Someone reviewed v on Jul 5, 2022

Pros: 555

Cons: 555

Bottom Line: 555

bobad reviewed v2.4.6 on Oct 11, 2010

Pretty good knockoff of XMPlayer. Looks great, sounds great, portable option, what more can you want? 5 stars! I still prefer XMPlayer, but this is very close!

v4npro reviewed v2.4.1 on Apr 6, 2010

AIMP does have a raido browser. It's a plugin that comes with it.

Aegis69 reviewed v2.4.1 on Apr 6, 2010

If AIMP would just build a radio browser into it, I would have no need for Spider.

Till then I use SPIDER for radio and AIMP as my main player, and I only use those because AUDACIOUS, the only good open source player is not available on Windows.

edit: ok found AIMP's radio browser, that must be a new feature since I last updated.

Alexander-GG reviewed v2.3.11 on Aug 4, 2009

AIMP is light, feature rich and besides, totally free.

guesswho reviewed v2.3.10 on Jul 19, 2009

@URAWMD
What a misleading comment! This is exactly what "this thing" doesn't do.
Of course the download page has a strong "buy pro" message, but the program itself *never* nags you. And most PRO features are there in the Basic version, but with some limitations, for obvious reasons.
P.S.
Disregard the rating, I'm biased :) Just wanted to add some clarity.

URAWMD reviewed v2.3.10 on Jul 7, 2009

Buy the pro version, Buy the pro version, Buy the pro version, Buy the pro version...That's all this thing does

urlwolf reviewed v2.3.9.5 on Jan 24, 2009

Well, feature-wise it's obviously not at the level of Mediamonkey (MM) or Winamp (i.e., currently it has no library, no last.fm support etc). But, for some reason I cannot fathom, it sounds better to ME. It's also very light in memory usage, and keyboard-friendly; that's all I need for now. I drag form MM library to this, then close MM because I cannot afford the memory it takes.

Great program. We should all be proud that things like this get written.
PS: I'd really like to know what it does to make it sound better than others!

coover reviewed v2.3.9.1 on Nov 17, 2008

Publiusher's page is down. Homepage is down. Download page is down.

Still, the application is certainly one of the best of it's type.

I assume whatever problems the Publisher is having will be fixed, hopefully soon, so I will continue to try to get the download.

Spider is very, very good.

petiot reviewed v2.3.9 on Nov 5, 2008

well a 5 partially because it pisses me off to see people writing "good but does not have this or this and I would like to see this bla bla". This player may not have all the features of all the music player altogether, but it has many that other don't. To start with it is portable, and i wish more developers would make their apps portable. It is a prehistoric approach to coding to write all over C and in the registry.

Apart from this, the player is nicely thought, and nicely implemented. You don't like the default skin, choose the second on installed. At least the developer had the taste of putting two skins with different graphic feel to them. you dont like the color, change the hue setting and you get any color you want. Then the radio feature works flawlessly. Favorite is simple but very usable. Format conversion and CD ripping is nice in the pro version (you can rip to flac). it displays audio quality where it should be: in the main GUI, it has a ten band equalizer etc etc. I didn't even start using all the features of this player yet.

What I would like to see (or to know how to do) is to be able to display track data in the playlist (like album, kbps, etc).

Thanks and keep up with the excellent work!

improvelence reviewed v2.3.9 on Nov 4, 2008

DudeBoyz is really on this programs johnson. This thing is not very likeable. Plays songs but I see no advantage to this over other players. Default interface is ugly.

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.3.9 on Nov 4, 2008

Improv - There's no need to make your comments personal, you know?

That said, you have heard about SKINS, right? You know you can change them, right? And, if I was a total fanboy, I'd give it a 5 instead of a 4. But one very cool feature - you know about the Global vs Local keyboard assignments, right? I can control this app from inside of my Rise Of The Witch King and Tiberium Wars sessions. It has a much smaller footprint (in every way) then Music Match 7.5, and that AquaUltraCompact skin makes it tiny enough to be unobtrusive on my desktop. And all this is about the FREE version. Plus, they have a free USB Thumb Drive version too. I only use it as a player - nothing else - and it's free and does a nice job.

Anyway...
Not much change to affect my daily use, but it's playing my audiobooks just fine and I'm glad that new updates do not break the skins (I hear that happens with some web browsers... ) heh.

