During the last year, not much has changed about the software designed to play .mp3 files. The market leader is MusicMatch Jukebox, which has such a quirky interface that I find it unusable. RealJukebox was weak, and now it’s been replaced by RealOne, which is horrible beyond belief. Windows Media Player looks pretty, but it’s missing many features and provides no ability to manage a large number of .mp3 files.
Media Jukebox continues to be the best .mp3 player on the market. A new version, version 8, was just released a few days ago, and I recommend it for anyone who has more than a handful of music files to play. It costs $24.98 and it’s well worth it. When you start it up, it looks like a Windows program instead of looking like some alien remote control. I think that’s a good thing. The more you use it, the more power it gives you to organize and work with your music collection. Check it out, read about it, see if it meets your needs. It’s probably the single most-used program on my computer. (If you’re new to .mp3 files or Media Jukebox, click here for some brief notes I wrote about how I use Media Jukebox to organize my collection.)
