anyone on a mac use an alternative to iTunes?

axisus

iTunes is just the biggest crock of sh*te ever and I'm fed up with it. I wish to exterminate this turgid, ill-conceived, dysfunctional piece of crap from my computer and use something better. 

Anyone use anything different?

joneve

iTunes is just somewhere that holds my music that I've ripped from CDs over the years and occasionally use if the album isn't on Spotify. But 99% of the time I use Spotify for everything these days.

joneve

Winamp is still around I think? 

TTony

axisus said:

iTunes is just the biggest crock of sh*te ever and I'm fed up with it. 

I got locked into it through my iPod (and now iPad) use.

I've tried various alternatives through the years.  I found one that was OK (red chair, or somesuch) but that defuncted a while back.

Most of the alternatives I found were very good at being not-iTunes, but not particularly good at being a viable replacement.

I use it as little as I possibly can - so just for backing up and syncing to i-devices, with the configuration very carefully set-up to minimise any damage that it can wreak elsewhere.

jellyroll

Agree, it's awful. I just tolerate it.

RandallFlagg

I've had a Mac for 4 years and after initial resistance I gave in and now very much like iTunes. I turn off all of the connect and other crap in settings and just have My Music and iTunes Store available. It's my repository with 3500 albums. I also have movies and TV series in there too, all organised and tagged with the covers, and I use Doug Scripts for editing track data etc. I much prefer browsing the covers in the albums view and playing from there. What is it that you don't like about it?

digitalscream

I've used this on Linux for years:

https://www.clementine-player.org/

Runs on OS X and Windows, too. It's simple, it's clean and it just does what it says on the tin.

Oh, and it doesn't muck around with your files either.

Fatfingers

I too am stuck using iTunes on a Mac and dearly wish there was an alternative that would import al my playlists. I've never come across one though.

iTunes is a pain in the arse. It loses songs and albums, its search function is deeply unreliable and it's just cumbersome. If anyone knows of software that will replace it and import all my current playlists, I'd love to know about it too.

jellyroll

RandallFlagg said:

What is it that you don't like about it?

It's absolutely anti-intuitive (to me, at least) user interface

sweepy

It s very restrictive on what formats it plays and one update overwrote all the library prefs and tried to move a 300gb library stored on another internal drive to the 256gb boot SSD, needless to say that that was interesting.

Troy

I use iTunes on a PC and it works well for me. The biggest pain was when i ticked the option to let iTunes manage my library, then had a similar issue to @sweepy

sweepy

Now, whenever iTunes updates I double check the prefs

stickyfiddle

iTunes works extremely well if you let it manage your library. The issues happens when people tick that box then assume they can override it themselves and then iTunes can't find the songs. It's the same with any cataloguing program - Lightroom is exactly the same. It can't know where you've moved something to if you don't tell it. 

JezWynd

RandallFlagg said:

I've had a Mac for 4 years and after initial resistance I gave in and now very much like iTunes. I turn off all of the connect and other crap in settings and just have My Music and iTunes Store available. It's my repository with 3500 albums. I also have movies and TV series in there too, all organised and tagged with the covers, and I use Doug Scripts for editing track data etc. I much prefer browsing the covers in the albums view and playing from there. What is it that you don't like about it?

It loses and or deletes whole albums. I get on with it okay, use it for albums and videos. I don't use the store side of it. I think it's ended up as such a dogs dinner as Apple take advantage of the fact that it's one of the very few Mac applications that Windows users install and so they added functionality to it that it was never intended for.

Fatfingers

So, for those of us that loathe it, is there an alternative that can preserve our current playlists?

axisus

RandallFlagg said:

 What is it that you don't like about it?

Off the top of my head:

It can't always find info (which is on Gracenote)

It doesn't group double CDs together as one album

Some individual tracks it refuses to put with the album

can't find cover art work a lot of the time

keeps downloading apps to my limited space laptop

won't always let me reorder tracks the way I want to

has f******* annoying desire to control everything you do

Incredibly annoying interfacing with ipod ipad etc

Some albums if I remove them from iTunes it want's to delete them from my mac altogether

no ability to organise albums in the way I want to

Stole £11 from my account

annoying handling of compilation albums

RandallFlagg

Never lost or deleted an album for me in 4 years of use. I let iTunes manage the files and I take car of the tags etc. I drag an album of MP3 into the interface and it copies the files, I find the tracks format the tags etc and add artwork and delete the original files, it couldn't be simpler to use. You have to let go of the need to manage the files yourself which is counter intuitive to Windows users, as it was for me initially

RandallFlagg

axisus;1119822" said:

RandallFlagg said:

 What is it that you don't like about it?





Off the top of my head:

It can't always find info (which is on Gracenote)It doesn't group double CDs together as one albumSome individual tracks it refuses to put with the albumcan't find cover art work a lot of the timekeeps downloading apps to my limited space laptopwon't always let me reorder tracks the way I want tohas f******* annoying desire to control everything you doIncredibly annoying interfacing with ipod ipad etcSome albums if I remove them from iTunes it want's to delete them from my mac altogetherno ability to organise albums in the way I want toStole £11 from my accountannoying handling of compilation albums

All of these issues are easily rectified by using the track info metadata tags, and yes if you delete an album from iTunes it will delete it from your machine, why would you want it any other way?

axisus

RandallFlagg said: if you delete an album from iTunes it will delete it from your machine, why would you want it any other way?

Seeing as you asked: At work I only listen to instrumental music. I wanted to clear everything else out of the interface, but I want to keep the stuff as I may require it at some point here.

digitalscream

RandallFlagg said:

Never lost or deleted an album for me in 4 years of use. I let iTunes manage the files and I take car of the tags etc. I drag an album of MP3 into the interface and it copies the files, I find the tracks format the tags etc and add artwork and delete the original files, it couldn't be simpler to use. You have to let go of the need to manage the files yourself which is counter intuitive to Windows users, as it was for me initially

Is it really beyond the scope of your imagining that people can have problems with it? Letting iTunes manage the files is exactly what causes a lot of the problems, if your setup is anything other than exactly as default (ie how the developers "test" it).

JezWynd

RandallFlagg said:

axisus;1119822" said:

RandallFlagg said:

 What is it that you don't like about it?





Off the top of my head:

It can't always find info (which is on Gracenote)It doesn't group double CDs together as one albumSome individual tracks it refuses to put with the albumcan't find cover art work a lot of the timekeeps downloading apps to my limited space laptopwon't always let me reorder tracks the way I want tohas f******* annoying desire to control everything you doIncredibly annoying interfacing with ipod ipad etcSome albums if I remove them from iTunes it want's to delete them from my mac altogetherno ability to organise albums in the way I want toStole £11 from my accountannoying handling of compilation albums

All of these issues are easily rectified by using the track info metadata tags, and yes if you delete an album from iTunes it will delete it from your machine, why would you want it any other way?

Not entirely true. If you delete an album from iTunes library, it will ask you if you wish to move it to trash - you have the option of keeping the source files.