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.