recommend a decent mp3 player

[ameraal]

now that itunes is dead (that last update to music has seemingly rendered it completely useless to me), can anyone recommend a good player with similar functionality (playlists, ratings, play counts)? i'm looking for something with less buttons and more columns and rows.

what's an mp3, you say?

 

[Ellie]

ITunes is dead??? What happened? I still have my iPod Classic on a dock in my room but admittedly haven’t loaded any new music to it in a while

 

[Tisch]

now that itunes is dead (that last update to music has seemingly rendered it completely useless to me), can anyone recommend a good player with similar functionality (playlists, ratings, play counts)? i'm looking for something with less buttons and more columns and rows.

what's an mp3, you say?

I assume you mean via a phone app right? Not a physical device?

I use Pulsar on my phone when I'm not streaming (admittedly very rare these days). You can do playlists, "like" songs, but I don't think you can see a play count. Sure it must store it somewhere though.

It has a nice interface as well so you can easily sort by album or artist.

 

[ameraal]

I assume you mean via a phone app right? Not a physical device?

I use Pulsar on my phone when I'm not streaming (admittedly very rare these days). You can do playlists, "like" songs, but I don't think you can see a play count. Sure it must store it somewhere though.

It has a nice interface as well so you can easily sort by album or artist.

no, i mean on your pc (a mac in my case). thanks though, maybe they have a pc version.

 

[ameraal]

ITunes is dead??? What happened? I still have my iPod Classic on a dock in my room but admittedly haven’t loaded any new music to it in a while

it's just music after the last update and it's really not very flexible at all. don't ever update it if you like itunes.

 

[Frozen]

Try MediaMonkey. You can import everything from iTunes - playlists, play counts etc.

 

[Ellie]

Apparently you can sync with Finder: https://uk.pcmag.com/gallery/123494/rip-itunes-how-to-sync-music-and-media-on-mac-with-finder

 

[Funky]

I exited iTunes about a year ago and honestly the hardest part was losing all the labelling I’d spent years organising which made my finding, locating music etc really easy. Plus the play counts. I moved to Prime and Spotify. Between them finding new music is much easier and discovery is more intuitive, but I do miss the simplicity of iTunes and how you can organise it to fit your needs.

 

[Diddy]

Oh is iTunes dead for Mac people only?

 

[Ellie]

I exited iTunes about a year ago and honestly the hardest part was losing all the labelling I’d spent years organising which made my finding, locating music etc really easy. Plus the play counts. I moved to Prime and Spotify. Between them finding new music is much easier and discovery is more intuitive, but I do miss the simplicity of iTunes and how you can organise it to fit your needs.

So you only stream now? Surely with the type of stuff you listen to, Prime and Spotify can’t have everything. I’m pretty mainstream compared to you and just by revisiting my old iPod there is tonnes of stuff that has come up which isn’t available on a subscription service, and not just live recordings, remixes and bootlegs.

 

[Ellie]

Oh is iTunes dead for Mac people only?

My Music app on the iMac looks the same as iTunes. No updates yet so I’m not sure what has changed.

 

[Diddy]

Since you’re all here, can someone else recommend a good default media player for music? I still have Windows Media Player but it’s a right mardy cow sometimes, and I don’t want to use iTunes because it gets up in my business. I have VLC but I use that for videos only at the moment

 

[Frozen]

Media Monkey

 

[Funky]

So you only stream now? Surely with the type of stuff you listen to, Prime and Spotify can’t have everything. I’m pretty mainstream compared to you and just by revisiting my old iPod there is tonnes of stuff that has come up which isn’t available on a subscription service, and not just live recordings, remixes and bootlegs.

It’s still my biggest contention, the lack of songs added likely due to licensing issues. I still have my mp3 collection, and I use iTunes for that, so if they get rid of the universal player I’ll download one of the free ones.

there are so many great R&B and dance tracks from early 90s that are seemingly lost forever. We should do a thread about it.

 

[Christian]

It's a shame there's not more care taken with back catalogues but I guess it was ever thus. Look at all the vinyl that sold poorly back in the 60s/70/s/80s and then was never transferred to CD, let alone digitised for streaming. Individual tracks suffer even more as there is no one to champion them and cough up the couple of grand it takes to get them on streaming services. There are some people out there championing early 00s pop and getting record companies to get things alone but it's a Herculean task finding the rights holders and then someone actually capable of putting them up.

It should the dream now: digitise once and it's available forever. It's too bad it doesn't work like and that things can come and go on these services as rights expire.

 

[Christian]

As for a music player, Apple Music (the new iTunes) works perfectly for me. I've had the same library for 16 years now and it does exactly what I need it to, so I can't see changing anytime soon.

I had a look at Media Monkey a few years ago when iTunes was throwing up problems with libraries over 25k tracks. Since that limit disappeared, I haven't gone back to it.