So... what's so bad about iTunes anyway?

[MSIC]

Can't believe no one has mentioned Songbird.

Songbird is indeed very good - it was my default player on Ubuntu for 2 years (from about 0.3 onwards) however of course on Linux development has recently been halted to focus on Win and Mac development... shame, but I hope that it does well.

For those who havent used it, it's the 'Firefox' of media players, both in terms of what it aspires to be figuratively, but also that it's an open, modular-type structure with some very effective add-ons.

It's also worth pointing out that for those, who like myself, actually get on with the layout of iTunes, Songbird nearly mirrors the look and feel. It's a very easy switch to make, and you can even skin the theme (like i said, like firefox) to make it look visually even more like iTunes.

[CaptainCrash]

Songbird is indeed very good

Songbird currently seems to have a nasty habit of rewriting your file tags without so much as a by-your-leave, unless you're aware of its behaviour and take steps to prevent it before letting it anywhere near your music collection. It seems this is by design, and not a bug.

To my mind, this is totally unforgivable - no application should *ever* alter or delete your data unless you give it explicit instructions to do so.

[dangel]

AIMP2 is a pretty ugly looking abomination.

Don't hold back love

To be fair it's a fully skinnable abomination

I think it's fair to say unless you were a winamp fan of old then AIMP2 is hard going though! Shame, as functionality/footprint wise it's really great.

[megah0]

[Unique]

apart from the size of itunes, and all the crap that it installs, which i can live with, as i just disable it all from running, and then restart it on the occasions (i only use it infrequently as it's such a PITA) i need to update my iphone, the main things i don't like are the lack of file format support such as flac, ape, shn, as i have a large amount of music stored as flac, and i can't put that on my iphone unless i use something else to convert it etc first (or media monkey can do it on the fly)

the other thing i hate is that my previous archos mp3 player needed no software, it was just drag and drop, as if i was using a flashdrive or external HD. it played music in alphanumeric order based on file name and supported folders, thus i had all my music ordered on my HD such as GENRE/ALBUM FOLDER/filename.mp3, and could just drag and drop the albums i wanted on. when i was ripping stuff since the 90s i never bothered with tags or proper filenames as i mostly ripped stuff with a pc that wasn't connected online, and in a lot of cases the filesnames were just 01_artist_albumname.mp3 without the real song names. as itunes doesn't support folders, you have to have stuff tagged at least semi properly in order to avoid songs not playing in order, and i want to listen to albums, not shuffle play. i don't want to hear part of the dark side of the moon abruptly end and then get a segue play from a rap album and then play an 80 minute dance mix. i have eclectic taste, but not like that

due to the large collection i have of already ripped music that isn't tagged properly, it means that any time i want to change my iphone music i have to sit and play around with tags and google up artwork first. and then it changes the files themselves so i can't look at my music folders and see what i last added, as any amended tags means the folder dates change

if it could play flac, ape, shn or do what media monkey does and convert on the fly to mp3 for the player, then it would be much better, but using folders instead of tags would be even better, as the problem with media monkey converting all my flacs to mp3 on the fly to my iphone is that i would have had to sit and tag the lot first, when they were already perfectly arranged in folders

i find it a bit ironic that people call itunes bloatware (i'm not disagreeing with them) as it takes 300mb+ when they have huge HD's full of media files. personally i prefer winamp over all over music players. foobar is also pretty good for some of the tagging and converting type stuff it can do, but i prefer the smaller screensize that winamp gives, that still lets me see the long list of files i have queued up, and i can move and delete and add files on the fly

what's also a bit annoying is that the ipod classic is pretty much the only large capacity mp3 player, as most other companies have either went the way of flash memory, with 64gb the largest size, and you are paying well over the odds for it, or alternatively the archos models are larger "media" players with bigger screens. i don't want to watch videos on a tiny 3.5" or 7" screen. they could stick a 500gb 2.5" drive in one of them things instead of an expensive 1.8" drive. considering the ipod shuffles and other usb stick size drives are so tiny, you would think someone could make a 2.5" HD based player that wasn't much bigger than a 2.5" caddy, and you could buy and install your own drive and let it play all the music formats and sort by folder and have a large capacity player for under £100

[kellyharding]

I find it ok, it can be a bit cumbersome sometimes (but i have 35k+ tracks), but i also use it on OS X on and old G4 iBook... so most of the slowness is down to the hardware often i find rather than the software.

It works well with my iPod (obviously), and generally just works how i want it to,apart perhaps from tag management, its a bit woeful at that. But the things it can't do usually can be done with applescripts (on OS X).

[TooNice]

I think it's fair to say unless you were a winamp fan of old then AIMP2 is hard going though! Shame, as functionality/footprint wise it's really great.

I was a fan of old school WinAmp (mainly 2.x), and having done a Google image search of AIMP2, I see the resemblance. But I am happy with my customised Foobar2k setup and don't think I'll be changing soon. Here's basic Foobar.

[Behemoth]

I've been looking for a new way of syncing with my iPod touch too because I'm getting cheesed off with iTunes and the way it installs 3 other programs that I don't want. I don't want quicktime, I hate it, its just another piece of useless software that I make certain I disable so that it doesn't bother me when I'm using my PC.

I used to like iTunes when I got my first iPod 5 years ago, but now I don't. I just want to be able to add my music to my device without any hassle.

Things that its done to my PC recently :

Crashed when syncing to my iPod
Crashed when pausing music
Crashed when quitting with music still playing
Crashed when I tried to access the iTunes store

I have to say however that I still use WinAmp to play my music and can't fault it, that said I always install it with a very basic layout no extra skins, no layout etc.

[funke_munke]

To be honest I quite like newer versions of Winamp and have been using it since the early days. If anyone can find me a better visualizer I'd be interested to see it. Milkdrop is definately one for the psychadelic lovers out there. I just find Itunes ugly and slow. And it comes with the added bonus of extra services for all those megs of ram you dont need .

[yoohoo8]

i learnt about songbird now..gonna check it out !

[yoohoo8]

I guess it's time that iTunes have some competition.
Hope this also brings the lower price of mp3.
Few months ago, I managed to purchase some songs from Amazon since they have a better deal on the mp3 albums..I hope Songbird is commercialized in moments to come, esp attracting people with the skinnable interface for user personalized.

[Calmeister]

I hate it because on Windows it feels like Apple intentionally made it godawful as just another reason to say "Oh, it's because Macs are better and faster etc."

It nom nom noms on my RAM, takes an age to start up, crashes when it does start up and decides to install three other equally bad programs whenever it wants to update!

That is why I don't like iTunes. But I still use it. Why do I do this to myself?

[MaddAussie]

Problem be simple: Apple can't/won't write decent Windows apps. It's the lotus notes of music management.

this made me lol muchly as ive just had the weekend from hell on a notes to exchange migration

Can't believe no one has mentioned Songbird.

+1

also metatogger is great for keeping things organised
http://www.luminescence-software.org...mid=53&lang=en

[Powderhound]

I find the most intuitive media player to be Rhythmbox, but sadly that's Linux only. I love the really slick way in which it lets you quickly search your library by narrowing down multiple parameters.

[Barrichello]

http://amarok.kde.org/ or http://www.getsongbird.com/ for me.