Looking for alternative to Music app for macOS in 2026

[digitaldave]

I have recently decided to get a digital audio player (Fiio M21) to use instead of my iPhone (maybe as well as, depends on the use case...), and this combined with the fact that Apple removed an album I bought from my library has made me think that I want to take back control of my library, move away from the Music app (nee iTunes) and find something else to manage my music and handle ripping and playback. Are there any good music players / library managers that I could use that meet the following requirements?:

Free or one time licence fee - I don't want a subscription based solution.
Able to play back lossless, either FLAC of Apple Lossless (ALAC?) as well as regular compressed formats like MP3 and m4a.
Able to rip the same formats - I may re-rip my library in to lossless if I can get the right software.
Able to manage the library.
Lossless playback would be good as I some albums that would need that.

That's all I can think of at the moment for absolute requirements.

The ability to drag and drop on to the iPhone would be good to handle what music I want to keep on there - can I drag and drop music from anywhere on my Mac on to an iPhone using the Finder? The DAP I'm getting uses micro SD cards, so I assume I'll just drag and drop on to that for the music I want on there...?

I know that all sounds a little vague at the moment as I'm really just at the stage of realising I would like to move away from Apple's Music app. If I need to provide additional info, please let me know.

Thanks.

 

[MBAir2010]

Foobar for Mac is excellent music player, that loves FLAC as I post "what are you listening" pics using Flac and the albumin that thread. I won't use Music again an sonly older itunes on the early intel Macs.
my only shanfu was I needed to use audio ranger to place some scattered songs in order numerical,
iTunes,  screwed up some albums.

my music taste ranges from Prog rock, Mozart, Jazz, 80-70's rock and some newer albums.
I use 2 Sony Walkmans that sadly play only MP3 but great sound with a Sennheiser phones.
and foobar is free, has GUI and shows album art as well.

how is the Fiio M21?

 

[digitaldave]

Thank you, I will look in to Foobar.

I can’t give any feedback on the M21 year as I only ordered it today - it should be here sometime next week. I went for that one because it seems to be well regarded and apparently it can drive my Sennheiser HD600 headphones well.