Music Management

What are some of the better (the best?) program(s) for managing and listening to your music library? This is a pretty big factor for me since I have almost seventy-five gigs of diverse music.

(Programs that don't overly hog memory, or promote spyware is a must. Features that can incorporate internet-radio broadcasts would be a plus.)

 

The two most obvious choices are iTunes and WMP. Both do a pretty good job of managing media libraries, and both have internet radio. I use iTunes, since I have an iPod, and it meets most of my requirements. However, I don't have nearly as much music as you do, so my advice is to try both and see if you like them.

Microsoft offers PowerToys for WMP:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/bonuspack/powertoys.aspx

One of the toys is a media management tool. You might want to give that a go.

 

I've heard good things of MediaMonkey; it has way more features than I need/want.

MusikCube is awesome, though somewhat overly minimalistic.

Winamp is alright, though its library management features are rather mediocre.

There's also foobar2000(which I use but don't recommend); it takes a lot of work to get it customized and up to par on functionality, though it's very expandable through plugins.

I can't stand iTunes or WMP.

 

I second iTunes. It's more of a memory hog than WMP is, but I still like it anyway. I don't have an iPod, but I still like it anyway. I have about 4 GB of music. It has Internet radio, but I don't use it.

 

Have you had a look at Songbird? It's a fully featured media player based on the Mozilla framework. It's still under heavy development but it's quite promising.

 

Mediamonkey is great. It will take audio in one format and transcode to another. I take my bigger MP3's and convert them into ogg format for my smartphone. I've been using the free version forever now and their auto-dj is a neat feature I just started using.

 

check out SnackAmp
oss ftw!

Instead of using metadata to build and maintain a database for a sloppy music directory, it uses the directory structure for organization. It uses metadata for searching, and for the tools which help you organize your media in the first place. The advantage is, once it organizes your data it carries over to most other players easily. Unless of course they just ignore directories...

 

I disagree that WinAmp's library is mediocre. I have 12,000 + MP3 files (a lot of concert and live stuff) in a number of directories with no particular structure and WinAmp keeps track of them all. I wouldn't touch any player that has to re-arrange your files to keep track of them. I also like the plug-ins that allow you to do things like burn a disk of MP3s and keep them in the order you want them.

PS...I also loathe iTunes and WMP...

 

Sorry, but... Foobar2000 for the win.

What other program lets you customize everything about it to the point where your background could be hot people with no clothes on?

 

customization is cool, but that has less to do w/ strength of library management. Plus Winamp has had pr0n skins forever - that's not new at all.

Mediamonkey can take a bunch of raw files in one mixed up directory and actually move all of them into structured subdirectories according to how you prefer them to be.

from the Mediamonkey help file:
"Auto-Organize Files
Tracks can also be automatically organized into a directory structure and filename format of your choice. This is done via the Auto-Organize Files function, which uses existing Track properties to move and rename files according to a specified format. For instance, you could organize all of your Tracks in the following format: C:/Music/<Artist>/<Album> - <Title>.xxx . To do this:

Select the Tracks that you wish to reorganize/rename, and click Tools > Auto-Organize Files.
Choose the Directory, directory format, and filename format to be used for the Tracks.
See Configuring Directory and Filename Formats.
A list will be generated showing the current directories/filenames and the new directories/filenames (changes are highlighted in yellow). If any of the new directories/filenames are incorrect, edit them as needed by clicking the path and editing it, or uncheck them.
Enable 'Delete emptied folders' if you wish the folders to be deleted after all tracks have been removed.
Click Ok to commit the changes to all the checked Tracks.
When Tracks are re-organized, it may result in old directories becoming empty. If this occurs, you will be prompted whether to delete the empty directory. If the all Tracks in the folder are moved, then you'll also be given the option to move any accompanying files such as Album Art or Lyrics."

 

i'm a big fan of winamp. i do some DJ'ing at school functions and just did my college formal for the one sports team and nothing is quicker for me to find, add, and rearrange in a playlist than winamp.

tried itunes and hated the way it would make my computer hang or sometimes freeze. too much of a system hog.

wmp is not bad, just not as intuitive and simple to me as winamp.

plus, shoutcast tv and radio means nonstop family guy episodes and radio stations from around the world within a click.

