iPhoto:Lightroom::iTunes:?

November 26, 2007 4:02 AM

I'm getting a little antsy with iTunes these days and since it's been awhile, I wanted to see what else is out there. What do you use that you consider to be the Lightroom/Aperture of the media player world? I'm hoping there is some sort of iTunes Pro style application out there that I just haven't heard of.
posted by feloniousmonk to technology (13 comments total)

It would help if you could be more specific about what is making you "antsy" about iTunes. And what your setup is like.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:39 AM on November 26, 2007

Antsy is kind of a bad term. My collection is getting to the size (100gb+) where I think there might be better tools to manage it. I also have a somewhat lesser interest in tools that might be better suited to having a single central store of data with multiple clients to replace the somewhat hackish shared library feature in iTunes.
posted by feloniousmonk at 4:55 AM on November 26, 2007

My collection is getting to the size (100gb+) where I think there might be better tools to manage it.

In what way? What don't you like about iTunes specifically? You've only mentioned one concrete item—it sucks for sharing libraries.
posted by grouse at 5:02 AM on November 26, 2007

I've been wondering about this... considering winamp and foobar... however the former is ugly as sin skins or not, and I know nothing of the latter.
posted by tomw at 5:55 AM on November 26, 2007

tools that might be better suited to having a single central store of data with multiple clients

SlimServer?

But nthing the need for more specific feature requests and use examples than 'I'm antsy.' There is no real user-facing app that's a 'prosumer iTunes'. There are database-backed server apps with robust and versatile client interfaces. But we need to know a) what you've got; b) what you want to do.
posted by holgate at 6:18 AM on November 26, 2007

Seconding slimserver. It's designed for multiple clients and can handle large libraries. Though I don't use it myself, I believe it advertises itself via rendezvous so you can use iTunes as a client.
posted by roue at 6:45 AM on November 26, 2007

I like Media Monkey and used it extensively until I changed to a Linux-based OS. It's main selling point was that it could manage 50,000 files without any problems.
posted by parilous at 8:24 AM on November 26, 2007

What do you use that you consider to be the Lightroom/Aperture of the media player world?

iTunes.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:30 AM on November 26, 2007

I may be in the minority but I use Windows Explorer. I have a shortcut to My Music pinned in my Start menu and when it opens I have all my album cover thumbnails sorted alphabetically with albums in chronological order by artist. I find I prefer quickly scrolling though album covers rather than lists. Then I just right click on an album and choose "Open In Winamp". Starts right away without having to wait for iTunes to load, etc.

Put it on a network like this and everyone can access it. It's obviously not going to be much good if you wants playlists though.
posted by gfrobe at 9:01 AM on November 26, 2007

Used to use Windows Explorer and Winamp, and now I largely use the media library inside Winamp along with some judicious directory sorting (so I can separate full albums from singles, for example). I make no claims as to the beauty of the skins (I've been using the default classic-mode skin for years now myself) but I've always found it very responsive and relatively bloat-free, even after Nullsoft got bought out by AOL.

Of course, this suggestion is completely moot if you're not on Windows. You didn't specify whether you were on a Mac or not.
posted by chrominance at 11:05 AM on November 26, 2007

I'm guessing he's on a Mac since he said "Lightroom/Aperture". Maybe he should let us know more.

Since switching, I've been very underwhelmed with the Mac's ability to play various media files and having robust programs for managing them. It's the only thing I miss about Windows.
posted by a_green_man at 12:35 PM on November 26, 2007

I've also been looking for something like this-- more of a database that will catalog my files and let me export playlists, something to keep track of where all the files are floating around. I have a lot of .ogg and .flac files that iTunes just won't play nice with, but I need to keep iTunes around for my iphone. I checked out SlimServer, but it's just not what I need.

Maybe it's time to put my meager python skills to work and roll my own database... Hopefully someone has a better suggestion.
posted by jstef at 1:11 PM on November 27, 2007

more of a database that will catalog my files and let me export playlists, something to keep track of where all the files are floating around.

That's what iTunes is, except with poor Ogg support. You should really get a better idea of what you want before you start programming. Or you might start with iTunes and script against it in Python. That's what I've done for a feature I thought was missing.
posted by grouse at 1:35 PM on November 27, 2007