Itunes Replacement: What do you use?

I'm really sick of itunes. What do you guys use instead? I'm just looking for something that will handle <80GB of music smoothly, not install a bunch of junk programs I don't need, or nag me for an update constantly. I found this page comparing the options but I want to know what you like best.

 

Foobar2000, if you can get it setup in a way you'd like it to be, perhaps too much customization is a bad thing

Why were you using iTunes if you don't have an apple device though?

 

Unfortunately, I do. The only apple device I own and will ever own. When I was in the market, the 80gb ipod classic was the only one that offered the best storage capacity for the buck thanks to Apple's monopolization of the MP3 player market.

Thanks for the suggestion. Is it a painless transfer to get all the song tags and playlists I currently have over to the new program?

 

...I think Apple was on something when they decided that playlists should be integrated into the iTunes library file; I have no idea if you can even extract them or not (importing them is enough of a pain from what little I've had to deal with it).

The tags should be in the MP3 file itself, if not, foobar gives you an easy way to edit quickly, or you can use Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...) if it gives you problems.

 

Use Winamp for your iPod. It has drag and drop features. I'm pretty sure it's even better now with newer versions.

How to manage music in iPod using Winamp? - Winamp Blog

 

Yeah I like Winamp a lot. I no longer have an iPod but for music etc, Winamp is solid. Oh love the avatar, OP.

 

The playlists aren't hard to recreate but the individual song tags must stay intact. Naming, organizing, and rating 80gb worth of songs takes a tremendous amount of time and I don't want to do it again.

Wow, thanks for the link to the video. It seems so easy compared to the torture Apple makes you go through to rebuild a playlist in itunes. Worst narrator for a tutorial ever but its so simple, you don't even really need to know what she's saying.

I'm going to download it and give it a try. Thanks for the suggestion.

Thanks.

Another vote for Winamp. Sounds like a solid choice.

 

Just be careful with Winamp SickSadLittleWorld. I had some issue with it last year, when they just released new version which supported portable devices, including diePods. I had Classic 6th gen I think (one with 120Gb). Winamp played music very good, BUT, after I disconnected, I've done all these safety thingies, my diePod became corrupt. Could play any music on it, it didn't see any, connected and tried playing through iTunes, said something like your diePod is corrupt and blah blah blah, get a new one. iTunes even couldn't reset it back to factory settings. But I managed to fix it . Uploaded some music onto diePod through Winamp, disconnected it and voila, everything was working. I wrote this just in case. After that, I bought 16Gb (it's a downstep from 120Gb I know, but I was using diePod more like an external HDD than mp3 player ) micro SD card for my smart-phone, and gifted my diePod to my sister, which almost teared my hands of when I gave it to her, 'cuz she's crazy about everything Mappple (hey Simpsons, also one more victim ).

As for iTunes replacement, well... I use Winamp to play FLACs with CUE files and for mp3s I mostly use WMP12. Unfortunately it has no tag edit, which is a huuuge minus, but it can handle big music library. Also for me advantage of WMP12 is that I can control it in background through my multimedia keys on my laptop without a problems when I'm playing games (like M$FSX) or doing anything else. I don't have to switch or use aero peek to pause/play etc. I can't make Winamp to function so . Also you could give a Aimp a try, very nice piece of software.

 

Mac OS X Music Players - alternatives to iTunes

 

I use a relatively minimal customization of foobar2000, which handles file tagging very well. I use Mp3tag to supplement that as well. Back when I used an iPod, I used to sync it with foobar2000 using a foo plugin as well... seem to have forgotten the name of it though. I'll post back when I find the one I used.

 

I can't stand iTunes, after using it for years. I hate that it installs so many programs and doesn't give an option for custom installation. It has poor playback codecs and the audio is noticeably poorer quality compared to Winamp. I do download books from Audible on occasion, so I've got iTunes installed in a virtual machine, so it cannot eff up everything. I even sold my iPod in favor of a Sony Walkman, which I'm so much more happy with.

