When you are listening to music, you have probably forgotten the name of the track that is currently playing and had to switch from what you are doing to look at your media player. This can slow you down, particularly if you are listening to music while you work, but it is something that ON AIR can help you with. This free plugin enables you to see at a glance what you are listening to, and also to share your music listening through Skype.

Whenever a new track is played, the name of it will pop up from the taskbar in a balloon notification. This may be all you want to know, but you can click on the notification to be taken online to look up more information about the band or artist in question so you can view a discography, read lyrics and find out anything else you may want to know.

But one of the main features of ON AIR, and the very reason that it is a Skype plugin rather than just a standalone program, is that it can be configured to update your Skype status with the name of the track you are currently listening to. There is support for a very large number of media players including all of the big name like VLC, WinAmp and Windows Media Player.

If you use different players for different things, you can opt to have any you want to be ignored so tracks that are played here will not be advertised. Your Skype status can be customized in a number of ways, not just with the name of what you are listening to at the moment. You can also have text, links and emoticons added so your updates are completely personalised rather than being the same as other ON AIR users’.