Windows 10: Minimal audio player needed

I occasionally listen to 2 hour long recorded programs on a n Acer One mini laptop. Between the machine's slowness, the short scroll/progress bar and the fact that Groove Music will not let you adjust the window size far enough so I can't reduce it to something that lets me see what's on the desktop while it is playing, not to mention all the inherent problems it has, Groove music just doesn't do it for this application.

Does anyone know of a good, free app that will let me reduce it to a narrow bar with basic controls and a long scrollbar, set it to always in front and place it in front of an inconspicuous area of whatever window I have open?

:)

 

grove music player is not showing on taskbar

windows 10 is working awesome on my pc and new video and audio players are nice bt when i play any video or audio player start fine bt dsnt shows on taskbar and when i minimize it player goes missing song is playing in bg bt player is not visible on taskbar

 

Audio Stops when I minimize or navagate away for IE in Win 8.1 phone and desktop

this is the one I listen to most.
http://radio.foxnews.com/player-files/radio.html?922014d but I think any streaming audio and/or video stops when you minimize or navigate from the IE program.

 

There's always winamp: Winamp — It really whips the llama's ass!

 

I can always recommend Xmplay for minimalistic, easy on resources player. Don't be scared by default skin. They have some nice one too.

 

And of course MusicBee, if you want a complete music organizing solution. My favorite for years. You can run it in normal, Compact and Mini mode. Mini is in front of other windows, some configuration is possible.

 

Wow, I had WinAmp years ago but when my son upgraded me to a computer with XP he changed me to XMPlayer.

When I changed everything to 10 I decided to give what came with it a chance; Groove wasn't bad at first because I could drag it into a long narrow bar so that the scrollbar was about 75% of the screen's width but then it was "improved" (or maybe I just used it until it had enough data to do it) and a bunch of other crap I don't want like the album covers of everything I have listened to in the past showed up and I can no longer reduce the height to less than about half the screen height. And to make things worse when you make the window wider the scrollbar no longer stretches longer than about 25% of the screen width. The screen on the mini laptop I'm talking about is less than 9" wide; For a 2 hour program that comes to a bit over an inch per hour, not nearly fine enough resolution to let me jump back half a minute when I miss something....

I need to make the scrollbar as wide as possible. I'm not familiar with MusicBee and I can't remember if either XMPlay or WinAmp's scrollbar got long enough if you dragged the window longer. Would any of them do that?

 

Windows Media Player Taskbar Band





Enable WMP Taskbar Band

 

That's neat. I think I'll use WMP with the taskband as the default audio player on my desktop computers that have real monitors. The scrollbar the taskband provides is still only a couple of inches long on my 24" monitor so it will be tiny on the mini laptop but at least it has a button that brings up the full window and that can be massaged into an at least halfway decent height and the full screen width.

For the mini that is already very slow (probably not really up to Win10 Home - it shipped with Win7 Starter), at least it wouldn't require adding another application to slow it down even more.

But I'm still open to suggestions.....

 

I'm still using Zune Software because i think it is very cool and versatile media player though Microsoft have abandon it. All my music collections are managed by Zune and also i will rip CD using it. You can minimize it as a mini player on your screen, move it to anywhere you want. it operate on Windows 10 but must activate .net 3.5 first.

Here is minimize version :





Here as fully expand :

 

Again a truly tiny scrollbar..... Imagine trying to move it back a few seconds if the file was 2 hours long and your screen was only 8.75" wide.....

BTW: I'm not at all interested in something to "manage" my music collection. What I have is stored in folders on my network drive and about the only time I actually listen to any of the individual songs is if I really want to hear that one specific song. Most of the time I listen to streaming radio or shows I recorded from streaming radio to time shift.

 

Another suggestion will be mediamonkey. There are many skin available perhaps maybe you can skin it to your liking.

MediaMonkey » Free Media Jukebox, Music Manager, CD Ripper & Converter

 

You can also get a WMP 'Slim Bar' skin