Without wanting to sound like a viral marketer, I'm very impressed. More features than both of them combined. Better ripper and burner (supposedly also burns dvds). Superior stat tracking. Imports play counts, ratings and play dates from iTunes or WMP. Auto ID3 tag from freedb or Amazon, including album art! Better visualizations. Better smart playlists. Export statistics and artist/album/file lists to a number of different formats like html. Takes all the same plug-ins that WinAmp 2 takes. Synch with any mp3 player, not just iPods. Damn, man! I didn't think anything would break me from my love affair with iTunes, but so far, so good. iTunes look is superior than the tree format used here, imo, but otherwise this looks like the king of mp3 managers/players for "power users." The official spiel:
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MediaMonkey - Little known iTunes/Winamp killer?
- Thread starter VALIS
- Start date
- Status
M3wThr33 said:
Any way to mark albums/tracks as compilations like in iTunes? That's the only drawback I see so far.
And I would guess Audioscrobbler/LastFM works fine with it, though I haven't tried yet.
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More coolness:
It does my #1 desired feature missing from iTunes - automatically watches your music folders for adds/moves/changes. YES!
Also, you can search CDuniverse, AmazonUK and and quite a few others fo information and album art on top of Amazon. Excellent feature, extremely easy to add cover art to the files now.
M3wThr33 said:
MediaMonkey will recognize iTunes' esoteric method of logging playcounts and star ratings, carry them over, and save them to the MUSIC FILE?
I had to research/figure out a rather contrived way of maintaining my ratings (and currently have no way of keeping my playcounts), and hate iTunes for it.
What about if I replace the music files with better quality rips? Or change the filenames and/or folder names for accuracy?
Mejilan said:
I know it imports all of those, but not sure if it saves them to the music file or its own database. When you right click a file and choose Properties, one of the tabs has inputs for play count and last played, so perhaps it does save this info to the file. Not positive, though.
Oh, it also does half-stars (1/1.5/2/2.5/etc.) instead of iTunes 1/2/3/4/5 system. Why iTunes could never implement this simple feature, I don't know.
Thank you for responding. I'm perfectly content with iTunes' 5-star system, since I only use 2 ratings anyway: 0 and 5.
iTunes has support for a "Grouping" tag, written directly to the file, which usually goes empty. I currently use it to store the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, each pertaining to a star rating (or no rating), and thus can I "write the rating to the actual file", so to speak.
Should MediaMonkey also rely on a proprietary database, would it at least support using a Grouping tag to "backup" the ratings from the database to the file?
Thanks in advance.
iTunes has support for a "Grouping" tag, written directly to the file, which usually goes empty. I currently use it to store the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, each pertaining to a star rating (or no rating), and thus can I "write the rating to the actual file", so to speak.
Should MediaMonkey also rely on a proprietary database, would it at least support using a Grouping tag to "backup" the ratings from the database to the file?
Thanks in advance.
Teknopathetic
Member
Hmm. Gives me a good "Amar0k" feeling. I'll check it out.
There's a script for MediaMonkey called MonkeyRok that gives it an Amarok look and some features.
http://www.dustypixels.com/blog/monkeyrok-alpha-mediamonkey-script/#latest
http://www.dustypixels.com/blog/monkeyrok-alpha-mediamonkey-script/#latest
Pikelet said:
Yes.
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I was playing around with plug-ins and scripts for this thing until 6am. New toy syndrome. It has a very active development community and active messageboards in general:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/index.php
Here's how I have mine looking at the moment. I'm still tinkering to try and make every inch of space functional. Everything can be dragged and dropped to where you like.
The Amazon auto-tag screen.
jobber
Would let Tony Parker sleep with his wife
VALIS said:Yes.
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I was playing around with plug-ins and scripts for this thing until 6am. New toy syndrome. It has a very active development community and active messageboards in general:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/index.php
Here's how I have mine looking at the moment. I'm still tinkering to try and make every inch of space functional. Everything can be dragged and dropped to where you like.
The Amazon auto-tag screen.
so have you figured out how to let it auto-tag your music? I have a lot of music and i'd hate to tag each and every album. WMP 11 did 1/2 of it but the album art is hit or miss.