CHANGE LOG: Spider Player 2.3.9 (November 4, 2008)

Improved:
+ Web Search button can now be turned off in the Options
+ some translations were updated

Changes:
* crossfading is now off by default

Fixed:
- http://spider-player.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1263
- http://spider-player.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1285
- crash when backward search button was pressed with no
search text entered and no playlist items selected

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Spider Player 2.3.8 (October 25, 2008)

New:
+ Backward search in the playlist

Improved:
+ Radio directory:
* hints for truncated lines
* user is now notified, when Shoutcast service is temporarily
unavailable

Fixed:
- Metadata editor didn't recognize UTF8 text in ID3v2 tags correctly

cltx99 reviewed v2.3.6 on Oct 23, 2008

I found it to be very unstable, but I would only use it for radio. I was disappointed. I'll try the next release.

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.3.6 on Oct 23, 2008

It's getting better, but there are a few things still needing to be fixed, and a few config options that I'd like to be added.

First, I'd like the option to Auto-Play when you drag and drop onto the Playlist. You have to drag and drop onto the Player window to get that, which is odd.

Second, depending on where you have your player on the screen, certain dialog boxes can be off the desktop. For instance, if you put the playlist in the very up-right corner and right-click on a song and choose Properties to edit the tag, controls and fields can be cut off because they go offscreen to the right.

Third, the SHUFFLE icon doesn't seem to cause an active shuffle to occur - at least not in terms of track order within the playlist. You have to click on ... button on the bottom of the playlist window and then choose SORT - RANDOMIZE in order to get the playlist to do an active shuffle of the content (change the physical order of the tracks listed there). Well, that's just silly. :)

Fourth, there is no "Total Time" listed for the tracks in the playlist. Would be helpful indeed.

Fifth, if you change the font in "Application Font Override" to something wider than the default (like Verdana for example) then the text in the left side of the OPTIONS dialog can be cut off. There should be a bar between the text and the dialog that allows you to resize the area so nothing does get cut off.

Sixth, it needs a "Mini-Player" mode, like Music Match and iTunes. Yeah, they do have the Aqua UltraCompact skin, but that's about it.

Seventh, given the lack of a true Mini-Player mode, you should be able to set JUST the program window to "STAY ON TOP AT ALL TIMES" so that the playlist / EQ windows don't also stay on top blocking stuff.

Eighth, there are some bugs related to opening and playing some WAV files where Spider Player doesn't perform as expected, but other programs do. For example, Windows Media Player and Music Match can play some wave files at normal speed, but the same wave file plays at like double speed in Spider Player. Need to write in some code to deal with all possible WAV header info so that no assumptions are made that certain values will always be the same. Other players play them fine, and so should Spider.

That about does it for now. :)

It is a good program, but it really could be a bit better, so a rating of 4 seems appropriate.

A rating of 4 is normally my top, cause you have to save the big 5 value for those apps that are far above and beyond the rest of the crowd.

It's like when judges don't give 10's in most olympic gymnastics competitions unless they see something monumentally perfect. Or like those judges on Dancing With The Stars who say "Hey, we usually reserve 10 for PERFECT dances late in the competition."

If we could give it a 4.5, I'd do that probably. But we only get 5 options, and a 5 is too high for this particular app in this particular point in development.

There ya go. :)

coover reviewed v2.3.6 on Oct 22, 2008

I absolutely agree with DudeBoyz (as I frequently do) except for his rating (he always is a bit lower than me). I give this a 5.

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.3.6 RC3 on Oct 15, 2008

Some very good bug-fixes. Toggles all seem to work as expected, and you can now map the TAB key to switch between the Player Application, Playlist Window and the Equalizer Dialog. Extra actions are good to have available.

Author is very responsive to user input. I'd give this a 4.5 out of 5 if that was available. It's heading to a full rating of 5.

Keep up the great work! This is a very good player.

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.3.6 RC2 on Oct 14, 2008

Added 4 new actions, which is great. But there does seem to be a bug with toggling the EQ and the PLAYLIST. They stop toggling after one or two toggles, it seems. But the SHUFFLE and REPEAT toggles still seem to work.

Player is improving nicely with each release.

I think it deserves a shot if you are in the market for a low-overhead player.