Anyway, I prefer Winamp for playback and Media Monkey for library/audio management. I've even customized the Rainify skin for Winamp and integrated it into my Rainmeter desktop. Am very happy with it.

 

Thanks for the heads up. Do you know if that is a widespread problem? Don't want to be bricking my ipod, despite how much of an apple turd it is.

WMP is not an option without tag editing. The multimedia feature would be nice but I don't have multimedia buttons on either my laptop or desktop. Have you tried out Aimp? It has a lot of features that appeal to me but I've never heard of it. The other two mentioned in this thread, I'd previously heard of.

 

Sorry, looking for Windows-based players, hence why I made the thread in the Windows OS forum.

Another vote for Foobar. I am going to download this one and give it a test drive as well. Please do post that plug-in, i'm definitely interested in trying out the software.

Can you tell me the benefit a third-party tagging software has over a built-in one, per se? I've never used one and if it would make organizing my library easier, I'm interested. What are some good ones?

Nice desktop!

I agree with you on every front about itunes...shoddy effort from apple. Itunes has infected my computer for the last 5 or 6 years, its time to move on. So another vouch for winamp...

Can you tell me more about this Media Monkey and how it benefits you?

 

Aimp is really good actually, at least I liked it. The main reason why I stick with Winamp is that I'm too used to it , but I have few friends who now prefer Aimp over Winamp. It has great sound quality, due to it's usage of some kick-a** codecs, also I liked tabbed playlists feature.

As for Winamp + diePod. Which one do you have. When I first tried syncing diePod, this feature was still new (around October last year) and at some points still wasn't tested enough. Although many users said that they had no problems, many us who had those 120Gb Classics came across this problem. Other diePods had no problems as I know. Since that October, I haven't used diePod, 'cuz like I mentioned above, I gave it away.

As for WMP12, I really don't get, why Microsoft removed tagging feature. As I know (might be mistaking) WMP11 had mp3 tagging. So why go ahead and do such a stupid thing removing tagging? M$ I don't get you.

 

Thanks! I've put a lot of work into it.

I like Media Monkey for library management because it seems so comprehensive. Tags are much easier to manage. With a few clicks, I can rename and completely reorganize every file in my library. I just think that the UI is better suited for the organization process than Winamp's is.

Let's say that 1/3rd of your files are completely loose and not in folders. Another 1/3rd is in folders by Artist/Album, and the final 1/3rd is in folders by Album/Artist. You can use the Auto-Organize (paid version of MM) and completely reset the file structure and naming sequence criteria for every singe file, provided all of the proper tag information is present.

Winamp, however, has better codecs than MM, which are all better than iTunes. So, I use both WA and MM.

 

caution: entries on that wiki page are about 6 months old/out of date/obsolete/flat out wrong for about 50% of the software listed.

 

Another vote here for WinAMP. I hate dealing with iTunes, but unfortunately, my parents both have iPhones and whenever I have to go through their media, it's a pain in the rear.

 

i use zune.
not much of customization you can do, but has a simple cool
UI.

its also good at finding album info's and such when you need one.

 

I'll be adding Zune to my setup once I get the Nokia Windows 7 phone due out later this year, or whenever. Sooooo looking forward to it.

 

Zune software is miles better than iTunes, even if only because it's just the Zune player alone.

 

I downloaded and tested out each player mentioned: AIMP2, Media Monkey, Winamp, and Foobar. The one that works best for my needs is Media Monkey. It does a decent job of detecting my library and imports a bunch of attributes Winamp didn't like play count and grouping. I did have about 200 songs that needed manual renaming since the tags were messed up and I'll have to run through everything to make sure it came through OK. The scripts that check for proper capitalization and other stuff is really cool. My library could definitely use some maintenance and this program should make it really easy. It also has sooooo many more features than itunes.

The media player is pretty decent and I only have MP3 codecs, so it is sufficient for my needs. I'd like to add some FLAC files down the road since I can play those now...do they sync up directly to the ipod?

On another note, uninstalling itunes was oh so satisfying and my god, does Apple install a bunch of junk besides the music player. I uninstalled Bonjour, Quicktime, Apple Software Manager, Update Manager and Apple Device Manager in addition to itunes. Bunch of unnecessary bloatware, good riddance to that awful software.

