# media player for clasical music
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-player-for-clasical-music/345127
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 18, 2006, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-player-for-clasical-music/345127 "2006-02-18T22:07:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2006, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-player-for-clasical-music/345127/1 "2006-02-18T22:07:11Z")
Can anyone recomend a good media player for clasical music? Winamp and iTunes don’t allow sorting by composer. To my mind one of the best ways to sort clasical music is by composer. I Tunes lets you sort by genre, artist and album. Winamp by artist and album. It is also posible that these programs indeed allow you to sort by composer and I just don’t know how to do it.
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### Author:  [@MrJackboots](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrJackboots)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2006, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-player-for-clasical-music/345127/2 "2006-02-18T23:05:42Z")
iTunes allows sorting by composer. You just have to enable that column. Right-click (ctrl-click on the Mac, naturally) on the column headings and enable “composer”. Sort to your heart’s content.
You may have to input the tags, though.
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### Author:  [@MrJackboots](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrJackboots)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2006, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-player-for-clasical-music/345127/3 "2006-02-18T23:07:54Z")
Afterthought: It does not, however, allow you to condense your library down to a single composer, the way you can with genre, artist, and album. Down in the library you can sort by just about anything if you enable the right column.
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### Author:  [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2006, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-player-for-clasical-music/345127/4 "2006-02-18T23:53:11Z")
MrJackboots thanks for the info about itunes. That is not quite what I want to do. I want to add a composer column to the genre, artist, album columns. But that is better than winamp where I cannot diplay composer at all.
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### Author:  [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2006, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-player-for-clasical-music/345127/5 "2006-02-18T23:55:08Z")
Take a look at [Media Monkey](http://www.mediamonkey.com/) - not sure if it’ll do exactly what you want, but it’s worth a try.
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### Author:  [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)
#### Post date: [February 19, 2006, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-player-for-clasical-music/345127/6 "2006-02-19T00:17:22Z")
You can add a composer column to Windows Media Player. Click on the “Library” tab. Click on “Library Options” and select “Choose Columns…” In the “Choose Columns” dialog box, check the “Composer” and click on “OK”.
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### Author:  [@Dahnlor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahnlor)
#### Post date: [February 19, 2006, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-player-for-clasical-music/345127/7 "2006-02-19T00:33:51Z")
[Yahoo Music Engine](http://music.yahoo.com/musicengine/) also has that ability in its library, you’d just need to right-click the column headings to add that column.
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### Author:  [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)
#### Post date: [February 19, 2006, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-player-for-clasical-music/345127/8 "2006-02-19T02:06:31Z")
Thanks for the ideas.
Yahoo music engine can sort by composer. However the way it works is similar to itunes and not quit what I want. I would like the browse drop down menu to list composer. The privacy policy for this program was sort of scary. I think I will have to go look at what apple and microsoft say for their programs.
Windows media player in the left panel allows you to browse by a number of things composer being one of them. It looks pretty useful so I may go to the darkside on this one.
Media Monkey does not really allow you to browse by composer.
On other forums people have suggested foobar2000. I am sure that it can be configured to do just what I want. However it is sure delivered in a very bare bones format and has links to user maintained wiki pages and forums. I am not sure if I care to spend the large amount of time it looks like it takes to use this program.
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### Author:  [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)
#### Post date: [February 19, 2006, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-player-for-clasical-music/345127/9 "2006-02-19T05:43:27Z")
> [@gazpacho](#):
>
> Windows media player in the left panel allows you to browse by a number of things composer being one of them. It looks pretty useful so I may go to the darkside on this one.
Allow me to join you on the darkside, then. I’ve used Quicktime for classical music, because it seems to be the favorite on edu websites that have a lot of the classical music I listen to. But frankly if Windows Media can do this I would just as soon use that.