Software to Manage Your Music/Media?

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by McDougal

I wonder what the next foobar icon will look like....lol.

We've got one prepared for them, if they choose to accept it, that's another story.... (this version pixellated to protect the subject's anonymity, but he wears a fanny pack)

[CrowdAds]

[eboyer93]

Originally Posted by lestatar

doh! You are right! White on Black! my bad
Still, I like the old one better

The new one grew on me, looks good in the Windows Vista taskbar.

[lestatar]

Ah, I got it at the office - we will see. I guess it is cute in a friendly alien face way, but I dunno yet.

Geez, still trying to figure out why I thought the old icon was black and gold... lol

[YeppBoy]

In Windows 7, I use MediaMonkey to manage my album art and tags, Winamp when I don't feel like using MediaMonkey and VLC for my videos. In Ubuntu, Gentoo and Slackware, I use Exaile or drag and drop. Also, why isn't Exaile in the poll?

[McDougal]

I've never heard of Exaile, and there aren't that many Linux users on here that I know of, so maybe that's why. IMHO MM is the best software for organizing/syncing music, which is why I use it to sync my Fuze and iPod Touch 4G.

[copeys]

I use itunes, media monkey and zune. Funnily enough, they all access the same library... I use itunes to keep everything organised, and the other 2 just update off of that library. Have to have some sort of system going with 3 media players!!

[Marvin the Martian]

iTunes and Zune on the same computer......epic! Walled gardens everywhere.

[McDougal]

lol, the only time I install iTunes and Zune on the same computer is the family laptop (which I plan to upgrade to Win7 soon), Zune software for my dad which I gave my ZuneHD to, and iTunes for my sister's iPod. I would NEVER install both on my own systems

[YeppBoy]

Originally Posted by McDougal

I've never heard of Exaile, and there aren't that many Linux users on here that I know of, so maybe that's why. IMHO MM is the best software for organizing/syncing music, which is why I use it to sync my Fuze and iPod Touch 4G.

Exaile is similar to Amarok, but it uses GTK+ instead of Qt.

[McDougal]

Ok, I've heard of Amarok before, speaking of Linux, I'm installing Linux Mint 10 on my ancient box right now....nothing else to do today lol. Running pretty slow, hope its successful, specs are: 80GB HDD, 2.8GHz Intel Pentium 4, 512MB DDR RAM, integrated graphics.

[lestatar]

^ Good luck McDougal. I have been quiet on my Linux Ubuntu thread as I have not had too much time to play around with it. But it is a fine and functioning OS from what I have seen thus far.

<sigh> I remember that a machine with the specs you mention was considered quite powerful. The processor is still OK though...

[McDougal]

^Thanks, finished installing. So far, so good ! Install was pretty quick, just logged on for the first time, desktop looks great (much better than my XP Pro desktop, which I still have on the system as a dual boot), and everything "just works". Internet, sound, graphics, and I already have all the software I need. Next step, explore customization options. Now I have something to do today !

And about Ubuntu....while its a great OS, I installed version 10.04 on this same system a while ago, and it ran terribly slow, MUCH slower than my XP Pro SP3, I left Linux for a while after that, but this new distro is running much better. Still won't install it on my laptop, no way I'm having 3 partitions.

[Danikat]

I use J.River Media Jukebox (yes I'm cheap and stick with the free version), mainly because I like how customisable it is. I used Musicmatch for as long as physically possible (until I got Windows 7) and whilst in many ways it wasn't great it left me expecting a few things that are apparently hard to come by, but with some fiddling J.River can do most of them.

I'm intrigued by Media Monkey though. Never heard of it before but so many people like it I might give it a go.

[skip252]

What things are hard to come by? I just haven't found much in pay software that there wasn't a freeware or free software (there's a difference) available to take it's place.

It'd true they may take a bit more user setup. However the degree of control and customization are most often worth the time spent working the learning curve.

[Danikat]

Nothing big, just a lot of little details in the way I want to use a player. For example the main thing I want is a list of just artist names on screen as soon as I open the program, from which I can select one or more artists and get a list of just their songs. Doesn't sound like much but the vast majority of programs just don't have that option, just a full list of every single track which is a pain to scroll through (especially if I want to build a playlist using specific artists who aren't nearby alphabetically).

I got the impression Foobar2000 could be set up as I wanted as well but I didn't find it as intuitive as J.River, I could never seem to wrap my head around how to get what I wanted out of it. (Possibly because a lot of features seem to require plug-ins so it's a case of knowing whats out there rather than knowing what to right click to get the options.)

(Strangely another problem I had with some programs was getting them to use just one folder instead of the entire computer to build their library, and to recognise that tracks I'd deleted from the library should not be re-added. Automatically searching the whole computer is probably great for some people but it's a pain for me because I share it with other people and we each have our own music collections.)

[lestatar]

^ Because a picture is worth a thousand words

Do any of these satisfy your main requirement? I hope I understood what you were asking about...

Also, MediaMonkey and Winamp can be set to monitor a single folder if you wish, sub-folders or not. Don't know about the deleting from the library part - for me, the only time I delete from the library is when I also physically delete the music files. However, in my own process, nothing gets added to my library in the first place unless I am sure I want to keep them there forever...

Hope these help...

Winamp: Free full version: View immediately upon launching:



MediaMonkey Gold: I paid for it, but view should be same in free version AFAIK and this is what I prefer it to look like immediately upon launching:



MediaMonkey: alternate default view:



MediaMonkey alternate default view:


MediaMonkey alternate default view:

[Marvin the Martian]

@lestatar.....some funky colors you got there....my MM Gold looks boring in comparison.

[lestatar]

^ lol...nah, not funky. More like old school - green on black makes me remember simpler computing days. Plus I find that combination very easy to read.

[eboyer93]

My foobar2000 looks like some of those:

[Marvin the Martian]

foobar, you say?