 

Ha, dude I know how you feel. Did you say some cool catchphrase when you pushed uninstall button ? Something like "so long *!@#$%^&*" .

Also for FLACs. Apple devices don't recognise 'em. But they have something close - A(pple) L(osless) A(udio) C(odec) or ALAC. But there are only a bunch of programs which can convert those, one of them are iTunes and dbPowerAmp.

 

lossless on an iDevice is a waste, their sound output quality is mediocre compared to other players

 

Here it is, it's called foo_dop.

I mostly use foobar2000's tagging, because it's so powerful--I have a standard tagging system and file-naming system that foobar2000 allows me to maintain. It's very powerful, and much more rigidly standard than iTunes or WMP's tagging. The one thing foobar2000 has relatively poor support for, though, is album art: that's where I use Mp3Tag (actually, to delete album art from all tracks).

 

I hope with the upcoming rumored iTunes 11 redesign, iTunes itself gets a trim and looses all the other processes it needs to run. For me as an iTunes replacement I use Spotify and CopyTrans Manager (free) for syncing music to my iPod Touch.

 

Like my own words.

When I sort my music, its organised as \music\artist\[year] album\1. song

I used to do that manually, because I (still) like to browse what I have and then clickety-click files and play them Almost as good as going thru those piles of CD's. When I bought my 80GB Classic to play music in my car I searched alternatives for iTunes and found Media Monkey.

Apparently iPod attached to my Pioneer in car and files without tags didn't mix. So tagging and finding images for Cover Flow is now a work in progress, has been for last two years What I like in Media Monkey is the ability to look for images in Amazon and then tag/organise music files as I want them and it also syncs them to my ipods (got even two of those now).

Now that I think of it, I don't really use MM for playing anything

Unfortunately I "had" to install iTunes again, apparently it's needed to activate an iphone

 

Me too! I don't play anything through MM either. Just do the ripping and tagging and stuff.

I just solved my newest iTunes dilemma this weekend. I have an audio book library and use this program called Angel's Vox. It's specifically designed for books. It remembers, independently for each book, playback volume/position/pitch/temp and is fantastic. Problem is that I download the occasional book from Audible. I can't play the files in AV and have to use iTunes to burn to disc so I can rip them back as mp3. Such a hassle and I didn't want iTunes infecting my fantastic setup.

Solution, you ask? I use the XP Mode virtual machine in Windows 7. It's got my audible downloader and my iTunes in it. I download the files, burn them to disc from the VM, then rip them back in Windows 7 using MM.

Yeah, MM rocks.

 

Well, so far my choices are down to winamp or mediamonkey. Has anybody had experience with the paid versions of both of those? Are they really worth the $20. The free versions also allow cd burning correct? Its just a slower speed than the paid version

 

I, personally, have no need for the paid version of Winamp, but don't think I could live without the paid version of Media Monkey.

I constantly use the Auto Organize feature when I've downloaded CD's or audiobooks and what to change the file structure in one fell swoop. I've also got an i7, so like to be able to use all of my cores.

iTunes is a single-threaded application when it comes to converting audio. MM Platinum can process up to 8 songs simultaneously on a quad-core processor. I've converted 1,000 FLAC files to 256kpbs in just over an hour.

 

You can always uninstall them, for instance I uninstall the software update and bonjour.

If you haven't tried 10.4, I'd say go for it. I think they finally made it compatible with Win7 animations and it's very smooth. I don't understand why people lambast it for being slow and whatever...but anyway give 10.4 a shot.

 

Could be because it IS slow. iTunes for Windows is a slap in the face. How hard is it to allow a custom install where an "advanced" user can choose what applications to not install?

iTunes being single-threaded also means it's slower than my multi-threaded Media Monkey.

Here's another thing that happens. When I install and uninstall iTunes, I end up having problems with MM crashing. Turns out theres an iPhone.dll thing in the MM folders that causes the problem after iTunes is uninstalled. So, I had to delete it.

