What's the best media player?

[deer of the dawn]

I've tried a few media players but haven't really had the time to learn the ropes of any of them besides Windows Media Player.

I find WMP dissatisfying for the following reasons:

• It loses data. Most often cover art, which I can live with, but it seems to forget what genre songs are, song titles, what artist they belong to; I end up with a "dump" of songs under "Unknown Artist" named "Track 03", etc.

• Frequent freezes/crashes.

• mp3 tag data is often missing or screwed up.

I have I-tunes, but I'm not sure if I want to invest the time getting to know my way around if it's not going to be any better.

Any recommendations?

[Frostheart Grueburn]

I've used Winamp for as long as I can recall: www.winamp.com/

It's gotten rather bloated during the past x years, however, so if you're looking for something simpler and less crash-prone, you might try VLC media player: www.videolan.org/
I mainly watch videos with VLC due to its huge selection of supported codecs, so less experiences with its mp3 tag data integrity and whatnot.

[Sorus]

I use iTunes, and have no complaints.

[MsMary]

I like iTunes, too.

[balon!]

you might try VLC media player: www.videolan.org/
I mainly watch videos with VLC due to its huge selection of supported codecs, so less experiences with its mp3 tag data integrity and whatnot.

It's also open-source so it's easy to find help if you have trouble. I have no problem playing music, and it's playlist function is great.