The name ‘Windows Media Player’ means, at least to me, media all-encompassing, so that means music, podcasts, and audiobooks. The close alternative would be Spotify, but that’s a closed system, as you have to obviously only use its app. If you go to the Microsoft Store now, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a podcast app that works as well as Apple’s Podcast app does on Mac. Speaking of podcasts: that’s an area that Microsoft has clearly been lacking in, bizarrely so.

That way, all of your music will be available to play, and so will podcasts. Wherever Apple Music is, Windows should follow. Make the app available everywhere - from Apple's App Store, to Google Play, and even on PlayStation 5 and Xbox. So for example, if you’re on vacation to Paris, you’ll be greeted with a playlist of French artists, custom-tailored to your favorite genres. Introduce a subscription, and implement the new Co-Pilot AI to give you curated playlists based on the information you give it, as well as letting it access your time and location data to help generate playlists for you. This is how Microsoft should start to give it some love:įirst of all, partner up with a major player like Google or Amazon, as it has before with its Microsoft Store in bringing those platforms' apps to its own storefront, and create a Windows Music Store, while making it accessible from the Media Player app only. It was an odd dose of nostalgia as I clicked on the icon, but there it was - even the user interface felt like the Media Player of old, newly updated for touchscreen displays.īut since its debut, there’s not been a major update since the end of 2022. Microsoft surprised a lot of users in 2022 when it brought out a new-and-improved Windows Media Player, myself included.

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