If you are looking for a small and lightweight audio player for Windows then you can check XMPlay. It is a portable audio player and needs no installation. It comes with many plugins for playing the audio CD files, for displaying the DSP data and more. However, we can get rid of all the other files and use only xmplay.exe and it will still work for playing audio files and online streams.
The version 3.8.5 of XMPlay has a special feature using which we can make any audio stream play in XMPlay automatically as soon as the URL of the online audio stream is copied to the clipboard. This feature works as long as the XMPlay application is running. When you shut it down, it won’t be able to monitor the URLs and will no longer be able to play the copied online audio stream.
Here is how we can configure XMPlay to automatically start playing the audio from a link that was copied to the clipboard:
- Launch XMPlay and right-click on its window. From the right-click menu, select Options and Stuff.
- In the Options window for XMPlay, select the Integration section from the left side. Then place a checkmark in the checkbox labeled Monitor Clipboard for URLs.
- Now you can try visiting any online audio stream URL and copy that URL to the clipboard. For example, you can visit KPCC radio website at www.kpcc.org/listen and copy the URL for old browsers.
- It will take a few seconds (2-3 seconds) before the copied URL starts to play in XMPlay. It takes a little time for connecting to the remote server and buffering etc.
This method works for all the modern audio streaming links. However, older style links might not work because they use a different data encapsulation method. For this to work, we should keep XMPlay running in the background.