nucleusdigital

Audio Playlist is a modern, self-hosted HTML5 audio player for WordPress. It dynamically reads MP3 and WAV files from a folder on your server — no Spotify, no SoundCloud, no dependency on external music services.
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Reads tracks automatically from your audio folder</li>
<li>Displays track titles based on filenames (clean formatting with spaces and capitalization)</li>
<li>Displays a cover image (cover.jpg or cover.png) for the playlist</li>
<li>Renders an interactive waveform powered by WaveSurfer.js</li>
<li>Full playback controls: Play, Pause, Previous, Next, Shuffle, Loop, Volume</li>
<li>Auto-scrolling title for long track names</li>
<li>Works in any shortcode-compatible field — no Gutenberg block required</li>
<li>Compatible with Divi and other page builders</li>
<li>Configurable background color for the player</li>
</ul>
<h4>Usage</h4>
Place your MP3 files in a folder named <code>playlist</code> under your audio base directory, add a <code>cover.jpg</code>, then use the shortcode:
<pre><code>[nuclaup_playlist label="My Playlist"]
</code></pre>
<h4>Free version limitations</h4>
<ul>
<li>Reads tracks from a single fixed folder named <code>playlist</code></li>
<li>Single cover image per playlist (cover.jpg) — no per-track covers</li>
</ul>
<h4>Pro version</h4>
Audio Playlist Pro adds:
<ul>
<li>Multiple playlists with custom folder paths</li>
<li>ID3 tag reading (title, artist) for accurate track metadata</li>
<li>Per-track cover art via catalog code matching</li>
<li>Companion Python script to extract and resize cover art from MP3 ID3 tags</li>
<li>Advanced admin panel with catalog code configuration</li>
</ul>

Nucleus Audio Playlist

A modern, self-hosted HTML5 audio player for WordPress. Drop MP3s in a folder, add a shortcode, and play.

