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Topic: Best music librarian software? (Read 5626 times) previous topic - next topic
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Best music librarian software?

So does anyone have any opinions on the best software to manage your music library?  I'm talking about AFTER you have the tags and everything else right....something that lets you easily find music, search for that song that you've forgotten was there, build playlists, rate songs, possibly search through lyrics files...etc?

In other words, something like Google for music + a really nice jukebox?

Best music librarian software?

Reply #1 –
Quod Libet is good. I don't think that has Windows or OS X builds though.

Best music librarian software?

Reply #3 –
Foobar2000.

You can do this however it suits you, but I use a parent "Music" directory, located on its own 500GB drive which stores flac rips.  Directory structure is \Music Library\Genre\Artist\Album\*individual files. (Individual Files include the *.FLAC files along with my scans for the album and cue sheets, assuming I made any.)

Just add your parent folder to foobar's Media Library & Scan All.  (Be prepared to wait!).

Install the albumlist viewer if it did not come with your installation, and also the album-list-panel.  Since your files are(or should be!) organized in a pristine fashion, ignore the tags and organize the album list panel to "view by directory structure" (so you have a mini tree view inside foobar).

Also use the quicksearch plugin, so you have a box to type something in and search.(and add to its own playlist of search results)

This is how mine is setup...  It wont let you rate songs although there are other foobar plugins that add that functionality.

Foobar can take a while to get setup exactly how you want it, depending on how picky you are, but I do believe that once you do you will find it to be the best, most effecient tool for the task.

Best music librarian software?

Reply #4 –
Quote
Foobar can take a while to get setup exactly how you want it
... if you want out-of-the-box functionality (quick rating, searching, complete view of your library, even showing least- or oft- played tracks, etc etc etc), noting beats MediaMonkey.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

Best music librarian software?

Reply #5 –
I'm with pepoluan... ya can't top mediamonkey!
Cheers,
Bruce.
www.audio2u.com
The home of quality podcasts
(including Sine Language, a weekly discussion on all things audio)

Best music librarian software?

Reply #6 –
WMP11 (I use), MediaMonkey, foobar2000. From my experience:


WMP11

Pros:
- Database functions are really fast
- Killer metadata lookup (AMG, Muze, J-POPS, etc.) capability
- Handles large libraries very easily
- Fairly extensible via plugins, DirectShow filters and splitters
- Full powered and free
- Plays very well with PC remotes (ATI and Creative so far for me)

Cons:
- Limited native format support
- No native media info export option (plug-in easily available, however)
- AFAIK, no native ReplayGain, etc. support


MediaMonkey

Pros:
- Probably more media library info export options than you'll see anywhere else
- Fairly good native format support
- Fairly extensible

Cons:
- Metadata lookup limited compared to WMP11
- Database functions can be slow at times
- Fully featured version isn't free


foobar2000

Pros:
- Lightweight, fastest of the 3
- Excellent native format support
- The most extensible of the 3
- Free

Cons:
- While it is possible to make it into something far more powerful than MM or WMP11 above, doing so takes quite a bit of effort and learning, relatively speaking.
- Not that powerful as-shipped
- Metadata lookup limited compared to WMP11


Of the above 3, WMP11 and foobar2000 get used the most on my PC. I use the latter as an auxillary for WMP11 to play tracks that aren't in my library since the former doesn't allow >1 instance of itself to run.
EAC>1)fb2k>LAME3.99 -V 0 --vbr-new>WMP12 2)MAC-Extra High

Best music librarian software?

Reply #7 –
Just to add my experience using MediaMonkey: It's actually very extensible using VBscript. It has a lively forum where you can get code snippets for extensibility.

Heck, you can even drive MM using full VB as MM exports its interfaces in a standard way.

And don't forget, most Winamp plugins work with MM.

Another feature I like from MM is that it is capable of showing multiple artists as separate entries in the tree, e.g. suppose I have a song by David Benoit and Dave Grusin, I can find it in the tree under both David Benoit and Dave Grusin.

Yet another feature I like is MM's ability to gather all 'incompletely tagged' audio files; it will create a separate node in the tree listing all those files.

All these features are available in the free version.

So. What's not there in the free version (i.e. features of the paid version)? The complete list is here: http://www.mediamonkey.com/product_gold.htm

Best music librarian software?

