Free jukebox software that queues music?

July 17, 2005 9:12 AM

I need a Windows-based, FREE MP3 player that will queue music, like a real jukebox.

I've used Windows Media Player, Musicmatch Jukebox, WinAmp, iTunes, and bunches of others, but none of them will do what seems like a really basic and obvious task. When I'm currently playing a song, and select another song, they *all* interrupt the current song and start playing the new one, which I don't want. I want to finish listening to the current song, and merely put new songs in line, like real jukeboxes do.

I know that most of these programs have some ability to do this - iTunes has an overly complex and bloated "party mix" thing, and in Media Player you can drag-and-drop songs into the playlist, but I don't want either or those. I want to merely select a song by double-clicking and have it added to a queue.

There's a commercial product - Virtual Music Jukebox - which does what I want, but I don't really want to pay if there's a free version out there.

posted by robhuddles to computers & internet (18 comments total)

Winamp will do that for you. Just select the song you want to play in your playlist and press q (the shortcut way), or, right click on the track, go to jump to file in the menu that comes up, and then click enqeue seleted track. Hope this helps.
posted by dazed_one at 9:22 AM on July 17, 2005

Or, in Winamp Options-->Preferences-->General Preferences-->File Types, you can select "Enqueue files on double click in Windows Explorer" (if you have an older version, the option might read more like "Enqueue as default action"). That might do the trick.
posted by box at 9:27 AM on July 17, 2005

For WMP, right-click and select "Add to Now Playing List" - doesn't work with folders.
posted by philscience at 9:46 AM on July 17, 2005

Within iTunes, you can right-click to add to the Party Shuffle playlist. It's not double-clicking, but right-clicking seems pretty close to me.
posted by Rothko at 10:00 AM on July 17, 2005

Since we're asking winamp questions (and this one was already answered wrt to Winamp), I hope no one minds my adding a supplemental question. Is there any way to move large blocks of songs in WinAmp other than to highlight them and then drag them? I'm basically looking for a simple cut and paste function...
posted by Sinner at 10:18 AM on July 17, 2005

Sorry, Sinner, but we're not asking Winamp questions. Please reread my original post - this thread is *not* about Winamp. In fact, it's a "what else can I use since Winamp, amongst others, won't do what I need it to do" thread.
posted by robhuddles at 10:55 AM on July 17, 2005

iTunes has an overly complex and bloated "party mix" thing

Well, for a start it's called "Party Shuffle".

And what is bloated or complex about this process :

Click on "Party Shuffle" on the list of playlists / libraries. Hit play (helpfully, iTunes automatically fills the Party Shuffle list if you click on it - you can delete these random selections if required).

Right click on a song. Select "play next in party shuffle".

If you drag and drop a song onto the Party Shuffle icon, it will be added to the end of the playlist.


Repeat as required.

Seems perfectly simple to me.
posted by coach_mcguirk at 11:07 AM on July 17, 2005

robhuddles, you're right that you didn't ask a winamp question specifically, but box's answer above will do exactly what you're asking for. I assumed you were unaware of that checkbox since you didn't mention it explicitly and it's sort of obscured by poor language in Winamp. Anyway, it occurs to me, that it won't do what you want if you're talking about enqueuing files from the Winamp Library instead of from Explorer. For reasons I can't fathom, the "enqueue" function is inexplicably ignored from the library, regardless of whether the box is checked. So maybe not "exactly what you're asking for."

There's an ongoing debate about what can be done to minimize the number of extra posts here in AskMe and since I thought your question had been answered, I could appropriate the space here to avoid cluttering the AskMe mainpage. In any case, I apologize for derailing your thread.
posted by Sinner at 11:12 AM on July 17, 2005

Foobar 2000 is an excellent MP3 player, and will automatically add files to the queue if you double click them. You just need to go into Preferences, and under the "Core" section check the box that says "Enqueue incoming files by default when adding from command line."
posted by nixxon at 11:41 AM on July 17, 2005

I added a toolbar to my taskbar that contains all my music. I've found that if I shift+left click on music from there, it will enqueue into Winamp. I don't know if this is something specific to the toolbar (this doesn't work if I open the folders through My Computer) or to Winamp, though. Anyway, it's a decent way of keeping my music organized, easy to get to, and easy to create a playlist from.
posted by solotoro at 1:43 PM on July 17, 2005

As mentioned by nixxon, Foobar owns, and does what you are asking about. Without changing any preferences, you can select your track(s) and click "add to playlist". Clicking "send to playlist" instead overwrites the playlist as you have previously encountered.
posted by Who_Am_I at 2:40 PM on July 17, 2005

winamp, as already stated, does exactly what you are looking for. checking this option will also end the tradgedy of clearing a whole playlist when you accidently double click on a file instead of single/ctrl/shift clicking. this option should be on by default.
posted by sophist at 2:16 AM on July 18, 2005

why would you use foobar over winamp? as far as I can tell it looks incredibly ugly, takes up too much space and uses almost exatly the same amount of memory as winamp in my process list. is there some brilliant hidden feature i missed?
posted by sophist at 2:42 AM on July 18, 2005

Not to be snarky, but any time I have read one of these "What software or hardware does x, and I don't want to know about any of the following mainstream solutions" posts, the mainstream solutions really are either the only or the best way to do what was asked in the post, and it seems as if the poster has a misinformed grudge against them. This kind of question seems to come up a lot.

You probably really want iTunes or Winamp. Any time anyone has ever asked me a question about playing or managing music files, or wistfully mentioned a feature they would like to have, it has always turned out that iTunes already does it. (They usually precede their comments not by asking if or how iTunes does something, but by simply declaring that it doesn't.)
posted by yesno at 3:58 AM on July 18, 2005

MediaMonkey allows you to easily queue tracks, and is an all-around fabulous media player.
posted by ewagoner at 6:32 AM on July 18, 2005

sophist: A few things won me over to Foobar, after using WinAmp for years. First, Foobar has a very simple interface compared to what I see as the clutter of WinAmp. Despite the simple interface, Foobars functions are incredibly customizable. WinAmp takes a long time to load when compared to the almost instant Foobar. WinAmp does not seem to handle large amounts of files very well (when I originally add my 8000 mp3s to WinAmp, I need to scan the database about 30 times for it to find them all), whereas Foobar never has any problems with this. Finally (and this is a big one for me), Foobar allows me to sort my music library "by directory structure", which WinAmp still doesn't seem to be able to do (i.e. I have a folder for the Allman Brothers Band, and within that I have a folder for each of their albums, and that's how I see it in Foobar). As for how it looks, well, it's certainly not the fanciest media player out there, but it's clean and easy to navigate, and how much time do I spend looking at a music player? I queue things up and then minimize it. It's not really that I was drawn to Foobar over all other media players, but that all the things missing from WinAmp finally made me give it up.
My one issue with Foobar so far is its lack of a volume control, which means that I have to use my system volume control, but it's been worth it.
posted by Who_Am_I at 6:35 AM on July 18, 2005

Sinner, if you save the playlist to your hard drive (as an m3u file, for example), you can open it in notepad and cut and paste the entries to your liking.
posted by bachelor#3 at 7:49 PM on July 18, 2005

ewagoner - Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. MediaMonkey does, in fact, do what exactly what I want. I really appreciate that you obviously read my question and responded with something meaningful and helpful, instead of yet another "iTunes does do it" when in fact it doesn't. Thank you.
posted by robhuddles at 4:10 PM on July 20, 2005