Fuckin' winamp

February 20, 2005 11:03 PM

Is there a software that can create mp3 playlists using tags (or something like it)? MI

I like the idea of playlists. I am a devoted downloader (and I'm far, far away from any reasonably available legal music, so, y'know... when bands come through here (China), I usually do make it and pay out the butt to see them, and I support local stuff where I can find it; International Noise Conspiracy was in Wuhan a while ago, 'twas good), but I also like the album format. But it dawned on me after I downloaded ZZ Top's Mescalero that there are lots of songs on albums that really just aren't good. I've always downloaded/stored my music by album, which means I'm not to keen on manually separating my songs by folder. I don't want redundant copies of things on my HD, and having to manually add things to winamp/media player playlists is way too much work for my fickle, flighty moods. So I need something that can churn out playlists with tags, and then allow me to add a song on a whim by right-clicking the song and getting some sort of neato input where I can choose from multiple pre-existing playlists or new ones that I can create on the fly. Do you know of anything? If you don't, do you know of any sourceforge-type sites where a software program of this sort could be requested and written within my lifetime (sourceforge is good too, I'm just looking to increase my odds)? Fantastic if it's free, bearable if not.

posted by saysthis to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Well.. uh.. not really sure if exactly grasp what you're talking about.

Tag & Rename is the best tag editor I've found, and you can sort via tags, select a group of files, and save it to a playlist.

Both Windows media player and Winamp allow you to "send to" playlists. They're not going to automatically send it to the right playlist based on tags, but automation isn't something most people look for when making playlists.

Foobar 2000 has a boatload of features, but i haven't installed it.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 11:19 PM on February 20, 2005

What you want is iTunes. It's that simple.
posted by aspo at 11:43 PM on February 20, 2005

It really does sound like you want iTunes. You can put your tag in the comments part of the song info and then create a smart playlist to play songs where the comments contain a certain term. You can set the smart playlist to automatically update. (So you could add the tag to any song you wanted, and it would be in the playlist.) (You can also sort by ratings, number of times you've played the song, artist, genre, etc. etc.)

It's also really easy with regular (non-smart) playlists. They're all displayed at the right and you can just drag the desired track into the playlist.

I used winamp for years and was really stubborn about switching since I already knew all the key shortcuts and had it set up exactly how I wanted, but I can't imagine going back now.
posted by SoftRain at 1:06 AM on February 21, 2005

Sounds to me that the Winamp Media Library does all this, if you know how to use it. It's certainly more flexible than iTunes.
posted by muckster at 7:34 AM on February 21, 2005

iTunes' Smart Playlist feature does exactly what you want, and it's extremely flexible if you know how to use it.

Muckster, have you ever tried the 'smart playlist'? It's kind of a hidden feature so as not to confuse beginning users.
posted by ikkyu2 at 2:28 PM on February 21, 2005

+1 for foobar2000; it's excellent for general purpose audio stuff like converting between formats, has very powerful tag editing and renaming support, and is probably the most configurable (screenshot of my current config) player on the planet.

Database search sounds roughly like what you want, but there are sure to be other plugins since it has a large following of geeky types who like their music and an extensive plugin system for them to play with :)

YMMV. It's the kind of thing that either clicks with you or you can't stand.. kinda like iTunes ;)
posted by Freaky at 10:10 AM on February 22, 2005

Mp3rat, is made by the Powermarks folks. They knew tagging was the shit a looong time ago.
posted by Moistener at 7:54 PM on February 22, 2005