X-Raym

This plugin replaces the default WordPress audio player with a player capable of displaying audio waveforms. It can display a mix of the different audio channels (for podcast, radio replays, e-learning, music), or all channels simultaneously (for sound tutorial, sounds-packs showcases, audio products demo etc…), which is its main purpose.
By working with the default audio/playlist shortcode, you have great advantages:
<ul>
<li>It works with all your previous posts</li>
<li>You still have the default player in the Visual Editor (not just shortcode)</li>
<li>It supports every audio format supported by WordPress (wav, ogg, mp3, m4a).</li>
<li>Safe deactivation: if you deactivate the plugin, your shortcode will fallback to the WordPress default audio player.</li>
</ul>
Global colors and style settings can be overridden locally by dedicated shortcode attributes.
<ul>
<li><code>progress_color="purple"</code></li>
<li><code>wave_color="#FF0000"</code></li>
<li><code>cursor_color="#FF0000"</code></li>
<li><code>height="128"</code></li>
<li><code>bar_width="0"</code></li>
</ul>
Also, there is some attributes accessible at shortcode level:
<ul>
<li><code>mute_button="true"</code></li>
<li><code>loop_button="true"</code></li>
<li><code>download_button="true"</code></li>
<li><code>split_channels="true"</code></li>
<li><code>player="default"</code></li>
</ul>
For more advanced customization, with a custom <a href="http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/what-why-and-how-tos-of-creating-a-site-specific-wordpress-plugin/" rel="nofollow ugc">site-plugin</a>, you can:
<ul>
<li>add shortcode attributes conditionally with the filter <code>wavesurfer_wp_shortcode_attributes</code>.</li>
<li>use the <code>wavesurfer_wp_shortcode_data</code> filter if you want to add custom waveform data attributes.</li>
<li>use the <code>wavesurfer-wp-init</code> JavaScript event handler to render the player on custom events, like after click on a button. See examples on the <a href="https://github.com/X-Raym/wavesurfer-wp-init" rel="nofollow ugc">WaveSurfer-WP-Init</a> GitHub repository.</li>
</ul>
Check this <a href="https://gist.github.com/X-Raym/5c388e6554b30ca6a56646fb8d96d17f" rel="nofollow ugc">Gist</a> for demos of how to use the filters.
Extra features :
<ul>
<li>Pressing play on a player automatically set all the others on the same page to pause.</li>
<li>AJAX Page loading compatibility</li>
<li>MultiSite Friendly</li>
</ul>
The default style requires some icons of <a href="https://fortawesome.github.io/" rel="nofollow ugc">Font-Awesome 1.0</a>. These are included in the plugin as a small custom font. Because this icon-font is already used in a lot of themes and plugins, you can deactivate this custom font if needed.
You can deactivate the default WaveSurder-WP theme, and use your own theme style. I strongly encourage you to do that as custom CSS is the only way to make it fit your theme perfectly. There is a lot of dedicated CSS selectors for that. You can take one of the included theme as reference. 
This will allow you to have more control on icons, responsivity, mouse hover behavior etc…
<a href="https://www.extremraym.com/en/wavesurfer-wp" rel="nofollow ugc">More Infos & Demos</a>
You can contribute by to WaveSurfer-WP development on <a href="https://github.com/x-raym/wavesurfer-wp" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a>
Themes and Translations are welcome !
Optimization trick: if you only use this plugin on a couple of pages, I invite you to use a plugin like <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugin-organizer/" rel="ugc">Plugin Organizer</a> or <a href="http://tomasz-dobrzynski.com/wordpress-gonzales" rel="nofollow ugc">Gonzales</a> to globally deactivate the plugin or its style, and make it load resources only on pages which need it. 
No need for that on the back-end, only for front-end.
This player doesn’t have and will not have Like Button, Sharing Button, Play count and Download count. 
If you are looking for a WordPress player with such Social Features and advanced statistics like <a href="http://www.soundcloud.com" rel="nofollow ugc">SoundCloud</a> or <a href="http://www.hearthis.at" rel="nofollow ugc">Hearthis.at</a>, take a look at <a href="http://codecanyon.net/item/zoomsounds-neat-html5-audio-player/4525354" rel="nofollow ugc">ZoomSounds</a>. 
For other advanced WordPress integration of wavesurfer-js, you can check <a href="http://codecanyon.net/item/waveplayer-a-wordpress-audio-player/14349799" rel="nofollow ugc">WavePlayer</a> by luigipulcini or <a href="https://codecanyon.net/item/wavesurfer-plus-mp3-player-module-for-gmedia-plugin/19242349" rel="nofollow ugc">WaveSurfer-Plus</a> by GalleryCreator.
Contrary to the other WordPress plugin based on wavesurfer-js, wavesurfer-js hasn’t been modified in this plugin. This means that you can extend feature of this plugin using the wavesurfer-js <a href="http://wavesurfer-js.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">methods</a>, and that updates from the wavesurfer-js community will be pushed in WaveSurfer-WP regularly.
WordPress 5 and Guteberg: Inserting <code>[audio]</code> with Gutenberg doesn’t bring the <code>[audio]</code> shortcode as it use to be. As this plugin is designed to hook the audio shortcode, you can use the generic shortcode block in gutenberg to manually write your shortcode, or use the classic editor.
<h4>WaveSurfer-WP Premium Add-on</h4>
A premium add-on is available to add extra features to WaveSurfer-WP.
<ul>
<li>
Cache Peaks File 
This add-on creates and loads peaks from small files, containing peaks values. No need to wait for the full audio to be decoded to display its waveform.
</li>
<li>
Markers System 
You can add custom clickable element on your pages to seek WaveSurfer-WP player to a desired position. Can be useful for adding marks, chapters, and it can even be used for <a href="https://www.extremraym.com/en/wavesurfer-wp-markers" rel="nofollow ugc">interactive audio transcripts</a>!
</li>
<li>
Plug and Play 
These extra features are packed as an add-on. No need to delete and replace the original plugin. You will still be able to benefit from translations made by the community. Also, the core is still open source, to allow contribution.
</li>
<li>
TimeLine Plugin 
When activated thanks to a shortcode attribute, a customizable time ruler will appear below your waveform.
</li>
</ul>
You can buy it from the official <a href="https://www.extremraym.com/en/downloads/wavesurfer-wp-premium" rel="nofollow ugc">product page</a>. 
Thanks for considering this way to support WaveSurfer-WP !
<h3>Additional Infos</h3>
It is a port for WordPress of <a href="http://wavesurfer-js.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">WaveSurfer-js</a> by katspaugh.
It also contains <a href="http://danml.com/download.html" rel="nofollow ugc">Download-js</a> by dandavis.
<h3>Donators</h3>
Thanks to our generous donators for supporting this plugin development !
<ol>
<li><a href="http://signaltonoize.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">SignalToNoize.com</a></li>
<li><a href="http://theopod.com" rel="nofollow ugc">hawthonn</a></li>
<li><a href="http://soundpacks.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Rob</a></li>
<li><a href="http://robertgetzner.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Robert Getzener</a></li>
</ol>
Do you want to contribute or sponsor one particular feature ? See you on the <a href="https://www.extremraym.com/en/donation/" rel="nofollow ugc">donation page</a>. Thanks !

WaveSurfer-WP

works fine

Customizable HTML5 Audio controller with waveform preview (mixed or split channels), using WordPress native audio and playlist shortcode.

Nucleus Audio Playlist vs WaveSurfer-WP