UltraMagnanimous
Member
Messed with it for a couple of minutes and I'm not liking it. The search function just blows, too much database oriented. In Winamp I can press J or f3 and fill in a combination of the name artist of the artist and the name of the track, wich comes in handy when you've got tracks with the same name etc. Plus Winamp also searches in the filename of the track so you can still find stuff that isn't tagged correctly. I can't search for albums... This might be a nice alternative to iTunes users but it sure as hell can't beat Winamp.
edit: I can't do previous track on shuffle... what a load of crap.
edit: I can't do previous track on shuffle... what a load of crap.
__Andrea__
Member
broadwayrock
Member
UltraMagnanimous said:
Ive been waiting ages for a preview. If this gets the extension support that firefox does then Songbird could be a great thing.
Lets just hope it doesnt rape the memory resources that firefox does.
Christopher
Member
iTunes is simple and clean I don't rage agaisnt the man.
CajoleJuice
Member
Only problem is that its a memory hog and I like to listen to music as I play games most of the time.Christopher said:
MediaMonkey uses Winamp plugins. Remember that.
What I did was download these Winamp shortcut programs and assign them to the keys on my media keyboard. Works perfectly.
Using some old plugins you can get it to work with Videos, but MediaMonkey is essentially MusicMonkey, sadly.
The music data is mainly stored in an Access file. However a large majority of it is also stored in the music file itself. I recommend storing album art to each mp3 because that's how iTunes and the iPod recognize them.
It can import playcounts/rating from iTunes as well.
If searching sucks for you, you aren't doing it right. No selection searches all available fields, then you can use a magnifying glass to specify.
Protip: To sort, click the column tag at the top.
Protip: To seconday sort, hold control then click.
So to sort by Artist, then Genre, click "Artist" then hold control and hit "Genre"
You can also set 3 custom fields. I used one of them to hold the "Featuring" data of a song because my lord, far too many songs I have use that and it clutters up the artist list.
I'll post my Auto-Organize Line when I get home. Remember, you can use something similar to the (?
operator from C++ in this for advanced sorting.
The SysTray icon uses gestures. Using the left-mouse button, you can drag to do a variety of things.
Up/Down change volume. Left/Right change track and single-clicks = Play/Pause.
Browse the categories on the left side and it can show you Files to Edit. This includes Unsynchornized Music (Where it hasn't saved to the file recently), duplicate titles and music missing genre/album, etc.
Also, under File->Create Report you can switch Artist/Title data (Sometimes it gets screwed up) and have smart Capitilization.
What I did was download these Winamp shortcut programs and assign them to the keys on my media keyboard. Works perfectly.
Using some old plugins you can get it to work with Videos, but MediaMonkey is essentially MusicMonkey, sadly.
The music data is mainly stored in an Access file. However a large majority of it is also stored in the music file itself. I recommend storing album art to each mp3 because that's how iTunes and the iPod recognize them.
It can import playcounts/rating from iTunes as well.
If searching sucks for you, you aren't doing it right. No selection searches all available fields, then you can use a magnifying glass to specify.
Protip: To sort, click the column tag at the top.
Protip: To seconday sort, hold control then click.
So to sort by Artist, then Genre, click "Artist" then hold control and hit "Genre"
You can also set 3 custom fields. I used one of them to hold the "Featuring" data of a song because my lord, far too many songs I have use that and it clutters up the artist list.
I'll post my Auto-Organize Line when I get home. Remember, you can use something similar to the (?
operator from C++ in this for advanced sorting.The SysTray icon uses gestures. Using the left-mouse button, you can drag to do a variety of things.
Up/Down change volume. Left/Right change track and single-clicks = Play/Pause.
Browse the categories on the left side and it can show you Files to Edit. This includes Unsynchornized Music (Where it hasn't saved to the file recently), duplicate titles and music missing genre/album, etc.
Also, under File->Create Report you can switch Artist/Title data (Sometimes it gets screwed up) and have smart Capitilization.
