What Alternatives are there to iTunes?

[TheKitschGoth]

I uised to use Winamp, but I have my entire Cd collection loaded onto the computer, and like to play the whole collection on random. Winamp tended to crash when I tried that. (It has been years since I used it though, so it may cope better now) I use MediaMonkey now, which does pretty much everything I would ever want it to.

It also lets you view the file locations of all the tracks, and, even better, when you burn a CD it lets you specify the folder to put the tracks in. So if I have CD with various artists I can put each track into the respective artists folder on my PC. Yeah.. these things are important to me lol

 

[Salv]

...

Ummm... /artist/album/track.flac? It's been my personal experience that some people flat-out don't get this idea, and an amorphous database works just fine for them. That's all good and well, but otheres (such as myself) actually want to be able to find the physical file, not just the metadata. And myself, I'm a neat freak when it comes to file structure

...

If I want to find a particular physical MP3 file in my iTunes library it will be at Macintosh HD/Users/Salv/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Artist/Album/Title.mp3 - this looks to be more or less the same as your set-up, unless I'm missing something obvious. This is how iTunes has organised the music files for me. Maybe it works differently on Windows.

 

[anon`]

If I want to find a particular physical MP3 file in my iTunes library it will be at Macintosh HD/Users/Salv/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Artist/Album/Title.mp3 - this looks to be more or less the same as your set-up, unless I'm missing something obvious. This is how iTunes has organised the music files for me. Maybe it works differently on Windows.

Either iTunes does do it differently for Windows, or perhaps I'm jumping the gun and this issue is iPod-specific, but what I thought was the iTunesDB concept was to take each individual track and copy it into a random directory. When first tried loading my iPod (via Amarok), I discovered that I couldn't find any tracks using Rockbox's directory browser and eventually figured out that I had about a dozen CDs' worth of tracks loaded, randomly and mixed up, into about a dozen directories that had self-generated names. I was under the impression that iTunes did the same thing, but perhaps I was wrong!

Given that, here's perhaps a better reason for using foobar2k: it's lightweight, plays music and is ?ºber-scriptable. Since I'm a geek about my music, ripping and transcoding (in a Windows environment, at least) are done only via EAC and dBpowerAMP. Album art is all good and well, but I'm rarely looking at the player, so it's really underutilised.

 

[Samsa]

If I want to find a particular physical MP3 file in my iTunes library it will be at Macintosh HD/Users/Salv/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Artist/Album/Title.mp3 - this looks to be more or less the same as your set-up, unless I'm missing something obvious. This is how iTunes has organised the music files for me. Maybe it works differently on Windows.

No, it's organized the same way in Windows, though obviously with a slightly different file path. Running XP, it looks like (for me):

My Documents/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Bob Dylan/Another Side of Bob Dylan/To Ramona.mp3

And that's without any tinkering. It might be that if someone is using a certain file sharing program it dumps the file somewhere else, but I don't know.

 

[BuddyJ]

So....what other alternative software-players are out there? I assumed you couldn't download files....or interface at all with an iPod without iTunes ...

http://www.yamipod.com

Yamipod lets you use your iPod without having iTunes installed. It looks like quite a sweet program.

 

[rebelgtp]

The iPods seems problematic unless you drink the Apple koolaid and do things exactly the way they want.....or is it just iTunes? Can you add files to their gizmo without using iTunes?

What MP3 players do you guys use?

I've got the Creative Zen:M 30g. I got it when it first came out and its a great little player. It is very flexible in the kinds of files you can add to it and plays video, I think, better than the iPod videos do. I've never had a problem with it since day one. Another thing that I like is it has a built in FM receiver and you can partition out a portion of the drive and use it as a flash drive. I can't tell you how many time we use to use that thing as a way of transferring large files around in my old office.

Oh and I don't drink the Windows or Apple Koolaid... I run Linux most of the time.

 

[MK]

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What software do you use to interface with it? Can you just drag and drop from explorer?

 

[rebelgtp]

I normally use the software that came with it in when I'm using Windows, I know with the old firmware setup on it you could just drag and drop things but I'm not sure since the last firmware update (haven't added anything really since I upgraded the firmware). In Linux there is a home brew to interface with it.

However if I remember correctly I think there is a plugin to interface Winamp and the Zen.

Edit: Just confirmed that its natively supported on the latest version of Winamp.

