I'm investigating jukebox software for playback on a PC hooked directly to the stereo via the soundcard.

The issues here are:
* play as many formats as possible
* playlists (including album playlists, custom playlists, random by genre, random by artists, etc.)
* ease of use - support various ways of browsing the music (artists, genre, etc.) with album artwork, links between related artists, perhaps artist bios, etc.
* OS (something that runs on Intel hardware - could be Windows, could be a UNIX variant)
* free verses cost is not much of an issue - I'm more concerned with open versus closed source in case the company that makes the s/w goes out of business...

I am *not* looking for a solution that does ripping and encoding and tagging. It's fine if the software does that, but I won't use it. I'm fine with using the best tools for the job (EAC, etc.).

I'm not going to list the s/w I have looked at, but I've investigated what seems like at least 30 packages so far.

What are people using?

I'm currently using iTunes. It's free and supports a lot of what you want in a media jukebox. It supports MP3, AAC, WAV, Apple Lossless Audio Codec, and AIFF. It supports displaying album artwork, runs on Windows 2000/XP/Mac OSX, supports creating internal playlists and smart playlists (no way to export playlists as M3U/PLS). iTunes is also very easy to use.

You may also want to check out Winamp, J River Media Jukebox or Foobar2000.

I use Winamp modified with several plugins. I can't leave Winamp easiliy since I like it and have been using it for about 5 years now. I consider my playlist to be "organised chaos" since I'm probably the only one who could find anything on it. Overall, any of the players mentioned would not be a bad choice. Just depends on your personal tastes and preferences.

You can try Music Browser.

Rhythmbox here.

I used winamp.

Mainly Amarok and iTunes here.

I also use VLC for playback on my headless machine via the web control interface.

iTunes all the way for me.

I use Winamp as well. It's the only free media player than meets my requirements of a turn-key solution that manages all of my music and playlists just as I want it to, plays all of the formats I use and serves as a great home theater jukebox/server, all right out of the box.

itunes
reason - the music store function. comprehensive and easy to use

I've been using Winamp for ten years. (maybe more can't remember) Supports every audio/video format I've thrown at it. Has plugins to beat the band.

Woody

For me:

foobar2000 under Windows XP

iTunes under Mac OS X.