Of course, if one doesn't mind proprietary audio formats, I'm sure iTunes is fine. This is, however, a thread on iTunes alternatives.

 

+1 for Mediamonkey. I also like Double Twist because it plays nice with my Android OTA.

 

x2, was going to post that exact sentence. Any respectably sized library is an absolute nightmare to organize in itunes. In addition to the slowness, the unnecessary bloatware installs, poor sync control, and overall malware feel of itunes, my favorite feature is the dialogue lockout box when you retag a bunch of files at once. Not only does it take its sweet time retagging (ironic considering its only got a fraction of the tags available compared to other programs), the user is restricted from doing anything in the program until its done.

Funny how itunes nags for updates so often and yet, so few features have changed since I started using it years ago. Besides a few cosmetic updates (don't care, i prefer function over form), what has changed? They obviously have made no attempt to optimize it and I don't even recall the last time a new, useful feature was added. Itunes is so horribly dated, bloated, and inferior to the other players mentioned in this thread.

Wish I would have switched a LONG time ago. That transition was long overdue.

 

I've been happy with the Zune software so far. Not sure if it's really worth it if you don't have a Zune device, but I have no complaints. I sold my iPod Touch for $120 and a 30GB Zune a month ago, and I've been quite happy.

 

I have no idea why anybody would have iTunes on their computer if they don't care about keeping their iPhone or iPad firmware up to date but give me a break, I've got an Atom powered netbook that runs it w/o issue.

 

As a general reminder, feel free to discuss an issue, but avoid getting personal. Use reasons, not insults and hyperbole. A bunch of off-topic posts have been removed.

Now, back on topic:
I've also found that various media players can vary wildly in the playback sound. Through my experiences, I've noticed that foobar2000 generally outputs more crisp sound than either Windows Media Player or iTunes (although it's been a long while since I used the latter). I'm not sure how Winamp is, since I haven't used it since Windows 2k days.

 

agree. the zune software really is nice.

 

winamp or mediamonkey

 

This was awhile ago (3 years), so it's probably changed, but for people that use Winamp, do you use the latest version? I remember when I was looking for iTunes alternatives in the past, some preferred the older versions of Winamp.

Last time I never found a good alternative when I looked last. While I agree about iTune's problems, I couldn't find another player with an interface I liked. That's the ones thing I enjoy about iTunes. For instance, on Foobar, it doesn't have the quick return arrow (or whatever it's called) to go back in your playlist to the song you're currently playing. It also did a poor job of organizing my music with songs out of order with their track number. There were also TONS of songs without a proper name. I'm not going to rename hundreds of tracks.

That said, I feel like looking for an alternative once again.

Edit: Gave the new Winamp a try. It definitely sounds much better.

 

foobar with the darkone them.
foobar2000
DetlevCM on deviantART

Handles a 74GB MP3 library just fine - either via g wifi on a Windows Home Server or on an external HDD.

 

+1 on MediaMonkey. Makes tagging and organization (especially reorganizing folders based on tagging) a breeze.

 

Mediamonkey, by far the best media player I've ever used.

 

Agree with others re: Zune. Have a 120GB and use the Zune software which is much much better than iTunes. I've also used Winamp, Songbird, and MediaMonkey in the past but feel Zune software beats them all.

 

Windows Media Player?

 

+1 for windows media player

only one that doesn't mess up my tags

 

Anything will leave your tags alone if you disable any rewriting.

 

Winamp.
It's simple and easy.
Just suits my tastes.
Oh, and it has a nice name.

 

-> "Oh, and it has a nice name."

A very objective choice...
The name of a program says nothing about its capabilities.

On this note: Did they ever unbloat Winamp? I stopped using it version 5. something ago... maybe 4-5 years ago... just too heavy & bloated...

 

^This.

Installed it once and will never go back. How can you use a program so bloated and heavy?

Ccleaner still cleans the registry and finds Winamp documents and files even though I have uninstalled it.

Thank goodness I sold that laptop however.

 

No idea sir.
I found it easy and simple to use. o_o
Ignorance is bliss?