What Alternatives are there to iTunes?

[Sunny]

I'm another longtime Windows Media Player user. I mostly listen to Old Time Radio, which are not consistently file-named or titled, so I'm continually moving files from album to album. Perhaps I'm just unsophisticated about it, but I just make sure the files themselves are saved or downloaded to where I want them, and then I arrange them in the player. Version 10 was the best, since it had three windows - list of albums, content of select album, and playlist/burn list. I hated version 11, and went back to 10 as soon as I could. But now that I have Windows Vista, I'm stuck with version 12. I can at least play things. Right now I've been playing through the "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar" album, and with 500+ episodes it'll keep me going for a while. But the visible playlist is screwy, I can't see a list of albums, and moving things around is abysmal. I want to be able to drag and drop so things are in the right albums. I may have to try Winamp, at least just to see if the interface is more useable.

 

[MK]

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Sunny, why don't you just drag and drop between folders in Windows Explorer?

Sidebar:

I started out on Windows 3.1 when the interface that managed the files was appropriately called "File Manager". It really bugged me when Microsoft changed the name to "Windows Explorer" for Windows 95. That is not an improvement! People easily confuse it with "Internet Explorer". At that time everthing was being named an explorer or a wizard.....much like the overly abused word "Ninja" in the 80's.

It still irks me when I have to say or write it.

OK. I am done now.

 

[Sunny]

Sunny, why don't you just drag and drop between folders in Windows Explorer?

Oh, I am the QUEEN of Windows Explorer. (Since that's what it's called now - I agree it's far too confusing with IE.) That's not the issue; my folders are well-organized. The issue is the album information - the "tag" information - since that's how WMP organizes things. An example: Last week I downloaded nearly the entire run of Sam Spade from an OTR subscription site, neatly into My Music/Old Time Radio/Sam Spade. But although WMP found the new tracks as soon as they were added, it had to use the tag information that they came with, and those were all over the map. I had to manually move several dozen tracks from individual albums into my master "OTR - Sam Spade" album. The drag and drop function within the older WMP actually updates tag information. With the new layout, drag and drop is impossible.

Editing track titles so they'll play chronologically is far more tedious, but is also a rather different issue.

That's where I am. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

 

[scotrace]

Has everyone seen this new intro from Adobe?

 

[Brad Bowers]

Has everyone seen this new intro from Adobe?

Nope, not until you posted it. I usually like Adobe products, so I downloaded it to try it out. Turns out it's only for videos, from all I can see, so I'll be deleting it. Thanks for pointing it out, though.

Brad

 

[anon`]

Oh, I am the QUEEN of Windows Explorer. (Since that's what it's called now - I agree it's far too confusing with IE.) That's not the issue; my folders are well-organized. The issue is the album information - the "tag" information - since that's how WMP organizes things. An example: Last week I downloaded nearly the entire run of Sam Spade from an OTR subscription site, neatly into My Music/Old Time Radio/Sam Spade. But although WMP found the new tracks as soon as they were added, it had to use the tag information that they came with, and those were all over the map. I had to manually move several dozen tracks from individual albums into my master "OTR - Sam Spade" album. The drag and drop function within the older WMP actually updates tag information. With the new layout, drag and drop is impossible.

Editing track titles so they'll play chronologically is far more tedious, but is also a rather different issue.

That's where I am. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

You might wish to consider the Godfather, a highly useful if somewhat complex mass tagger, generally considered to be just about the best out there for this sort of thing. You can also mass tag in Amarok, though I don't know if any of the standard Windows palyers gives you that option.

Off the subject, "Windows Explorer" is so named because some nutjob at Microsoft decided that create a program (Explorer.exe) that controls, amongst other system functions, both WinEx and MSIE. This is why you can't truly remove IE from Windows. I prefer "Nautilus"

 

[Sunny]

You might wish to consider the Godfather, a highly useful if somewhat complex mass tagger, generally considered to be just about the best out there for this sort of thing. You can also mass tag in Amarok, though I don't know if any of the standard Windows palyers gives you that option.

Thanks for the tips! I'll be trying this.

 

[imported_the_librarian]

I wish my music was so organized (tags, etc.) Usually I end up with a folder of 001.mp3 002.mp3, etc. etc.....

I know I need to organize them....but with so many things to do.

So I just pretend it's Vegas and I'm at the slots. Pull the handle (download the songs onto the player) and see what I end up with!

Last week I started with WSJ This Morning, then went to Johnny Dollar and ended up going to Dragnet. Makes for interesting shows while I'm walking the canine.