Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The original WMA codec, known simply as WMA, was conceived as a competitor to the popular MP3 and RealAudio codecs. WMA Pro, a newer and more advanced codec, supports multichannel and high-resolution audio. A lossless codec, WMA Lossless, compresses audio data without loss of audio fidelity. WMA Voice, targeted at voice content, applies compression using a range of low bit rates. Microsoft has also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store audio encoded by WMA.
Windows Media Player, is the first media player and media library application that Microsoft developed to play audio and video on personal computers. It has been a component of the Microsoft Windows operating system, including Windows 9x, Windows NT, Pocket PC, and Windows Mobile. Microsoft also released editions of Windows Media Player for classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Solaris, but has since discontinued them.
FLAC is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software package that includes a codec implementation. Digital audio compressed by FLAC's algorithm can typically be reduced to between 50 and 70 percent of its original size and decompresses to an identical copy of the original audio data.
foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android and macOS developed by Peter Pawłowski. It has a modular design, which provides user flexibility in configuration and customization. Standard "skin" elements can be individually augmented or replaced with different dials and buttons, as well as visualizers such as waveform, oscilloscope, spectrum, spectrogram (waterfall), peak and smoothed VU meters, which all of them are analysis-oriented, at least for built-in visualizations. foobar2000 offers third-party user interface modifications through a software development kit (SDK).
The Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), also known as Apple Lossless, or Apple Lossless Encoder (ALE), is an audio coding format, and its reference audio codec implementation, developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music. After initially keeping it proprietary from its inception in 2004, in late 2011 Apple made the codec available open source and royalty-free. Traditionally, Apple has referred to the codec as Apple Lossless, though more recently it has begun to use the abbreviated term ALAC when referring to the codec.
Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files, or character encoding. This is usually done in cases where a target device does not support the format or has limited storage capacity that mandates a reduced file size, or to convert incompatible or obsolete data to a better-supported or modern format.
Nero AG is a German computer software company that is especially well known for its CD/DVD/BD burning suite, Nero Burning ROM. The company's main product is Nero 2019, a piece of software that comprises burning, file conversion, media management, and video editing functions and was updated on an annual basis, though new releases have not occurred for several years.
Squeezebox is a family of network music players. The original device was the SliMP3, introduced in 2001 by Slim Devices. It had an Ethernet interface and played MP3 music files from a media server. The first Squeezebox was released two years later and was followed by several more models. Slim Devices was acquired by Logitech in 2006.
Firefly Media Server is an open-source audio media server for the Roku SoundBridge and iTunes. It serves media files using Roku Server Protocol (RSP) and Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP).
The Samsung SCH-u470, or Juke and Verizon Wireless Juke, is a mobile phone offered exclusively by Verizon Wireless. It was announced on 2 October 2007, and released that same year on Q4 in three colors: red, teal, and navy (blue). The phone is a music player when closed, and can be swiveled for use of the mobile phone. It also has a VGA-resolution camera with a special "night shot" mode for taking photos in low-light conditions.
Deezer is a French music streaming service founded in 2007. The company has been a subsidiary of Access Industries since 2016. Deezer is available via web and on various digital platforms, including Android, iOS, macOS and others.
Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Recorder (SUPER) is a closed-source front end for open-source software video players and encoders provided by the FFmpeg, MEncoder, MPlayer, x264, ffmpeg2theora, musepack, Monkey's Audio, True Audio, WavPack, libavcodec, and the Theora/Vorbis RealProducer plugIn projects. It was first released in 2005. SUPER provides a graphical user interface to these back-end programs, which use a command-line interface.
WiMP was a music streaming service available on mobile devices, tablets, network players and computers. WiMP offered music and podcasts for users to listen to. WiMP also offered a HiFi-product with FLAC/ALAC. WiMP has since been merged with Tidal.
Clementine is a free and open-source audio player. It is a port of Amarok 1.4 to the Qt 4 framework and the GStreamer multimedia framework. It is available for Unix-like, Windows and macOS operating systems. Clementine is released under the terms of the GPL-3.0-or-later.
iCloud is a cloud service developed by Apple Inc. Launched on October 12, 2011, iCloud enables users to store and sync data across devices, including Apple Mail, Apple Calendar, Apple Photos, Apple Notes, contacts, settings, backups, and files, to collaborate with other users, and track assets through Find My. It is built into iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, macOS, and visionOS. iCloud may additionally be accessed through a limited web interface and Windows application.
This is a comparison of online music storage services, Internet services that allow uploads of personally owned or licensed music to the cloud for listening on multiple devices.
Groove Music is a discontinued audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Qobuz is a French digital music store and streaming service, launched in 2007 by Alexandre Leforestier and Yves Riesel. Qobuz is now owned by Xandrie SA. In June 2023, Qobuz offered over 100 million tracks on its service.
BubbleUPnP is a DLNA-compliant UPnP media controller, server and renderer, designed to allow streaming of audio or video from and to an Android device with various external devices and software. Alongside the Android client, it also has a server middleware application that can be installed on Windows, macOS and Linux computers or network storage devices, providing remote access through a web interface. BubbleUPnP also utilises ffmpeg and ffprobe for transcoding.
