fucking itunes blew away all my music

[BrotherLovesDub]

Originally Posted by froopy seal

But I can, even multiply so: J.River Media Jukebox, Guayadeque, Rhythmbox, Amarok, Winamp... In fact, name any player with basic library functions that doesn't forcibly reorganise your music collection in a shitty way, and you have a 'better one'.

Can you just briefly explain why each one of these are superior to iTunes. And why have you tried out 5 different apps? Seems like if the first one you tried was better than iTunes, you would have stuck with that.

[stimpee]

Originally Posted by bas_I_am

ive got raid on my important stuff

hah music IS my important stuff. i think i have that and photos RAIDed. the rest i dont care about.

[BrotherLovesDub]

Originally Posted by stimpee

hah music IS my important stuff. i think i have that and photos RAIDed. the rest i dont care about.

Yeah, me too. I back up Music to an external and have my home folder backing up to CrashPlan throughout the day.

[froopy seal]

Originally Posted by BrotherLovesDub

Can you just briefly explain why each one of these are superior to iTunes.

Originally Posted by froopy seal

Just don't find it intuitive [...].

That's one of the things meant: Last time I had a look at it, the synchronizing/copying from iTunes to iPod resulted in a massive disorganisation, which prevented me from finding certain music files on the iPod.

But for me as someone who likes to have control over small details of organisation, files and software, Apple usually is too restricting.

I'm generally a blockhead and control freak regarding my data. Additionally, I don't like the extremely closed, all-proprietary spirit of Apple (or other manufacturers).

Originally Posted by BrotherLovesDub

And why have you tried out 5 different apps? Seems like if the first one you tried was better than iTunes, you would have stuck with that.

Are you serious? Why should I stick with anything just for being better than one product I didn't like? Why should I assume that the second (or third...) product is serving my purposes best, especially when there are other, commonly used, highly recommended alternatives I haven't yet tried? What's more, I recently switched OSs, so I had to have a look around for compatible software.

Originally Posted by stimpee

hah music IS my important stuff. i think i have that and photos RAIDed. the rest i dont care about.

I cherish my music, too. That's why I always have it in my backpack, stored encrypted on an external drive. Nonetheless, I do value my personal data (documents, e-mails, photos) even higher, largely because I have most of the important music on CDs sitting on a shelf.

[BrotherLovesDub]

How does iTunes control your data? Learn to use the application before you bitch about it. Uncheck 'Keep Library Organized' and you can control where your files live. Also, I use about 20 free, user created scripts for iTunes to manage metadata. If it were extremely closed, as you say, I wouldn't be able to do that. iTunes is the best media management / playing software available. Songbird had a shot but they failed.

[stimpee]

I must say that I dont use iTunes for my music library either. I just dont like it. But I know its a different beast on the mac. On the PC its bloated and overbearing, taking over everything media related on your machine (along with Quicktime). Also if you have multiple devices (iphone + ipod) you have to keep a separate library. Getting music OFF your ipod with itunes is also a pain in the ass (not possible with iTunes). Sharing libraries is also not possible I think (as in put the library on the network and have multiple devices read/write to it at the same time). Im sure there are hacks around it but from what Ive read theyre not that good. Windows users should check out Aethyr tho.

Songbird got some investment money from Philips and basically stopped all development on what they were doing to make a custom Philips Songbird (this included stopping Linux builds i think). Now theyre back on track and the amount of devices they support is rapidly increasing. v1.8 is out and its getting better. Still not ready for prime time tho.

Also when I add my NAS to the library it wants to calculate gapless playback for everything. Trying to make it stop just freezes my system. iTunes also takes about 100mb of ram, which is a lot for a music player (Winamp takes about 8-9mb).

I use Media Monkey. Its got a library if you want to use it, but if you dont, you can just browse your NAS and drag n drop to your ipod/iphone. You can also drag stuff out of your iphone. You can put your library on the network and share/add/delete/read/write to it. No need for syncing or authorizing.

If youre gonna use iTunes on the mac though, as BLD mentioned, Applescript is your friend. Check out Dougs Scripts http://dougscripts.com/itunes/
If youve got Windows, then I cant recommend iTunes at all. Try out Media Monkey instead. I actually just use MM for managing my tunes. I dont use it for playing. I still use Winamp. Some habits are hard to break i guess...

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

not much to add here, but i have itunes and it works fine on my pc. I have used it 6 years and don't want to lose all the play count/rating data plus it syncs with my ipod obviously so I've kept it. I have tried other media players though and don't see why people complain so much about apple. I've never really had a problem with it, and my music library is huge. I have it automatically organize my folders and I don't see how that could be any better. I mean it's literally artist/album/song, whats the problem?

[froopy seal]

Originally Posted by BrotherLovesDub

How does iTunes control your data? Learn to use the application before you bitch about it. Uncheck 'Keep Library Organized' and you can control where your files live. Also, I use about 20 free, user created scripts for iTunes to manage metadata. If it were extremely closed, as you say, I wouldn't be able to do that. iTunes is the best media management / playing software available.

What Steve said. ^

Plus, as indicated before, I avoid Apple for closed-mindedness. I know this is an unreasonable, emotional argument so I don't attempt convincing you of my point of view. End of story, from my point of view.

[BrotherLovesDub]

Yeah, I know where you're coming from. I hate people who drive nice cars.

[froopy seal]

Just for the record: I don't generally hate people who use Apple products (or have nice cars).