Jaangle (previously Teen Spirit) is a free media/music player that provides an excellent user experience.
It offers online integration (automatically downloads and displays artist information and artwork from the net) as well as full-fledged, integrated audio tag editing for every imaginable audio format.
In a crowded field of freeware music players what makes this music player/manager notable is the way it marries your music library with a world of information/artwork which it downloads from the internet. More notes below:
- Online integration: esp. with respect to album art and images that represent the band and/or artist you are listening to, which it will automatically download from Last.FM. It will also download and display information such as artist bios, reviews, lyrics, etc.
- The user interface: the interface consists of multiple “panes” that can be maximized, minimized, added or removed, and works very well once you get used to it.
- Advanced search: comes with a very impressive search function. Aside from filtering by specific fields (e.g. artist, title, album, or location) it can also search lyrics, comments,and/or your own personal comments if you have them. Also keeps track of your history and can deliver interesting stats on demand (e.g. top songs, top artists for a specific time interval).
- Tag editing: very powerful. Right click to perform all major tagging operations. For researching track information you can access online reference via right click r(e.g. AllMusic, Amazon, Discogs, etc).
- Video playback: is also supported, although it seems restricted to .AVI (didn’t play MKV or MP4 when I tested)
- LastFM scrobbler: can be enabled in the settings.
- Low memory footprint: at around 25 megs in memory.
What it does not offer:
- No Internet Radio support
- No Audio podcast support
- No Support for hardware devices (i.e. hardware MP3 devices)
- No CD ripping.
The verdict: this is a great little program. It looks good, feels good, and generally provides a great user experience. The downloading of info and artwork works really well and is very well implemented. Recommended.
Version Tested: 0.97.951
Compatibility: Windows XP/2003, Vista.
Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 2.2 megs).
