Warning
This is more of a rant than a legitimate article.
Winamp is old(/paid software sucks) -- Let's get a replacement
what do you use for music management / playback? i used Winamp (winaMP3) for music playing/management until recently, and finally decided to switch (it felt really old). however, it is my reference/benchmark. i want any replacement to do what it did for me (watch multiple folders, playlists, global hotkeys) and more (not feel so dated, be less of a resource hog, natively scrobble to last.fm, allow mass tagging). those are reasonable expectations, right?
Songbird
i switched to Songbird bc i prefer programs that aren't 'free' with a separate 'paid version,' when possible. it had some good reviews/recommendations and lots of neat features...the website was well done. however, it has a horrible UI when it comes to a 'now playing' section // interactive playlist. apparently, this has been a problem for 4 years or so. until it gets fixed, i decided to look elsewhere since that is such a big part of my listen-flow.
foobar2000
i'd downloaded foobar2000 a while ago (when i first heard of songbird) but was turned off by just how bland it looked (especially on Windows XP). after just having installed it again, i'm pretty happy. it seems to be pretty capable. i did spend 20 minutes getting it configured to my liking (added freedb tagger and audio scrobbler for last.fm posting) and making adjustments to the layout. i may look into some various themes...but am a fan, so far.
iTunes
of course, there's itunes. but (like winamp), it feels bloated and i can't stand that it keeps pushing quicktime on me and running services in the background. it probably does most of the stuff i want, though...to be fair.
...thoughts
anyone have any other suggestions?
2 comments:
Just stumbled onto your blog.
I used to use winamp as well, but then switched to itunes for tagging and I liked its navigation, which is simpler. But once I got bored of its look I was looking around for a replacement. Have not found one suitable enough yet so just got a black ui for itunes. Also found the itunes dj to be the now playing playlist equivalent, athough sincce switching songs is pretty easy for menow, i dont use it. It makes for a pretty good facelift and seems more contrasting to my album art.
What should happen is vlc should bring out a player with such a look, so i can use it for movies and music. And hopefully with the now playing album art feature(iTunes best feature), and a now playing playlist(winamps best feature).
And also there is an excellent iTunes lyrics plugin. Most lyrics are available and those not available its simple enough to paste them so some other user can see and edit.
It turns up as a visualizer so its easy to access, and is one of the best modes for lyrics (like the wmp one but that was far tougher to access), and offers customization of fonts etc which does not work for me.
Still its pretty cool.
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