Doji Grovesai

Play That Funky Music

So the reference is about a week old. Big deal. Over at Real Life, Greg made his little funny about iTunes and MusicMatch Jukebox. And of course, there is WinAmp which you couldn't avoid unless you were living under a rock. And only then because you had no internet connection.

I figured I'd see what iTunes was about, since the iPod is the most widely advertised piece of Apple product out there, and iTunes is its companion. I've ended up with three media players, and no clear decision on which I like best. (And by the way...we are pretending that Windows Media Player does not exist)

Since WinAmp came first, I'll start there. Being the first, it's still landmark, and has continued to at least inspire the standard for audio playback, even if version 3 isn't that great. If people still use 2.x, then that has to say something for the product. It is the bare bones. Add files, take away files, mess with the equilizer, create playlists. You can skin it if you want. There are lots of people with the time to have probably done it for you, if you look hard enough. When I started with winamp, it was great except that my playlist files and my actual music files had to be in the same folder. You couldn't really organize music that way. This, at least, to my anal-retentive, highly subjective standards. But it provides everything you need to make a good player, and it doesn't take up that much room.

But apparantly, bigger is better. MusicMatch Jukebox is a piece of work. And you can take that phrase in both directions, as they apply equally. On the negatives, you have a crappy burning and label printing utility packaged with it. And it really does suck. You can't burn any CD, and have it really function unless you play it in the computer, or an MP3 compatible CD player. Even if you are making a regular audio CD. The visualizations blow, and skinning it is a chore (you must make all three views to make the skin work). The Portable plug-in is ok. You can go to the site, download the plug-in for whichever portable you are using, and now you can directly port MusicMatch playlists. Wee. It's actually a pretty nice feature. I use it with my iRock (can't afford an iPod), and it works way better than the software that came with the player. I list it with the negatives only because the interface isn't very intuitive, in that you can only select songs that you have on playlists. You can't just grab tracks from your library. Easy way out: just make a playlist that has everything in it. But then you lose organization, and we already discussed my anal-retentive habits. So even the workaround is a pain. Negative. And it costs money. That sucks too. Well, it doesn't suck, because it weighs in (at least when I bought it) at a scant $24.99. The "unlimited upgrades," however, only apply to that version number. If I want my update for 8.1, I have to fork over the price (I think it's $30 now). Another negative.

The positives, however, are pretty rad. You can change the organization in the library interface with just a right click, and it sorts by whichever category you want. So you can have "folders" by artist, album, genre, whatever. Then you can expand and close them at will, and still sort in track order, length order, what have you by folders. My anal retentive organization habits have been satisfied. :-) Adding tracks is pretty easy, and changing track tags is a snap. Also, if you realize that the CDDB you got your info from is wrong when you rip a CD, you can just select all the tracks, and change whatever you want. It then applies it to all of them, and even changes the filenames if you want. If you move your files, or change the names manually, you can "repair broken links" and the player will verify all your music files, and if it can't find one, it asks where it is. I did this after moving several folders within my 10GB library, and the whole process took maybe 5 minutes. Then there's the feature I love most: AutoDJ. All you do is create 3 rules for the player to select music. X amount of time, selected from these genres, but not these artists, and not those albums. Bang, you've got X amount of constant play, without having to select the tracks yourself. It's also a good way to hear some stuff that you may not remember you have.

Then there's iTunes. I still don't know what to make of it. From the get go, it looks like a spiffy version of WinAmp. Has the essentials (plus radio features), but no organization. But the search feature is beyond cool, and the "browse" feature is pretty neat, too. Like a Mac, it's pretty useful, but might prove too "different" to really want to get used to. But it's free, and (as of now) worlds better than WinAmp. If iTunes were skinnable, that would be cool, because it looks awfully out of place on my "Windows Classic" themed desktop. And I won't make my computer look like OSX unless it's a Mac running OSX. But I am very much impressed with what I'm seeing (and hearing) right now. Maybe you can make an "autoDJ plug-in" for iTunes...