 

[MK]

Oh and I don't drink the Windows or Apple Koolaid... I run Linux most of the time.

At some point I need to look into that.

 

[MK]

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Now that the pro-Apple people have had their say....I would like to hear what the rest of you are using.

 

[Salv]

Now that the pro-Apple people have had their say....I would like to hear what the rest of you are using.

Not so much having our say, more correcting false impressions...

 

[Harley Quinn]

Anyone tried 'Songbird' from the developers of Firefox and Winamp?

http://www.songbirdnest.com/about

 

[Brad Bowers]

I just use Windows Media Player 11 (ducks head to avoid flak), and download songs from Wal-Mart and Amazon, besides all my CDs. Works fine for me. When I finally buy a player, I think it will be one from Creative. Don't have any use for video, though.

Brad

 

[Andykev]

Real Player is great.

I have used Real Player for a long time. It allows me to do lots of organizing, and burning CD's. Handles movies, clips, songs. Since Sue got an Apple Laptop..I have used Itunes.

 

[Prairie Dog]

Now that the pro-Apple people have had their say....I would like to hear what the rest of you are using.

I still rely on Musicmatch, a very easy way to keep my vast collection of mp3's organized. Unfortunately, Musicmatch merged with Yahoo in August. The new Yahoo/Musicmatch hybrid is not good.

The current Winamp 5.5, the 10th Anniversary Edition, has many new bells and whistles, including album art, a custom graphic equalizer and outstanding visualizations. I never liked Winamp's prior versions, but this one is worth the 5 minute download time.

As for the 4.6 version of iTunes on my computer, I do not intend to do an upgrade anytime in the near future. I've been told it's no better than Napster, the disaster!! And if all else fails, there's always Windows Media Player 11, a viable option that has vastly improved from it's pre-historic beginnings!

 

[MK]

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I have used Real Player for a long time. It allows me to do lots of organizing, and burning CD's. Handles movies, clips, songs. Since Sue got an Apple Laptop..I have used Itunes.

I have had good luck with Real Player for years. I did find that iTunes was better at some things. Winamp seems to do all things from both players...and more.....that I want.

 

[PADDY]

This is proving informative...

As I am using iTunes as we speak. But...I don't find it overly user friendly (I know, I'm a techno-chump![huh] ).

Also, I cannot get it to bring up the album art, it's not easy for me to organise things on it, and I have given up on trying to upload vintage radio shows, let alone videos!! (onto my iPod Classic).[huh]

So, I think I'll give MK's suggestion a shot to see if it works for me

 

[imported_the_librarian]

I'm on JUICE right now. Works pretty smooth.....

Course I'm old school, I'll just download the track, podcast, whatever and then right click in explorer and send it to my device.

I just went back to winamp today and found out it can sync my zen with podcasts, so I'll try that for a few days.....

VLC is a great dvd player!!!!

Great thread!!!!!

 

[Harley Quinn]

I'm still looking for a reliable MTC driver for Unix... but I'm sad like that

 

[MK]

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I'm on JUICE right now. Works pretty smooth.....

Course I'm old school, I'll just download the track, podcast, whatever and then right click in explorer and send it to my device.

I do that for the most part too. I like dealing directly with files in their folders rather than through a program. I organize files a little differently. For example I have a great love for some studio session guitar players. I have folders for them with the different session they played on. These guys played on thousands of songs by various artists. If I used a program to keep track of my music by artist and album....they would be scattered all over the place and I would have to remember which songs he played on. Here is my Mike Landau folder:

Notice I keep video as well as audio files for him there. If I want to hear Mike I just go to his folder and select something by double clicking on it.

Of course I could create a "genre" called Landau for all these files....but why go to all that effort? I can already do what I want without jumping through any hoops. One of the great things about Winamp is I can list them by file name. I also list the path to know exactly where it is.

Notice the artist and album fields are blank. If I were counting on the program that only lists them by tags, I wouldn't have a clue as to what they were. Sure I could spend the time to type all that in....but why? I have been using them fine for years. The musicians that send these to me don't bother with tags and I have never needed them because I deal directly with files in folders I organize.

I know a lot of people like to just add tags and deal with them that way. That is fine if that works for them. The way I see it, computers organize by drives, folders and files. All files have names, but only some have tags.....if you add them or have a program add them.

I am glad to see that others use files this way too.