You’ve got Media Player, the resident music software. It is one of the best music players for Windows 10, but ultimately, you can have so much more with third-party music apps.

Of course, the app you choose will have a lot to do with how you want to use it. Do you want to tag and sort your music more efficiently and download or stream podcasts and other online radio services like iHeartRadio and Pandora? Or perhaps you just want to have the best possible listening experience across all your devices.

Whichever need is driving you to check out the best music player for Windows 10, we’ve got an app that will fill it.

Related: Best Music Players for Android

How We Formulated Our Ratings

You don’t want to waste time with products that are being touted by someone paid to do so. That’s why we’ve taken the time to read through users’ feedback and testimonials on these music players as well as developer information.

We’ve also considered what media sources are saying about each, to bring you as well-rounded and balanced a view as possible.

Here are some of the criteria we used to come to our conclusions about the best music players for Windows 10.

It supports a whole slew of audio formats, including MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, M4A, FLAC, OGG, APE, TAK, and more.

If you’re not completely getting rid of your Apple devices, this little honey of a player can sync your songs with your iPhone and automatically update your music library as it changes over time. It can also sync with Android and over USB drives and it supports audiobooks, a rare feature.

It supports Groove Music, which used to be Xbox Music, so you can add your favorites to your existing playlist or get recommendations from the Groove Music catalog.

One important feature is that Music Bee doesn’t take up much space on your hard drive and it’s customizable with lots of plug-ins and skins to choose from. According to their website, Music Bee only uses 25-70 MB of ram even with skins and add-on plug-ins. That’s a plus when you’re trying to conserve precious disk space.

Portability

Music Bee is conveniently available in a portable version, so you can pop it on a USB and take it anywhere.

With powerful CD ripping, automatic metadata import, DSP effects, and support for a 15-band equalizer and high-end audio cards, it’s a pretty full-featured app.

It also comes equipped with a visualizer so you can “see” your music onscreen as it plays in real-time. Recently, Music Bee developers have added support for WinAmp plug-ins so now you can get even more mileage from the app.

Music Bee is one of the highest rated music players for Windows 10 according to users and some industry reviewers.

Music Bee is free.

Apple’s a smart company so they knew they needed to make their iTunes player available to a broader spectrum of music consumers. iTunes for Windows can handle the music stored on your PC or laptop as well as the music you’ve purchased on iTunes if you own an iPhone.

If you subscribe to Apple Music, a monthly service that gives you unlimited free music downloads for as long as you subscribe, then your benefits increase because iTunes can stream this through your PC effortlessly.

Stream with other devices

With the Home Sharing feature, you can also stream your music to other audio devices in your home like Sonos, Echo, or any other Bluetooth-enabled speaker.

iTunes has all the standard things you’d expect from a music player—metadata import, equalizer, and more. In addition, it can handle most audio formats including Apple Lossless, AAC, MP3, AIFF, and WAV.

Most importantly, the app is backed by Apple, so you can rest assured it will be updated and continue to grow and improve over time. It has continued to be one of the most widely-used and popular music players.

iTunes is free.

One of the major pluses of this software is its ability to stream across so many devices, including mobile phones, PCs and even gaming consoles as well as Bluetooth-enabled devices like Echo and Sonos.

The interface is clean and understandable and one of the easiest to use, which makes it a win if you’re just looking for a simple app to play your tunes.

Spotify offers free and paid versions.

All the controls are intuitive and easy to locate, and it comes with great extras like lyrics that play in real-time and automatic meta-tagging.

It supports a number of audio formats including FLAC, M4A, OGG, MP4, WAV, APE, and OPUS. It also features a “Now Playing” screen, tray controls, a Notifications screen, and both micro- and nano-players.

It’s got a minimalist interface that’s appealing and simple to use, earning the program high marks in the user interface category.

Dopamine is free.

You can configure all of your music in one place with this little player, since it interfaces with the following:

• Dropbox
• Box
• Google Drive
• OneDrive

Internet radio you can play on Clementine includes:

• Spotify
• SomaFM
• Grooveshark
• JAZZRADIO.com
• Digitally Imported
• Jamendo
• Magnatune
• SKY.fm
• Subsonic Servers
• Icecast
• Soundcloud

In addition to all that, it can even interface with Mac OSX—a bonus for those who have devices using both Windows and Mac platforms.

Clementine makes it easy to tab your playlists and attach lyrics and artists biographies to songs as well as to listen to podcasts and audiobooks.

A truly full-featured player in an unassuming package, Clementine is the perfect addition to your Windows 10 desktop.

Clementine is free.

It has a powerful DSP manager with sound effects and an 18-band equalizer plus settings for speed, tempo and pitch. You can set it to shut down at a specific time and there’s an integral alarm clock feature that can keep you on target throughout your day.

There are plenty of play-listing features and the interface is simple, although the set-up is unlike most Windows media player programs. Tech Radar says it’s like “a blend between a Mac and Linux app” and they’re right.

The app is streamlined and can be minimized completely rather than appearing on a tab like other Windows apps.

AIMP offers lots of keyboard shortcuts and the audio converter handles AudioCD to MP3, OGG, WAV, or WMA and you can increase the flexibility of the app with the addition of DSP, Input, and Gen plug-ins from Winamp.

AIMP is free.

Audacity can import music from dozens of formats and allow users to add sound effects, remove scratch and hiss, and otherwise fine-tune the sound. Afterwards, you can export your work as lossy or lossless or save it as a project to share or work on later.

The program comes with Bass and Treble tunings, Notch filter effects, High/Low Pass and Equalization features as well as offering fade in/out capacity, amplification, and volume adjustment. There’s plenty of support for plug-ins and a nifty crash recovery feature built right into the program.

You can record audio from your computer or through a microphone, making Audacity great for those who want to add voice-over or music effects to slideshows and other multi-media presentations.

Users rave about the program, especially new-to-music-editing folks who find Audacity one of the easiest programs to manipulate and learn.

Audacity is free.