Reply #8 –
Quote from: pepoluan on
Another feature I like from MM is that it is capable of showing multiple artists as separate entries in the tree, e.g. suppose I have a song by David Benoit and Dave Grusin, I can find it in the tree under both David Benoit and Dave Grusin.
WMP 10 and 11 does this, too.  I find it almost necessary for large libraries.  I have multiple Artists, Composers & Genres per track... and (optionally) browse/search via any of them.  Regretably, most applications don't do this... so interoperability isn't exactly perfect between applications, even for formats that natively support multiple entries per field.  (Thankfully, most just ignore the additional names and use the first one... as long as you don't re-write tags.)

Best music librarian software?

Reply #9 –
Quote from: grommet on
Quote from: pepoluan on

Another feature I like from MM is that it is capable of showing multiple artists as separate entries in the tree, e.g. suppose I have a song by David Benoit and Dave Grusin, I can find it in the tree under both David Benoit and Dave Grusin.
WMP 10 and 11 does this, too.


Seems to me that MS abandoned the tree structure completely in WMP11 in favor of a nearly completely search-based database system. Works a lot faster when it comes to finding what I want on my end. I'm approaching 8000 songs and over 3000 artists in my library (wide tastes ), and man, the tree structure in WMP10 was becoming quite a PIA to deal with.
EAC>1)fb2k>LAME3.99 -V 0 --vbr-new>WMP12 2)MAC-Extra High

Best music librarian software?

Reply #10 –
Just to add: I've used WMP11, Foobar, iTunes and Winamp in the last twelve months. I have a very, very large collection (50.000 items, which will grow to 80.000 when I've ripped my full CD collection), so comments on esp speed might not matter much if you have a small library.

From my experience:


WMP11

No need reiterating the points above. *THE* best thing about it is its speed, if I had a smaller library I wouldn't use it.


iTunes

Pros:
- Clearest and easiest interface
- Excellent handling of album art (Cover Flow!)
- Excellent search and filter options
- Easy library sharing
- Best Podcast handling
- Seamless integration with iPod

Cons:
- Tracks all need to be manually added: no folder watch, no automatic pruning of dead entries
- Sluggish and memory hungry (300+ MB) for larger libraries
- Format support very limited, and difficult (codecs, non-iPod players) or impossible (non-MP3/4 tags) to extend
- Webradio limited and clumsy to set up


foobar2000

See comments above, which I agree with. I like it, but the main reason why I use it less and less is that whenever I want to try another function, I end up spending an evening figuring out how it's done. And that's for someone who develops software for a living.

Winamp

Pros:
- Format support
- Plugins for everything under the sun
- Great for sync with portables (incl transcoding)

Cons:
- out-of-the-box one of the ugliest, most impractical and unintuitive interfaces ever
- sluggish with large libraries
- no library sharing out-of-the-box

Of these four, I now actually use iTunes and WMP most, while a year ago it was Foobar+Winamp. I hardly use Foobar anymore since WMP11 got so fast. Winamp gets used when I need a specific plugin (Shoutcast, HE-AAC, syncing-with-transcoding with my phone)

Best music librarian software?

Reply #11 –
Another vote for mediamonkey for me! It may not be perfect, but its damn good.

MM 3.0 should be entering beta soon, it has been indicated to have many improvements to weaker areas.

I have a very large library (~500 gig) of mixed formats (mp3/flac/ogg) spread across multiple drives (most on an external usb/firewire drive) and MM is the only app I've found which handles it with ease.

Best music librarian software?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: LANjackal on
Seems to me that MS abandoned the tree structure completely in WMP11 in favor of a nearly completely search-based database system. Works a lot faster when it comes to finding what I want on my end. I'm approaching 8000 songs and over 3000 artists in my library (wide tastes ), and man, the tree structure in WMP10 was becoming quite a PIA to deal with.
A tree structure enables me to easily see if I have mistyped an artist's name.

That said, MM Gold Version has amazing database search ability.

I must point out that MM's database is an .mdb file (i.e. Microsoft Access/Jet), and fully leverage Windows' database engine.

If you don't like the default tree in MM, scripts are available in MM's forums to create your custom nodes.

Quote from: eofor on
WMP11

No need reiterating the points above. *THE* best thing about it is its speed, if I had a smaller library I wouldn't use it.
MM is mighty fast thanks to its Jet-engined database.

Quote from: eofor on
iTunes
Pros:
- Clearest and easiest interface
To you. Unfortunately, not for me.

Quote from: eofor on
- Seamless integration with iPod
MM integrates with iPod nicely.

Quote from: eofor on
Winamp
- out-of-the-box one of the ugliest, most impractical and unintuitive interfaces ever
Again, to you. I found Winamp's interface to be very intuitive. A slight tweak of the color theme gives me an interface I can look at for hours on end. My foobar2000 & MM interfaces are 'work-interfaces'. I use them to do what I want on the files, then minimize them.