So if you’re out and about town and suddenly have an urge to hear Oklahoma!, you don’t have to go without. 
Backup. I’ve lost enough hard drives over the years to know the value of a second copy of all of my songs. In fact, as I referenced earlier in this thread, I keep three copies: one on my home computer, one on my office computer, and one on the iPod itself.
Looks like I’m the first user to chime in for Windows Media Player 10.
I get all of my digital music from my CD collections, which I rip at 128kbps WMA (WMP 10 has support for ripping MP3 too). WMP will automatically download album information (including album cover). WMP automatically organizes everything in folders by Artist\Album, and in its internal library songs can be organized by album, artist, composer, whatever. You can also specify the filename to use; I use <track number> <track name> (“01 Come Together.wma” for instance). This is the best way I’ve found if you’re using folder-based music devices (such as the Pioneer WMA CD receiver I have in my old car).
Note: while it is possible to use digital rights protection to protect the music you rip, you can turn this off very easily (the first time you rip a CD, WMP will give you the ripping options dialog so you can configure this quickly).
Some features I like with WMP10:[ul]
[li]Fast ripping (this is anecdotal, I don’t have any hard numbers, maybe 2-5 minutes to rip an album) (the demo version of MusicMatch takes forever, but it is also purposely speed-limited so that you’ll buy the full version)[/li][li]Automatic volume leveling (if I have everything on random, I don’t constantly have to change the volume)[list][/li][li]Very useful when going from the first Queen album to the Smashing Pumpkins.[/li][li]I have no idea if any of the other players do this.[/li][/ul]
[li]Crossfading (every player has this, though)[/li][li]Non-breaking play (If an album has one song that is mixed directly with the following song, WMP will seamlessly start the second song. Try listening to the last half of Abbey Road for a demonstration of this.)[ul][/li][li]Winamp (earlier versions at least) inserts a blank pause as it opens the second song[/li][li]I haven’t heard a device or player that doesn’t insert the blank pause, except for WMP. (I don’t know what iTunes does with this, though)[/li][/ul]
[li]Pitch-constant variable speed playback (not the best tool for figuring out that guitar passage, but works a lot better than just listening to a song at full speed).[/li][/list]
I have all my CDs (around 300) ripped to HD on my work computer. I tend to either listen to everything, with crossfading, volume leveling, and random on, or I listen to an entire album at a time, with crossfading, volume leveling, and random off. (I’ve developed a skin for WMP that is compact and has a button to switch between random-variety and album modes, along with a rating button that I can use to rate music).
WMP also has a 5-star rating system (unrated songs are automatically rated based on the number of times they’ve been played relative to the rest in the library), and provides auto-generated playlists (such as “Favorites – 4 and 5 star rated,” “Favorites – weekends,” “Favorites – Hannukah,” and you can create your own autogenerated playlists (say, “1 and 5 star user rated and 3 star auto-rated music that I haven’t heard for 5 days”).
Finding portable players for WMA is pretty easy these days: most brands have WMA support built in (except for Apple, Sony, RCA, and maybe some others). I had a Pioneer CD player in my old car that used WMA, and I have an iRiver WMA-CD player which is neato. I just got my sister an iRiver flash player.
Basically, WMP does a great job organizing my music (most players do this pretty well). Not only that, but when I listen to albums that have music across tracks, there’s no break in the sound, which is a very important feature for me. Since I haven’t used iTunes at all and MusicMatch only very limited, I don’t know how well they stack up, and I’ve found Winamp to be less easy to use with my large library.
And a quick sidenote: when listening to internet radio stations (such as http://www.radioparadise.com), I’ve found that Winamp works better, since WMP for some reason does not update the title based on the artist/track title metadata that is pushed alongside the music.
Hate to break it to ya, but most of the features you touted in WMP 10 were “inspired” by iTunes.
Excellent point… any program that downloads this info from the Gracenote DB saves a TON of time. I know that iTunes supports the info, but I don’t think it grabs the album artwork.
Ahh, I’ve got everything burned to CDs as well. So I consider that my back-up. (After my computer crash back in October when I managed to delete all of the songs on my computer AND iPod, I was glad to have the CD back-ups.) I’ve got way too many CDs (coming up on 7000 now) that I’d need more than a terrabyte of hard drive space to put 'em all on. It’s unfortunately not feasible for me.