I would imagine it's more the tone and substance of the complaint than anything else. Going through this thread, one sees on the one hand angry rants about the media player sucking for pretty vague reasons, and on the other hand specific complaints about what is not perceived to work properly or what desired features are missing. The first is guaranteed to create a 100 post scream-fest, the later very likely will barely be objected to, even if the same user is creating multiple threads on the same or similar topics.

For me, the media player works perfectly fine, even though it's a fairly barebones app. I also spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the library on my PC and tagging media files so it would display properly, but it's a minor price to pay. It was a mess anyway.

The only aspect I don't like is that the audio stream player skips to the next stream if the stream interrupts. Plus the edit and delete stream buttons need to be made more obvious instead of hidden.

I don't have an Ipod or other dedicated media-player, so I can't compare, but to me the audio is excellent regardless of the music style (though admittedly hip hop sounds probably just as atrocious on the N900 as on any other media device). And I'm using my N900 hours every day especially for that purpose.

I tested opening heavy websites like the WashingtonPost.com while streaming audio over the same WLAN and there's no stuttering whatsoever. When I call my own phone, the music simply stops properly and the incoming call audio starts playing. When I reject the call or end the call, the music simply continues. All quite unlike what some others in this thread claim to experience. Then again, that probably makes me a Nokia apologist in the eyes of some.