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.3.6 RC1 on Oct 13, 2008

Would like some more keyboard actions included, but other than that, the player is pretty good.

They don't have a real "Show Small Player View" type of mode like Music Match has (and iTunes has something like that as well) but it is nice to see they have some skins online and some of those are very compact, which does end up saving screen space and ends up being essentially the same result.

I'm looking forward to the next release.

yokozuna reviewed v2.3.5 on Jun 13, 2008

The link should be to this file: http://spider-player.com/spider/files/Spider_Player_2.3.5_Setup.exe

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.3.5 on Jun 12, 2008

Odd quirk when you try to set the main font. The little area in the upper-right corner of the main player window does not change font, even though the one right next to it on the left that shows the length of the track, does.

Other than that and a few small bugs, it seems to be a good effort.

Thanks to the developer(s) for keeping it updated at a brisk pace.

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.3.1.3 on May 30, 2008

Still lacks some simple keyboard controls in the playlist, like holding down the SHIFT key and pressing the UP or DN arrows to select groups of files.

It really needs pop up / baloon help descriptions for each and every interface element as you move your mouse over them. It does not seem to happen all of the time. Sometimes you move the mouse over them and they don't pop up.

A lot of stuff is hidden and not obvious, especially to new users.

Much work to do to improve the userfriendliness of the product for novices, imo.

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.3.1 on May 15, 2008

Good player - and I like that they are working on making it more keyboard friendly. More efficient than always using a mouse.

Keep up the good work, please. :)

Here are two PNG's showing how Spider Player can look like Music Match 7.5

http://www.pdscomputing.com/files/player01.png
http://www.pdscomputing.com/files/player02.png

the artist reviewed v2.3 on Apr 7, 2008

i really wonder what you might find in common between Spider and Music Match.

err... tried it in 2.3 betas, din't find that state to hinder my experience but i didn't find compelling reasons to keep it. It is very good and comfortable but the interface is quite toy-looking which i can't stand and available skins are a disaster.
It certainly lacks the all-in-one details i use in Winamp, and even if that one is heavier it is still light and very complete.

Very good anyway, feels like a Winamp Restarted.

DudeBoyz reviewed v2.3 Beta 1 on Mar 30, 2008

Pretty darn nice little player. Reminds me of Music Match 7.5, back when it was still a good player.

This one, unlike Music Match 7.5, has a responsive progress bar that goes right to where you click it. Music Match forces you to drag the little tiny progress "dot", which can be a pain in audio books.

I like the feature that it can remember where you left off when you close and restart the app, again, great for audio books.

I do wish it had a "mini-mode" like Music Match does, where it can collapse into a single small line of stuff. I also wish the main player area on the left was resizeable. I don't use the EQ at all, so turn it off. I'd like to be able to stretch the primary window to the far right so that it can be the same width as a playlist usually ends up being. For now, I just put the playlist window right next to the main player window, like Music Match 7.5 defaulted to, so it works okay, but still.

It does do snap docking, which makes for easier window management, and I like the cross-fade feature and how adjustable it can be. I set it to Zero for audio books, but can drag it higher for music if I wish.

I hope they continue to develop it. So far, it's a pretty good little app, as a player at least.

I use BonkEncoder for ripping and converting anyway, which is a pretty awesome free app, so this free version of Spider will probably do me just fine.

dhry reviewed v2.203 on Mar 8, 2008

Not so sure it's worth a version update because the thing got a new skin and a couple of new translations. Who the hell cares eh. Did anything -important- change?

coover reviewed v2.203 on Mar 3, 2008

Change File, 2.202 to 2.203:

- "Aqua" skin
- Dutch and Russian translations

Chocobito reviewed v2.2 Beta 6 on Feb 13, 2008

Good player very low in resource. Its a shame that not support AAC sound files.

EDIT: Sorry this does support AAC files.

coover reviewed v2.2 Beta 6 on Feb 12, 2008

A very nice free player. I have replaced Screamer with this player. Both sound (on my computer and to my ears) very good. However, Spider has an Equalizer. And Spider seems more stable than Screamer, which frequently can't immediately open the Radio Source I wish to hear, and sometimes loses the stream while playing. Spider doesn't seem to have those problems.