Learn2read
Member
I've been using MediaMonkey for about a year now...I even use it to sync up with my iPod.
If it was possible to have sex with computer software, I would have sex with MediaMonkey.
If it was possible to have sex with computer software, I would have sex with MediaMonkey.
Learn2read
Member
jobber said:
you can auto-tag from free-db, auto-tag from filename, or auto-tag from amazon (including album covers)
Learn2read
Member
Mejilan said:
I suppose it would be...I found iTunes to be a bit limiting , I had no problem against it, but I manage my collection (18,000+ songs and counting) with MM and just don't see the same amount of control with iTunes so I've don't use it much anymore. I've disabled the auto-start feature for when I connect my iPod. Although the ITMS is still my primary legal online music source. Perhaps someone else could give you better advice, but I found using both of them at the same time a bit troublesome (iTunes always wanted to hijack my iPod and music collection back from MM now matter how much I wanted it not too...it's clean interface also means it's there's less options to tell it to **** off)
Learn2read
Member
Mejilan said:
Hmm...I'm not sure exactly what advice to give you. I'd recommend downloading MediaMonkey and taking it for a spin anyways. You may not use it as you primary mediaplayer, but you could use it as a secondary one and also as a tool to get your music collection in shape. Having both at the same time certainly won't make your computer explode or anything, it's just that iTunes tends to like to through it's weight around, especially if your using an iPod.
Happy tagging!
Look for "iTunes Library Updater"
It'll scan the directories you tell it and automatically update the iTunes database with them. So however you tag/sort/organize with MM, iTunes will be updated with it when you run that.
It also rocks because iTLU can automatically delete all the songs in iTunes that link to deleted music.
It'll scan the directories you tell it and automatically update the iTunes database with them. So however you tag/sort/organize with MM, iTunes will be updated with it when you run that.
It also rocks because iTLU can automatically delete all the songs in iTunes that link to deleted music.
Dragona Akehi
Retired
M3wThr33 said:
STOP THE PRESSES. I MUST KNOW: Is there a MediaMonkey for OSX, and if so does it also take Winamp Plugins? If true, this is the greatest news ever. .spc, .psf .usf playback on the same program as for MP3s on iMac HERE I COME.
Media Monkey doesn't have network share. You can go onto the forum and request it. I'm sure he could look at the Limewire source for an idea. RSS feeds are also planned for the next version.
No Mac version. Sorry. This is basically just a glorified Microsoft Access database manager.
As for tagging, get to know how it works using the system and it will work wonders. I'll be going home soon enough and I can explain it.
This is how my music is organized:
E:\MEDIA\MUSIC\$if(<Album>,Albums\$if(<Label Grouping>,#<Label Grouping>,<Album Artist>)\<Album>\<Track#:2> - ,No Album\)<Artist>$if(<Featuring>, feat. <Featuring>) - <Title>
This might be a bit hard to understand. Basically the first one seperates the Non-Album songs into a different folder. The cut off basically just changes the folder (Album or No Album). Then it sees if it's under a specific Music Label (Like Toshiba-Emi's Dancemania). Otherwise it just puts it under the Album Artist name. Finally for the filename itself, it adds the forced 2 digit track number, artist, optional Featuring Artist and finally the song name.
No Mac version. Sorry. This is basically just a glorified Microsoft Access database manager.
As for tagging, get to know how it works using the system and it will work wonders. I'll be going home soon enough and I can explain it.
This is how my music is organized:
E:\MEDIA\MUSIC\$if(<Album>,Albums\$if(<Label Grouping>,#<Label Grouping>,<Album Artist>)\<Album>\<Track#:2> - ,No Album\)<Artist>$if(<Featuring>, feat. <Featuring>) - <Title>
This might be a bit hard to understand. Basically the first one seperates the Non-Album songs into a different folder. The cut off basically just changes the folder (Album or No Album). Then it sees if it's under a specific Music Label (Like Toshiba-Emi's Dancemania). Otherwise it just puts it under the Album Artist name. Finally for the filename itself, it adds the forced 2 digit track number, artist, optional Featuring Artist and finally the song name.
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