My Itunes Alternative, MediaMonkey (2007-03-17)

2007-03-17 00:00

My Itunes Alternative, MediaMonkey

One of my main concerns after receiving an ipod as a gift recently was the ipod's attachment to the itunes software. I have heard many bad things about the windows version of the itunes software and I wanted to avoid installing it, so one of my goals was to find a decent itunes alternative. I first used Winamp to load my ipod, and I found it's features to be lacking. Winamp's library feature isn't as straightforward as I would like, and it had a few bugs in the process of syncing my nano - it definitely doesn't fulfill the job of an itunes alternative. After a bit more searching I found a free program called MediaMonkey. It is an ipod style media player with a song library, playlists, search function, and most importantly, the ability to easily interface with mp3 devices, including the ipod. I was able to easily import my existing mp3's into the media library and sync it with my nano flawlessly. Since finding it, I have been using it as my preferred itunes alternative. I also tried out the option to "Auto-Tag" my mp3 files from Amazon.com's data - my files already had id3 tags, but I was hoping to also attach album art to display on the nano screen. After doing this for all of my music I soon realized that Amazon's data is not reliable - my songs suddenly had many misspellings in artist and song names. In the future I will likely find a better option for attaching album art, and I don't suggest using the amazon auto-tag option found in mediamonkey. Beyond this 3rd party spelling problem, I have had no problems at all with the MediaMonkey software and my nano - it may be slightly less robust than itunes, but it works wonders if all you want is a non-intrusive itunes alternative to load songs onto an ipod.

- Kevin
Kevin (at) Upcsite (dot) Net

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