MediaMonkey – Free MP3 music library organizer
Posted on May 27, 2008 at 5:02 am
Most of us are so used to clicking on that iTunes or Windows Media Player icon that we don’t even stop to think for a second, “Is there anything better out there”. I’m going to answer that question now. Yes, and its called MediaMonkey. Read on to know why MediaMonkey deserves to be your new Jukebox.
Instead of pointing out what features MediaMonkey has, It would be a lot easier to point out what it doesn’t have. I honestly cannot think of a feature that I would want from my Jukebox that isn’t present in MediaMonkey. Even if you do find that its missing something you’d like, there’s probably a plugin for it.
Most people automatically assume that more features = horrible interface. Luckily, this is untrue when it comes to MediaMonkey, which has an unarguably stellar interface. The interface is very easy to use, and, as an added bonus, looks just great.
First off, music management. MediaMonkey is very iTunes-esque when it comes to music management. As you can see from the image below, it uses a sorting pane extremely similar to iTunes’. However, its collapsible, and several options have been added.
So you can sort your music by any virtually any filters you can imagine, and you can get rid of the ones you don’t need. For example, I never use the “Album” filter, so I’ve removed it. Naturally, there is also a search bar that returns results as you type.
This brings me to one of the key benefits of MediaMonkey. It is very highly customizable. For example, you can very easily turn MediaMonkey from what it is above, to…….
Yes, that’s still MediaMonkey. It can be as complicated or as simple as you want, and even whatever color or skin you want it to be. You can even assign your own shortcuts to just about anything.
Something else I really loved was an auto tagging feature that actually worked. You can select any file you wish, and simply hit Ctrl+L, and MediaMonkey goes online, looking for tags, and you can apply the ones you want. Unlike iTunes, you don’t have to register anywhere before you are allowed to use this awesome feature.
Then there’s the auto-playlists, which are far more in number that I can envision anyone requiring, but I’m not complaining. After all, the more the merrier!
It even comes with Podcast support, and by default you can access four major Podcast directories and subscribe to any of their Podcasts without ever leaving Mediamonkey. Four Podcast directories means more Podcasts than you can handle! Just take a look at the image below.
Believe it or not, that’s just one directory!
MediaMonkey also comes with two features that make it the Jukebox to use when you’re hosting a party. First is the “Party Mode”, which ensures that no changes are allowed to be made to your files, so that one of your friends don’t accidentally delete your Iron Maiden discography. The other is “Auto-DJ”, which automatically queues up files for playback, so you can leave the Music to your computer and actually enjoy your party for once.
Many people are aware that iTunes is bogged down by performance issues in Windows. MediaMonkey is just the opposite. Despite having more features that WMP and iTunes combined, its surprisingly light on resources and blazingly fast.
Now the quirks. There is hardly anything I can write here, so I’m just going to point out that to unlock some extra features such as some advanced filters and automatic Library updater, you need to purchase the Gold edition for $19.95. But I don’t really see that as a necessity, considering every feature mentioned above is part of the free version.
You can download MediaMonkey here. Go ahead and give it a spin. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed!
This is a guest post written by Om J. Bathija, a tech enthusiast and blogger.
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Hi Om J. Bathija and Aseem, good post. I used MediaMonkey as my media player long ago. I always found mediamoney really cool, especially the DJ part. I stopped using it because it did not support many well known audio file format. hopefully it supports more file format now. I will give it a shot.
Finally! I’ve been looking for an iTunes replacement for a very long time. So far, this is much better than iTunes.
Agreed. It is one of the best music and audio managers that I’ve tested. Check out the audio leveling function too, which is pretty cool.
Nelson – thanks for the heads up. If you used MediaMonkey a long time ago, I’m guessing that may be the reason why it didn’t support a lot of audio formats. Seems like it can handle MP3, OGG, FLAC, WMA and other file formats now.
Fili – This is one of the better MP3 library organizers out there, glad you like it.
Syahid – Have not used the audio leveling function…will need to see what that does! Thanks!