iTunes is a widely used audio player, but it wasn't always like that. Up until recently, it was the audio players such as Nullsoft's Winamp that dominated headlines. This was back in the days when you either grabbed audio from our own CDs or obtained tracks off the Internet from, well, less legitimate sources. No copy or DRM protection was required or utilised and people simply needed to play their audio.

You don't need to purchase from the iTunes Store to use iTunes. At a basic level, it can be used to store your audio tracks (from whatever source) and, with the release of iTunes 7, you can now obtain your artwork from the iTune Store, without making a purchase. This means that artwork for audio grabbed from your CDs can be stored and shown, without requiring you to scan in the original art. The latest iTunes 7.01 contains a few bug fixes found within the recent release of 7.0.

Winamp 5.3 is a minor upgrade, but is a long-term favourite of a lot of users.  There are quite a few enhancements within the latest release, improved media player syncing support and much more. If you've never used Winamp, it's worth downloading for yourself.

29 Sep 2006