Digital music is on the rise.  Now that your laptop can hold more music than an entire closet full of CDs, you probably listen to quite a bit of music on your computer.  But what program should you be using?  If you use a PC, chances are that you’re pretty familiar with Windows Media Player.  If you use a Mac, likewise for iTunes.  But now iTunes is available for PCs and HP manufactures ipods.  Has Apple gone and rendered Windows Media Player obsolete?  Well, that depends on your taste and needs.  Here are some relative pros and cons. 

Layout and Appearance

On first glance, iTunes is surely the more accessible looking program.  The virtual buttons are bigger and the organization of your music library is more immediately apparent.  But if you want iTunes to look any different, you’re stuck.  WMP on the other hand comes with lots of different skins and lets you download more if you so desire.  With only a little bit of use, WMP becomes just as intuitive as iTunes appears to be, and is much more customizable.

Playback

For some reason, iTunes can’t seem to play any number of songs in a row without adding a split-second pause in between the tracks.  This might sound like a negligible short-coming, and it’s true that much of time that gap is unnoticeable, considering that many tracks come to a full stop before the next one begins.  But any true music fan is familiar with albums that put lots of thought into the transition between tracks.  When listening to such music, the gap is not only jarring but annoying.  I keep thinking that the latest version of iTunes will have fixed this problem, but now I’ve been waiting for over a year.  WMP just doesn’t seem to suffer in this category. 

Making playlists

With both programs, you can easily create playlists and add to them by simply clicking and dragging the desired tracks.  How the programs differ is that WMP has “auto playlists” whereas iTunes has “smart playlists”.  These are both self-generating playlists that organize your music library based on criteria like the date you last heard a track, the number of times you’ve played a track, or the number of stars you’ve given a track (both programs let you rate songs on a 5 star scale), etc.  You can create the same sorts of playlists with both programs, but WMP comes with more of them.  So iTunes requires a bit more tinkering if personalizing the organization of your music is important to you. 

Burning Cds

This is easy enough with both programs, but slightly more intuitive with WMP.  iTunes requires that the CD you want to burn is its own playlist.  There is no immediately apparent “burn CD” option as there is with WMP.  And once you’ve burned a CD with iTunes, you’re stuck with those annoying gaps in between the tracks.     

Non-music media

WMP will also play streaming videos, DVDs, and all sorts of digital video formats.  iTunes is only concerned with music playback.  To be fair, downloading iTunes will also give you the latest version of Quicktime, which will handle all of your video files.  But WMP puts everything in one place; you only need to familiarize yourself with one program to play all of your media.

Sharing and buying

Here is where iTunes finally has the upper hand.  If you computer is on a network, iTunes will adda “shared music” menu right above your playlists, and let you listen to any of the tracks in the libraries of anyone on your network that is running iTunes.  This option is controllable of course; you can limit access to your library if you want.  Also, the iTunes music store is accessible directly through the program, which is definitely a convenient way of buying new music and adding to your own collection.