Mp3 players is a software that you need in order to listen to MP3 audio files. There are so many players available out there, from the simple ones to those with all the bells and whistles. The choices available can be quite confusing for beginners.

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Which mp3 player?

So which player should you choose? It depends on what you want to do. If you've a large collection of MP3 files, you would want a program that can play and manage your collection easily. A Jukebox program will do such tasks, they don't just let you play audio files in a variety of formats but they also have the ability to decode, burn CDs and help you download your MP3 files into a portable mp3/CD player.

One feature that you may want to look for is the ability to add and edit the track information (ID3 tag) such as the album title, artist, song title etc. This tag information can help you find the file you want easily and quickly if you have many MP3 files in your hard disk.

If the mp3 player supports CDDB, that means it can automatically download the song title, album, artist info off the Internet, this can saves you time from typing in the info yourself. The ability to create and save a play list is a nice feature allowing you to play tunes according to genre, tempo, situation, moods etc. If you own a large collection of mp3 files, your player should be able to organize them in a nice database according to your preference. MusicMatch Jukebox and Media Jukebox do an excellent job on this. Other cool features you may want to have are graphic equalizer, skin/visualization support, CD player, internet radio and plug-ins. 

Winamp and Sonique are by far two of the more popular and well established players for Windows. If all you're after is a player that plays mp3 files, then Winamp is the right choice, it's a small download with excellent sound quality. If you demand more, check out one of the Jukebox type players. Try several of them out, until you find your favorite. After all you've got nothing to lose with a free tag price.

How to play mp3 files?

To play an MP3 file, you just have to double-click its icon in Windows Explorer and your default player will launch and start playing it. Of course you can always launch your mp3 player first and select the file that you want to play. The controls on most players is fairly initituive and look like those of a CD player or cassette deck with the usual play, pause, stop, rewind, and forward buttons and some other extra buttons for special function.

See also:

If you want to record MP3s from your audio CDs, convert WAV to MP3 and vice-versa, or are new to mp3 etc. check out these sections.