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I have a collection of music that is stored on a network drive. Are there any music players that can play these songs, without modifying them, and without me having to manually add songs to some kind of library before they show up (like iTunes)?

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Lots. Any particular OS? –  Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jul 8 '10 at 18:36
I'm in Windows, and I'm trying to avoid using Windows Explorer to navigate to my files. I'd like to still have the music presented by genre, or artist or whatever, I just don't want to have to manually add it to a library like iTunes. –  Jon Tackabury Jul 9 '10 at 0:56
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3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Well, VLC would work just fine. Also, you could add them to an iTunes library without actually copying the files (in other words, iTunes would just read them from their current location). Just tell iTunes not to copy music to the library location when being added (in the preferences) and then drag your network location into iTunes. Of course, you don't have to use iTunes or any similar program, but it's nice to be able to make playlists and such.

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Sure. I have all my music in my ~/Music directory (under linux) and run pms - I can browse & play songs from my PS3 no problem.

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If you're using windows just set up a network fileshare and open them like you would on your local machine.

I'd suggest Winamp as a great player.

You can just drag files into it's playlist to play, or double click them. It also integrates with the shell and you can right click any folder and play all songs in that folder (recursive or not).

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