Do you hate iTunes as much as I do? Try Media Monkey.
Ive said it before, I really hate the iTunes software. Ive stayed away from iPods since they were introduced years ago, not because of the software (I didn’t know how bad it was) but because I didn’t want my music to be locked down to one player. Ive had the iPhone now for about a year and a half and have installed iTunes on several machines, through several versions of Windows and each time I would say that iTunes is virus-like with its bugginess.
Right now, Ive been using my Media center PC to sync my phone, well up till a few days ago. I finally got tired of Itunes and decided to check out other options as far as syncing my media with my iPhone. Luckily there are other options and I’m going to let you know about 1 I tried out.
Media Monkey isn’t really new to music management but it has recently added support for the iPhone and iPod touch. The good thing about Media Monkey is that you could possibly get by without having itunes installed at all.
As far as using it with the iPhone. You can synce your music, along with your playlist (there is a shuffle option). You can also search for, manage and sync your Podcast. All without using iTunes. I kept itunes installed but removes all the settings that allows iTunes to start with windows, or when a iPod is plugged in. Then I installed Media Monkey and plugged in my iPhone. I went through all of the settings, which more detail on configuring an iPod (or iPhone) can be found here. and everything was set up. took less than 10 minutes.
The Time consumption came when I went to sync all of my Podcast. MM (MM = Media Monkey) easily brought over all my music and playlist when I imported the iTunes music folder to MM, It also imported all of the podcast. The problem was that since I created that list of podcast within iTunes, there were no Feed address associated with any of the podcast that I listen to (and there are about 30). I had to go through and edit every podcast to add the RSS feed.
As far as finding podcast, there are ways to search using MM. Digital podcast, Podcast.net and Podcast.com are included by default but you can add more directories. Even still, its a lot easier to just go to a website and search for the podcast you want and subscribe by cut n Pasting the RSS feed.
So far, MM has worked out pretty well, Ive only synced my phone once…just to see if it works, but there is a big difference as far as my system performance without having iTunes running.
MM is free, but there is a “gold” edition that cost $19.99. Also, Winamp plugins all work with MM.
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January 29th, 2009 at 7:42 am
I hate iTunes, iPods, but love laptops and notebooks.
We all have to understand that Apple, Microsoft and others try to struggle against pirates. That is why the picture is so sad!
February 1st, 2009 at 8:42 am
I always said that laptop is worth more than those tiny devices such as iPhone, iPods or iTunes
February 1st, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Pretty cool. Personally I’ve always been fond of iTunes, it works great for my needs. However it’s always a huge hassle to sync my other MP3 player, so maybe I’ll give this a shot!
February 1st, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I have used Media Monkey since I broke iTunes back in the summer of 2008. I have quickly fallen in love with it (well, human-technology love), and have used it to sync my iPod nano! I love it, and I’m glad other people do, too.
February 3rd, 2009 at 5:06 am
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I hate that stuff with ipod. Why can’t I just plug it and use as normal usb drive?
With Media Monkey I think the problem is solved.. Not quite. I think I will not buy me an ipod until it acts like normal usb stick.
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Media Monkey sounds like a great alternative..it gets rather annoying when Itunes becomes synonymous with music downloading.
February 8th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Looks like a great piece of software - I’ve constantly had problems with iTunes ‘forgetting’ where some of my albums are stored and then deleting them from my iPod as it can’t find them. I would like to now use my music collection with other media players that won’t work with iTunes so MM looks just the thing.
February 9th, 2009 at 6:48 am
I also hate iPods and iTunes. Media Monkey is better option for that.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I’m really not a big fan of itumes whatsoever, I’m gonna try out media monkey, thanks for the suggestion!
February 12th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Frankly, I can’t understand why people love iPod so much. Buy usual MP3 player by not so promoted company as Apple and you’ll have never have any problems with files extensions, connection to PC and etc.
April 28th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
It seems the feature that I have to have from iTunes has not been duplicated in any other players - Organize My Library.
When I new music from various sources outside of my computer, I don’t want the hassle of creating folders and naming conventions of my files. Ok, I don’t like that now, I used to be a stickler for manually managing everything, but now I am just too busy for that.
so, if I drop 10 files into a random folder and tell MM to import them to a new location within my Library folder without me worrying about where exactly?
and when its done I can delete them from the “staging” folder and not worry if I just deleted my only copy?
May 22nd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Why can’t I just plug it and use as normal usb drive?
With Media Monkey I think the problem is solved..
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