These are the best apps to listen to your music on a Windows 10 PC.
Windows is a vast platform with a huge selection of apps, and it's sometimes difficult to know where to get the best one for you. That's certainly true of music apps, since different types of music listener will have different requirements.
Fortunately, there's a lot of great apps to choose from. Here we've rounded up what we feel are the best of the best.
Groove Music
You may have overlooked the built-in Groove Music app, but you shouldn't. It's very good.
It looks fantastic, is very easy to use and has minimal fluff and you get the option to store your own music in OneDrive and stream it to your devices.
Groove has come along way since the early days. The subscription service is gone but the app remains and is very good for your own music.
VLC
If a format exists, the likelihood is that VLC will play it. This is very much the Swiss Army Knife of media players.
VLC also comes in two flavors for Windows, both free. There's the Windows 10 Store version which is built for phones, PCs, tablets and Xbox One, and there's the old-school desktop app. VLC goes beyond just digital files and also allows for streaming and media conversion.
Download VLC from the Windows Store
Download VLC (desktop app) from Videolan
Spotify
Spotify is probably the most popular streaming music service on the planet, and it's now available through the Windows Store, too. It's the same desktop app as it's always been with the added bonus of seamless updates through the Store.
Not only do you get access to Spotify's vast catalog of content, be you a paid or free subscriber, but you can also use it to play your own locally stored content. The app is free.
Download Spotify from the Windows Store
Foobar2000
While Foobar2000 was pushing forwards with a Windows Store app to complement its existing Win32 offering, that project seems to have stalled thanks to low user count. The "proper" app is still very much alive and kicking and is both powerful and customizable.
When you set it up you can tweak the interface to your liking, and Foobar2000 will play basically anything you can throw at it. It's also got a built in transcoder, support for full Unicode, tags, and gapless playback. That last one alone is reason enough to give it a try. It's also free.
Download Foobar2000 for Windows desktop
Light Media Player
Light Media Player is a Store only app and it's a very good music player for all your different formats. It costs $5, making it the only paid app here, but it's impossible not to fall in love with its modern look that fits perfectly within the new Windows 10 design language.
It supports a bunch of different formats, including lossless audio like FLAC, and is a very easy to use app for managing your library.
Besides managing your library and looking glorious, Light Media Player also offers gapless playback and support for synchronized lyrics. You know, in case you want to sing along.
Download Light Media Player from the Windows Store
Tidal Unofficial
This is only useful if you're a Tidal subscriber, but if you like high fidelity music and you want it on demand, you should probably try it out.
Tidal Unofficial is a Store app and it's not only nicer to look at but also more reliable than the official Tidal desktop client. You lose no functionality, you can still download music for offline listening, and best of all it still pulls down those lossless streams.
You get a free 30-day trial if you sign up to Tidal, and once you have you should definitely use this excellent app and not the official one.
Download Tidal Unofficial from the Windows Store
Updated December 26, 2017: We've updated the information on Groove Music now that the subscription service is ending.