Many people complain that iTunes is buggy, difficult to use, and a memory hog on non-Apple platforms. And then there's the DRM problem. If you change computers often, or run on multiple operating system platforms, the "protected" music you download from the iTunes store is hard to transfer between computers and portable devices.
If you're unhappy with what iTunes has to offer you don't have to settle -- there are dozens of free alternatives to iTunes. When shopping around for a new digital music management program make sure that it's designed for your operating system, that it has the plugins and features that you want, and that it supports the types of music files you use.
Foobar 2000 media player
foobar2000 is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats. It works with Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows XP 64 bit edition. This program is compatible with MP1-4, MPC, AAC, WAV, SND, WMA, Ogg Valis, WavPack, AIFF, CDDA, FIAC/Ogs FLAC and AU.
Main features of foobar 2000
- Supported audio formats: MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND... and more with additional components.
- Gapless playback.
- Full unicode support.
- Easily customizable user interface layout.
- Advanced tagging capabilities.
- Support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component.
- Full ReplayGain support.
- Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
- Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.
Songbird media player
Songbird is an open-source customizable music player that's under active development. Built on the Firefox platform and works with iPods and other media players. Songbird runs on Windows, Linux and Mac.
In addition to many great features, Songbird has a plenty of add-ons, and because it's open source, clever programmers will be adding more as time goes on.
Features of Songbird
- Songbird's device support is limited. The Device Support wiki has additional details about what's supported. Apple iPhones, iPod Touch and Microsoft Zune devices are not yet supported.
- Add media to Songbird by importing from your file system or iTunes.
- Songbird supports MP3, FLAC, and Vorbis on all platforms; WMA and WMA DRM on Windows; and AAC and Fairplay on Windows and Mac.
- Display the currently playing track's album art and write new artwork back to the file. Automatically fetch missing album art from the web.
- Songbird includes an integrated web browser with features like bookmarking, tabbed browsing, and more.
- Browse, organize, sort and search your media.
- Make Songbird your own by choosing from dozens of different skins.
Songbird supports reading from and writing metadata to many music file formats. We still need to support the ability to fetch additional metadata from popular lookup services.
YamiPod media player
YamiPod is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod under Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation. Take a look at the feature list to find out what it can do and feel free to suggest anything that might be missing. An interesting iTunes alternative, because you don't have to install it on your computer at all. Just copy it to your iPod's hard disk and then you can manage your songs from any computer running Mac OS X, Windows or Linux.
Winamp media player
Sometimes called the grandfather of Windows music players, Winamp is a full featured music manager, with integrated iPod support and will even play iTunes protected files if QuickTime is installed.
- Sync Your iPod (or other portable player) with Winamp
- eMusic Gives Winamp Users 50 Free Music Downloads +1 Free Audiobook!
- Access and Share Your Music and Videos On the Go
- Discover the Best Music on the Web with Media Monitor
- Unleash the Power of over 18,000 Internet Radio Stations with SHOUTcast Radio
- Put Your Music Collection in Overdrive with Album Art and Auto-Tagger
- Rips CDs to aacPlus, AAC, WMA and burn CDs
Amarok media player
Amarok is a powerful music player for Linux and Unix, MacOS X and Windows with an intuitive interface. It makes playing the music you love and discovering new music easier than ever before.
Amarok works with a wide variety of portable music players including: iPod, Creative Zen players, iRiver iFP and T players, Nomad players, generic MTP players and generic USB players.
Some of the features that this program has that you are going to love include: album covers, wikipedia integration, last.fm integration, superior visual effects, lyrics support and music tracking capabilities.
Banshee media player
This free download allows you to do everything that you want to do with your digital music. You can import music, organize music, play it back, share it and rip it on a CD. This is a great program for people who love their music and who want to actively manage it.
- Sync your music and videos to your G1, iPod, or other device
- Download or stream podcasts and video podcasts
- Listen to favorites and discover new music with free, streaming music from Last.fm
- Queue up songs, videos, and podcasts on the fly
- Artwork is automatically fetched as you listen
- Filter your library or playlist by selecting artists or albums
- Find exactly what you want, fast.
Cog media player
Most people using Mac OSX feel that iTunes is the best option because it was designed for this platform. However, Cog is worth a look for Mac users, because it addresses many of the limitations that iTunes has. It can be used with the following file types: Ogg vorbis, Monkeys Audio, MP3, Wavpack, Apple Lossless, FLAC, Musepack, AAC and WAV/AIFF.
Some of the features that make it a worthy alternative to iTunes include: gapless playback, auto updating, preferences, Growl support, global hot keys, seeking, feedback forms, last.fm support, and smart shuffle.
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