At least Poweramp can, I'm not really sure about the others. I repeat, Android, Apple's biggest and most problematic competitor, can play iTunes m4a files no problem. And that's not on Apple, that's on the user for running an old as dirt media player. And some people want to blame Apple because the old Winamp can't play iTunes songs. And for the longest time, Winamp 2.95 was fine. Media Player Classic Home Cinema supports all common video and audio file formats available for playback.

But we're using Winamp 2.95 from like 20 years ago because that's the last version that wasn't complete shit. Download Summary Files Support Source Code (GitHub) Donate Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) is an extremely light-weight, open source media player for Windows. I'm sure the big Winamp refresh next year will be able to play it, too.

That's not Apple's fault, they're using an open format. Winamp has an M4A plugin, but it's so old, it requires QuickTime to be installed for some reason. Winamp can't play M4A, which is just MPEG-4, it's literally the next MP3. I copy the music from the laptop to my wife's Android phone and to OneDrive. I buy music on iTunes, iTunes downloads to the laptop and my iPhone. We have two Windows machines, I have an iPhone, wife has an Android phone. Your old version will still play your old files, but if you get a file made with a newer codec, who are you going to blame? The file for being made with a newer codec, or your outdated media player for not supporting the newer codec? Since BE/HC, VLC, and others use internal plugins instead of system codecs, they have to update to keep up with the latest formats. Codecs are a big part of it, I'm guessing.

Download media classic player