ideal Mac iTunes replacement for HUGE music library?

April 12, 2023 8:28 AM

A friend has a gigantic iTunes library (lots of albums, lots of podcasts). It didn't properly migrate to Music - Date Added was lost, which is a big deal. What would be a great replacement player?

When upgrading to a newer OS, Migration Assistant failed to bring over the iTunes library, and the subsequent import got all the songs but lost the Date Added dates, so now there's no way to create smart playlists based on "albums I added five years ago."

What's a good replacement player for both music and podcasts? (Two separate apps might be okay.)

An ideal player would have these features:

• do a great job at importing the old iTunes library info, including the Date Added dates
• be AppleScript friendly
• have Cover Flow
• work with a remote
• have access to a good, accurate CDDB-like database - one with extra fields for handling classical tracks (composer, conductor, musicians, properly handling movements of a work) would be especially nice
• just generally be a pleasure to look at and use

Paid is okay; subscription probably not.

Integration with any cloud services (Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify, etc.) completely unnecessary.

Thanks!

posted by kristi to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: I think Swinsian hits every bullet point with the possible exception of Cover Flow… it does have an album art view, but I don’t remember seeing Cover Flow last time I used it.

Doppler is a less feature-rich option, but has a mobile app that it syncs to, if that is at all needed/wanted.
posted by boisterousBluebird at 8:41 AM on April 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Seconding Swinsian here. I switched over and it works for my multi-gigabyte library.
posted by anansi at 8:51 AM on April 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm piggy-backing on this question and I see two recommendations for Swinsian, hope it's okay to extend the questions
- it looks like a payment, one and done (not subscription based).. how long have you been using Swinsian? I can't imagine updates are a big deal but have any updates to the software been issued?
- my library in iTunes currently resides on an old PC, is there any "easy" way to transfer that to my much newer MacBook Pro?

sorry if these are dumb questions and/or not appropriate for this space
posted by elkevelvet at 11:37 AM on April 12, 2023

I HATE the fact that iTunes has been dumped for the far less convenient and helpful Apple Music. The loss of its efficient and intuitive podcast display for the mess we have now is particularly galling. HATE it.
posted by Paul Slade at 2:11 PM on April 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Swinsian has had (free) updates, but they aren’t super frequent—it’s a fairly complete app, though, and I never encounter any show-stopping bugs. (That said: I switched to Linux last year, so I am no longer using Swinsian to manage my library.)

If you are moving an iTunes library from a PC to a Mac, you would probably have to just copy your music files over and then import them—IIRC, the iTunes database isn’t portable between Windows and macOS.
posted by boisterousBluebird at 5:42 AM on April 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks for the info about Swinsian! I appreciate all the helpful info!
posted by kristi at 10:44 AM on April 19, 2023