Music Organising Software, alternatives to iTunes etc

[Chorlton]

At the risk of asking a silly question, what's wrong with it? My ex uses it and it seems fine to me.

it ripped apart 80gb of my mp3s lovingly hadn reared in their little directories by album and flung them across my hard drive organising them by a method of its own making - the worst of it is when i go on messageboards expecting help or even sympathy the most i get is 'aye, but you could have switched that option off'.

 

[tarannau]

Yeah, but you could have just turned that option off. it's not even hidden away deep in the read me somewhere, it's a blinking obvious check box option.



I never really understand the problem with itunes. It's just taken over 80gigs mp3s off 4 separate hds, consolidated them automatically into one file store, organised by album and artist.

Since then I've run some freeware to eliminate dupes, with the excellent MPFreaker (shareware) churning through my library overnight, adding album covers, lyrics, year of release and other info to the vast majority of the tracks. It's even automatically set up playlists for each individual album.

Pretty effortless really, albeit I'm on a mac.

 

[Firky]

http://www.thejukeboxer.com/

The JukeBox'er - the ultimate home jukebox system.


Are you also tired of having all your CDs laying around, every time you are having a party?


With The JukeBox'er, your problem is solved. Rip all your CDs to your hard drive as MP3 using the build-in CD Ripper, and let The JukeBox'er do the job. The only thing you need is a mouse and a monitor. You can hide away the keyboard and the noisy PC.


You can also listen to Internet Radio (www.SHOUTcast.com and asx supported), play music videos ( avi and mpeg ) and select your preferred visualization.


It's very user-friendly, easy to configure and nice looking too.


Your guests will enjoy selecting their favourite music with ease.


The main features are:


Jukebox functionality (queue and random play )

MP3, WMA, OGG, Wav, Flac, Aac, Ac3, Alac, Ape, Mpc, Ofr, Spx, Tta and Wv support.

Karaoke player - MP3+CDG supported

CD Ripper with MP3 Encoder and CDDB functionality

ID3v1 and ID3v2 support. Includes ID3 Tag editor.

Playlist Manager with TOP25 feature.

Create your own skins.

Internet radio - Hundreds of stations to choose from ( internet streaming )

Video player ( avi, mpg and mpeg )

Lots of visualizations ( supports sonique )

Display of cover images

Multiple languages - English, Danish, Deutsch, French etc.

 

[Chorlton]

Yeah, but you could have just turned that option off.

 

[Hoss]

Software to organise your music?

I'm transferring all of music files over to the new Mac and have noticed that the files are not as tidy as I thought.

Anyone know a good piece of free software that will sort media files?

Mediamonkey comes recommended but it is only for PC.

E2A: I can't do it on the PC as it is on it's death bed and everything takes about 1000 years to do.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Er, well, iTunes? It sorts everything into artist/album directories unless you tell it not to.

 

[ovaltina]

*£"$%ing iTunes - is there an alternative?

I'm having a bit of trouble with iTunes, which is no longer recognising my ipod.

After putting a few dozen CDs onto iTunes yesterday (win 7 pc) I tried to sync with the ipod classic, but itunes said the device was corrupt and could not be read.

I let itunes do a factory reset and software update on the ipod, and then tried to sync again this morning. It copied about 10 albums and then said the ipod couldn't be recognised and needed to be reformatted for windows.

I've spent about 5 hours trying to fix this now and am getting exasperated. I upgraded to the latest version of itunes and it put a load of other crap on the machine - 200mb - and is running very slowly.

I defragged the hard drive to see if that would help, but still no joy.

Is there a programme that can import my entire itunes library (80gb) and sync painlessly with the ipod? I tried songbird but apparently ipod sync is no longer supported

Me + iTunes +

 

[editor]

Yes! Media Monkey is a far superior music player/organiser (although your problem may be with the iPod and not iTunes).


Ape eats Apple: Why MediaMonkey is an iTunes killer
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-9933993-12.html

 

[FridgeMagnet]

It might be that your iPod actually is fucked of course.

 

[ovaltina]

Ah, tried that too but it stopped importing the library after about 500 tracks - maybe the settings were wrong?