One advantage that Screamer does have is it's presets which are catagorized and easy to find. Of course some work, and some do not. Unfortunately, Spider seems to have only Shoutcast, Icecast is listed, but no stations can be found. If. however, you have a favorite station not on Shoutcast, Spider can play that favorite if you add it to the playlist. Unfortunately, adding it to the playlist is not a straightforward procedure, and you may have to play around a bit to do it. But it can be done.

And that is another of Spider's problems. There doesn't appear to be a help file. I probably should rate this lower than a 4, but as a player, it's actually worth a 5.

I suspect that the Shareware version of this product may be easier to use, but I think I've got it figured out.

dpcdpc11 reviewed v2.2 Beta 6 on Feb 12, 2008

nice idea but still without tabs in playlist is useless to me... and aside from winamp and other look alike audio player it doesn't bring anything new... AIMP2 for example has much more potential than this little piece of software that is also not entirely free... if u wanna buy.. buy a more advanced player like winamp.. if u wanna keep it free... get foobar2000 or AIMP2.

some guy reviewed v2.2 Beta 4 on Feb 9, 2008

I love this one nice improvements over the last one, glad you guys grouped the , player EQ, ect..

thing I would like to see is compact mode :)
keep up the great work!

and they got more skins on their website :)

dhry reviewed v2.2 Beta 3 on Feb 4, 2008

Very nice player. Replaced "Screamer Radio" as my internet streaming radio app. Of course, for regular files, nothing can touch foobar2000. BTW, beta4 is out.

waqeed reviewed v2.2 Beta 2 on Jan 24, 2008

I liked it no need for setup
and fast playing

christoofar reviewed v2.102 on Nov 7, 2007

pretty nice player , with the right skin installed.
Not sure which plugins someone would need, it plays most anything right out of the box.

Flebbo reviewed v2.1 on Nov 2, 2007

Love it! It is my default-player for audio now. Great sound and small footprint.

Nikkie reviewed v2.02 on Sep 29, 2007

User submitted plugins would be nice.I can't switch cause it lacks way too much.i'm sure its great for someone with needs of a basic player but i need more than this..

''Winamp 2.95 (2.4 MB)'' and has a lot more..

some guy reviewed v2.001 on Sep 13, 2007

nice light weight player worked fine low foot print. only 3.5 megs used ---niccccceeeee

Richardky reviewed v2.0 Beta 2 on Aug 24, 2007

xprotocalx - i dont see much comparison between the 2 other than a skin to match .. also the sound quality is much better in Spider and i used to be a hard core winamp user ..

i rate a 4 because no plugin support .. other than that its really nice i use it as default player!

radiomaffia reviewed v2.0 Beta 2 on Aug 24, 2007

Looks pretty nice, are there skins available? It is for me very inportant to have a good, low cpu mp3 player because allways when I'm behind pc mp3's are running.
VUPlayer is also very good, but both have no browser like 1by1 has, that is why i stick on 1by1, I just hate to work with playlists.
Would Spider added this browserfeature, I directly switch over!

xprotocalx reviewed v1.90 on Apr 29, 2007

this player is nice, i'll give it that much.
however... this player is basically identical to winamp lite. just looks better.

mentallo666 reviewed v1.90 on Apr 28, 2007

Good player so far. Simple and sounds good. As mentioned by others, lack of plug-ins support is the only drawback.

ahjefri reviewed v1.90 on Apr 28, 2007

First time to try this software, but it seems very promising,
It's very like, Skinned,

needed to improve in these area,,

2 mode skin 1 standard and 1 mini,

ability to control playing through tray icon like QMP

Stay at top feature,,

Good luck ,, nice player,,

but I am still with QMP

Richardky reviewed v1.90 on Apr 27, 2007

I like it .. easy on resource simple and sounds good .. i rate a 4 for the lack of skins and plugin support .. other than that its great is my default player .. many thanks to the creator and keep it free :)

And| reviewed v1.81 on Nov 14, 2006

the only things are, lack of skins, and the lack of last.fm plugin.

Flebbo reviewed v1.80 on Oct 23, 2006

Damn! Very good sound! Simple and fast. I like it!

And|: Didn´t u read the quote u typed? It´s OPTIONAL to download the ad-version of spider if u want to support them. You can download the absolutely ad-free version of spider and then give a proper review.