a saturated market. Top 98% are streaming services with the remaining 2% being battled over by thousands of niche apps