 

[Crispy]

itunes on windows is shit it started bloated and crap, went through a period of being quite good and has gone back to being bloated and crap again

I blame the iphone - they make itunes do so much now that it's become unwieldy. needs stripping back or separating into multiple products.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Did you reformat it? It's not the same as factory restore.

 

[ovaltina]

It might be that your iPod actually is fucked of course.

But it was fine until I tried to sync... it's about two years old and gets bashed about a bit but there was nothing to indicate it was on the way out...

Meanwhile, it's syncing again - although it might have frozen because the spinning arrows have stopped.

 

[ovaltina]

Did you reformat it? It's not the same as factory restore.

Do you have to do that in itunes or can I get windows to do it?

 

[kained&able]

.

 

[editor]

iTunes is a dreadful, dreadful product on Windows. MediaMonkey is free, but it's well worth paying for the full version.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Do you have to do that in itunes or can I get windows to do it?

Ah actually it seems that iTunes does it as part of a factory restore.

 

[ovaltina]

iTunes is a dreadful, dreadful product on Windows. MediaMonkey is free, but it's well worth paying for the full version.

I'd happily remove itunes and never let it near my PC again but MM didn't import all of my library, just a couple of hundred tracks - might be because it was the free version? Am going to Google a bit more...

 

[ovaltina]

So when I left to take the dog for a walk it was still syncing, and when i got back there was an error message saying the disc was unreadable. It got as far as the Bs. I'm going to uninstall and try media monkey, which means losing about 20gb of new uploads.

 

[WWWeed]

Is there a programme that can import my entire itunes library (80gb) and sync painlessly with the ipod? I tried songbird but apparently ipod sync is no longer supported :

not painlessly no. if you dont like this shit dont buy propriety apple products!

sorry I wish I could be more help!

 

[ovaltina]

not painlessly no. if you dont like this shit dont buy propriety apple products!

sorry I wish I could be more help!

Well I'm trying MediaMonkey again and it's going well so far - has found 20,000 tracks and imported 5,000, and it's still finding more tracks, so I reckon it might find all 30,000 ish tracks in the itunes library. I was close to wiping the whole thing and starting again but that might not be necessary.

If the ipod doesn't sync with MM then I guess it really is fucked, which means I'll have to use the netbook with an external hard drive as a media player until I can afford to get another MP3 player.

"It just works" my arse.

 

[XerxesVargas]

not painlessly no. if you dont like this shit dont buy propriety apple products!

this is not quite true. It depends on whether you save your music to iTunes as AAC or MP3. The default is AAC, however if you have saved them as MP3's then all you need do is either point your new player at the Itune folders or you may have to drag and drop them to a new location.

If you have saved them as AAC then is proper arse ache to get them into a format to be used elsewhere.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Any decent player made in the last few years should play AAC. Even my old N73 played them.

 

[XerxesVargas]

Any decent player made in the last few years should play AAC. Even my old N73 played them.

Or really? Didn't realise that. I use itunes but I know that Windows Media Player can't play em. So I extrapolated.

Then surely that's even better? Just an import of the data to the new player?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

That would be because Windows Media Player is a load of old pony. (Even it will play AAC if you install a plugin or something.)

 

[XerxesVargas]

Of course it is, utter shite.

I quite like itunes mind - never had any probs with it at all (and no I'm no apple fan boy).

 

[ovaltina]

Desperate times call for desperate measures - I've reinstalled Windows (a few other things were annoying me) and put MM on it. It's now happily copying across what's left of my mp3s

The player on MM is really nice, makes the most out of my little USB speakers and makes Kate Bush sound top notch, which of course she is

 

[ExtraRefined]

Foobar 2k is the one true choice

 

[mitochondria]

^^
nothing comes close

 

[Sunray]

I had exactly the same issue with an old iPod I had. The disk was kippered. Get to x number of tracks and then would stop letting me put more on.

There is a disk scan on an iPod that can repair the disk sometimes.

Hold down Menu and Play until it reboots and you see the Apple logo. As soon as you see the Apple logo, press Rew/Fw/Menu and the center menu "Select" button all at the same time. That will start the full scan.