 

It's not about pron skins, I can make foobar into anything I want it to. The way I have it now, I can take any 1024x768 background, and make it my foobar2000 background.

 

I use Musikcube myself for almost a couple of years now.

I would say it avoids superflous things, while being far easier to set up and operate than say Foobar, which is really for techie tinkerers.

This is driven by its relentless focus on the essentials. The tail does not wag the dog here and nothing is sacrifised for eye-candy or useless tools. At the same time it is quite full featured and it has plugins for any audio format under the sun, including some very obcsure ones. The database is solid too.

If you just want to play your music and you sync with a USB device, this thing really grows on you. I have really not found anything like it.

 

Oh, I get it, now. Pretty neat and simpler than taking the time in making a custom skin for winamp. I have two questions though,
1> Is there a text shadowing/background fade option so that your text doesn't get lost in the background photo? It's cool that you can use any background but without those features I think it would be hard to see stuff.
2> Does it have a minimize into a mini-interface so that if I wanted just a little dock w/ minimalist control in the tray/taskbar/floating on desktop?

 

WMP11 is really sweet when it comes to organization. I download music, and it automatically organizes it by album, song, genre, artist, personal rating, and year. Also, the program will automatically label the song names, artist, album, composer, song length, and add album art. For me it is really a fantastic, and simple music library solution.

 

I do not suggest, ever, using iTunes. It is a resource hog. You'll notice that iTunes also installs itself several services that can total over 15mb in RAM. If you read enough about peoples experience with iTunes: "Oh my god where did all my music library go?!". iTunes has a lot of fun messing up, crashing, and slowing your system down.

 

I think by now almost all music management software across the board will do this. Another system that hasn't been mentioned yet is Moodlogic - a few years ago they were making lots of waves, but I hadn't heard anything about them lately. I never got quite how it worked but it was one of the first to let you specify a "mood" and it would auto-generate a playlist for you. Lots of users back then used to swear by it, but I guess by now many of the "groundbreaking" organizational features have trickled around to other players.

 

You could probably add it to foobar if you want to. Foobar is as custimizable as anything.

 

This is a thread about music managers. The UI has little to do with that, WinAmp has builtin minimalizing and at least one plugin to allow its controls to appear in the title bar of any open window. That aside, I like WinAmp because I don't have to organize my music into folders and such.

 

foobar2000 is my choice for music management (and no, I'm not pushing it's ability to be customized). The learning curve is too steep for some, so other choices like MediaMonkey and the likes are more popular.

 

Actually when it comes to Foobar, UI and music management are pretty much mutually exclusive

Sure on default it does the job, but getting into it opens so many doors for the management and navigation of your library. Saying that, you do need to spend a while reading around, so its perhaps not for everyone to have to "learn" a program

I agree iTunes, Mediamonkey, WMP or Winamp with downloadable skins would be simpler

Perhaps hands-down the best I have seen is this from my fellow head-fier for pure aesthetics. OK, browsing by album art cover may not be for all but I think its cool


See post here

(I think he would be OK with this)

 

I like MediaMonkey the best from all the ones I've tried out.

 

Another vote for Foobar2000, yeah it is the most customizable. So customizable to the point, I even have a layout for music management. It has all the tools you need to manage music

 

Wmp Ftw! 733t...

 

i currently use winamp on 3 machines at home to manager a library of 33,000 mp3s. works great for me. i have started messing around with mediamonkey though and i like what i see so far.

at the radio station that i do the IT work for, we have a library of mp3s even larger than mine and it will soon reach 200,000 songs when we finish our backlogging of all of our CDs. right now we're using winamp and have yet to have a problem so i really can't complain about it. we will be switching to Google's broadcast automation software in the next six months though.

i use itunes at work with my ipod just because i use a mac and it's easier to not mess with it at work. it's kind of eh in my opinion.