Media player software in the context of Music visualization

Media player may refer to:

• Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media
• Media Player Classic, open source software that plays digital media on computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system
• Media player software, software that plays digital media
• Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media
• Windows Media Player, software that plays digital media included in Windows
  • Windows Media Player (2022), also referred to as Media Player, media player software included in Windows 10 and Windows 11 replacing Groove Music

The arrow keys (↑ Up, ← Left, ↓ Down and → Right) are the four keys on a computer keyboard labelled with directional arrows, typically found in an inverted-T layout to the bottom-right of the keyboard and to the left of the numeric keypad. They are a subset of the cursor keys, which include others like the Home, End, and Page Up/Down keys.

The arrow keys have a wide variety of functions. In a command-line interface (CLI), text box, or word processor, they typically enable caret navigation, allowing the user to move the text cursor between characters and lines. Meanwhile, in graphical user interfaces (GUIs), file viewers, and web browsers, the keys are generally used for scrolling, providing an alternative to dragging a scrollbar with a mouse pointer. Specific kinds of software make use of the arrow keys in more unique ways: they are used in most media player software to skip backward or forward through audio and video files, and they are used in some video games to move a player character around a virtual space (although modern games typically use the WASD keys for this purpose).

Last.fm is a music website founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Utilizing a music recommender system known as "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm creates a detailed profile of each user's musical preferences by recording the details of the tracks they listen to, whether from Internet radio stations or from the user's computer or portable music devices. This information is transferred ("scrobbled") to Last.fm's database via the music player (such as Spotify and Apple Music) or through a plug-in installed in the user's music player. The data is then displayed on the user's profile page and compiled to create reference pages for individual artists.

On 30 May 2007, it was acquired by CBS Corporation through its streaming division CBS Interactive, which is now part of Paramount Skydance Corporation, for £140 million (US$280 million, equivalent to $406,900,000 in 2024).

Media Player (also known as Windows Media Player in the Microsoft Store) is a media player software for Windows, developed by Microsoft. Written in Windows App SDK, it is built upon Groove Music to add video playback and it’s a modern replacement of the original Windows Media Player. It was first released in January 2022, built for Windows 11 and later released to Windows 10 on January 2023, and it replaces several separate apps.

A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player, either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs that can be played once or in a loop. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of television broadcasting, radio broadcasting and personal computers.

A video playlist can also be a list of recorded titles on a digital video disk (DVD). On the internet, a playlist can be a list of chapters in a movie serial; for example, Flash Gordon in the Planet Mongo is available on YouTube as a playlist of thirteen consecutive video chapters.

VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client), sometimes abbreviated as VMP, is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS and iPadOS. VLC is also available on digital distribution platforms such as Apple's App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.

VLC supports many audio- and video-compression methods and file formats, including DVD-Video, Video CD, and streaming-protocols. It is able to stream media over computer networks and can transcode multimedia files.

A media center application, or simply media center, is a type of multimedia and technological convergence software that is designed to be used on a large screen like a television or a projector. They are intended to be controlled by wireless devices such as a remote, game controllers, or a smartphone connected via Wi-Fi.

They usually inherit the combined capabilities of media playback, digital media library organization and aggregation, connection to a media server, music and video playlist creation, music visualizations, live TV playback, media streaming, among others. They then present the content on a 10-foot interface that’s easy to view from a couch or seat, and can have multiple views for browsing media.