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Billy is a truly tiny, minimalistic music player for Windows
Ahh, ... feature bloat, how we love thee. There used to be a time when Foobar2000 was the scrappy, fast, agile player on the market. It was up against Winamp, which had become so bloated that it was almost a joke.
Today, years later, here's Foobar2000 weighing in at 29MB of RAM on my system. That's with the stock UI, no fancy skinning, and very few add-ons enabled (just the ones that come with it, really, and maybe one or two extra).
And what's up against it, consuming just 1.8MB of memory? Billy, from Sheep Friends. It's not a new application by any means; version 1.03 dates back to 2004, while this "cutting-edge" 1.04 beta was last updated in February 2008.
Still, it works surprisingly well. It plays Ogg files as well as MP3s, and it scrobbles to last.fm. It has no skinning, no plug-ins, nothing. It does support customizable global hotkeys, so it works just fine with my multimedia keyboard.
I must admit that I still turn to Foobar more often, but it's very nice to know there's something that gets 90% of the job done at less than 10% of the memory footprint. And like Foobar, Billy is completely free and portable.
Comments
23
Subscribe to commentsmadmanmostafaSep 10th 2010 4:52PM
AIMP2 only uses 8MB and it's as feature packed as Winamp. In fact, it runs the same plugins.
nospamSep 10th 2010 4:56PM
Hey I got a great idea. I'm going to build a computer with 6 gigs of ram then worry about my music player taking 20 megs (less then 1%).
Seriously?
MxxConSep 10th 2010 5:33PM
i agree with you that computers have memory to be used, not to keep it free :)
for computers w/ 6gigs of mem that's not a problem, but for netbooks w/ 1gigs of mem this is probably a good choice.
GaiusSep 10th 2010 5:08PM
1by1 is just as minimalistic and way more up to date.
http://mpesch3.de1.cc/1by1.html
Dan LarsonSep 10th 2010 5:39PM
I use foobar2000 with the Columns UI, and it was taking up 13MB while playing a track. I just upgraded from v1.0.3 to v1.1, played the same track, and it's now using 8.5MB. I'm down with that.
I have more concerns about running unmaintained software than I do with my media player hogging .002% of my RAM.
belkiraSep 10th 2010 5:48PM
I still prefer xmplay, lightweight and portable
JackSep 10th 2010 6:34PM
Do any of these lightweight players play FLAC files?
cyberguy91Sep 10th 2010 8:33PM
I do know for a fact that Foobar2000 has played almost every audio file I've thrown at it: M4A, AIFF, WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, etc... In fact, it's my personal preference to convert FLAC (or other Apple-unsupported files) to M4A to copy to my iPod Touch.
alstkiSep 10th 2010 10:29PM
'Billy' supports FLAC format.
robin_rosengrenSep 14th 2010 1:54PM
It supports FLAC in 44100 Hz.
I have one album in 48000 Hz and Billy most definitely does not support that.
Glad I still have my eardrums left after that screeching noise.
Captain_HairySep 10th 2010 7:33PM
I don't really use Billy for its streamlined size, but for the fact that it has sensible keyboard shortcuts, instant search and a tiny, information packed screen footprint. I could probably get the size with foobar, and the keyboard shortcuts could be mostly ported over, but the instant search upon pressing any letter or number is just so useful, it's ludicrous.
It means that I can have my entire music catalogue loaded as a playlist and then just start typing the name of any track or artist I feel like listening to at any given time. If I want to listen to an album at a time, I just search for the first track and then hold 'insert' until the whole thing is queued.
I've been using Billy almost exclusively since before 1.04 came out for pretty much these reasons.
alstkiSep 10th 2010 10:34PM
Agree with all your observations. Billy is just the best working mp3 player I've used, and I have used it exclusively now for 4 years. It's nice to see it getting some love again.
NemanjaTGGSep 10th 2010 9:05PM
try Aimp ;)
adgth1Sep 10th 2010 9:11PM
Hi! Billy Mays here for the Billy! The music player for Windows that's SO EASY, even the angels from Heaven can use this!
Get it? Billy? lol
MxxConSep 11th 2010 1:47AM
don't quit your day job
bryceSep 11th 2010 2:18AM
I have billy set as my "quick player," meaning that I associate .mp3 files with it. That way if I just want to hear what a song sounds like, it's right there and dead simple. I use Mediamonkey for tagging, playlists, cover art, etc.
JayenkaiSep 11th 2010 5:11AM
This is ABSOLUTELY the reason to have one of these.
Sure, sometimes you'll want to kick back, pop Winamp on "Shuffle my Hard Drive", and get it's visualiser to swoosh around for hours.
But if you're flicking through a bunch of tracks in Explorer, you want something that loads quickly, and most importantly closes quickly, too!
All hail the tiny-players!
(I use CoolPlayer, but same/diff)
JonnySep 11th 2010 10:41AM
I have 16 gigs of ram, sooooooo...I'll stick with foobar
BillSep 11th 2010 11:15AM
I want to know what you are using to make your screenshots.
I'll try Billy, I tried to look at 1by1, but if I can't find the real download in a glance, I'm out.
I stream most of my music anyway.
Erez ZukermanSep 12th 2010 12:44PM
I use Screenpresso. It's nice, but recently they've added some pretty annoying nags to the free version. I'm considering switching over to another solution.