Having iTunes is like being married to a morbidly obese woman who constantly demands more food, and I am like the feeder. I’d like to leave her, but I just don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s getting more and more difficult just to wake her. She is slow and bloated, and I’m pretty sure the Recycle Bin has grafted onto her skin. On top of that, she has the gall to demand even more features every week or so until I finally comply.
That’s it. I’ve taken all I can stands and I can’t stands no more. iTunes has rendered me but a shell of a man. I am going to reclaim my life.
Where do I start?
Ideally, I’d like to have a media player that fulfills these criteria, in order of greatest to least importance:
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Lightweight - It shouldn’t hog too much memory, and it should boot up relatively quickly.
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Playlist support/Organization - I like all of the organization options I have in iTunes. For example, I currently keep my library organized by artist primarily, and secondarily arranged in order of album release. For example, The New Pornographers appear just before Nina Simone, but the Pr0ns’ Mass Romantic (2000) appears before Electric Version (2003), not in the default alphabetical order. I’d like to be able to duplicate this effect. As for playlists, it’d be nice to have smart playlists akin to iTunes, but not necessary.
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iPod support - This one isn’t a deal breaker. It’d be nice, but I wouldn’t mind loading up iTunes every once in a while to synch my iPod. It would suck to have to maintain separate libraries though.
Everything else is superfluous. I don’t think this is too much to ask.
To be honest, I do like iTunes. It does what I ask of it very well, just not very quickly. Ideally, I’d be able to just strip away all the features that I don’t want, and it would run blazing fast. That should give you a good idea of what I’m looking for.
Winamp, foobar2000 and MediaMonkey will all use less resources than iTunes and all will support with different amounts of work an iPod. Foobar is the lightest and by far the most adaptable, MediaMonkey has the best media library and Winamp is a very adaptable (if a little bloated) all rounder. I’d like to recommend Songbird, but it still isn’t usable as your main media player (it’s only at v0.3)
I’m in the same place as the OP.
If I uninstall iTunes, will any/all of these programs automatically ‘find’ my existing library, or will it take extensive setup? Any problems with filetypes? (I have a mix of mp3s, m4ps and aifs.)
Also, will they automatically ‘find’ my iPod when its plugged into the USB, and play it in shuffle mode?
Also, do they import from CD as smoothly as iTunes does?
I assume you’re using Windows, yes? The Mac version of iTunes is a very different animal (and has far fewer alternatives).
My vote is for Foobar2000… IF you’re willing to take the time to learn its intricacies. You might say it’s like the Linux of audio players: a bit of a learning curve, but will do everything you want it to do, and do it better than anything else. By “the time it takes,” I should specify that it took me maybe 3-4 hours of casually toying with it to get it to do everything I wanted it to do, and I’m not particularly tech-savvy by the standards of this board. It’ll do a lot more on top of that, if you want it to. It can also play a huge variety of formats (far more than what iTunes offers).
Any half-decent player these days should find your existing library without trouble when you install it.
…also, iTunes is, as far as I know, the only player with built-in iPod support. However, both FB2K and WinAmp have plugins for use with the iPod. Others probably do as well, but that’s what I’m familiar with. And both will import from CDs with no trouble.