Longtime readers may already be aware of my attempts to de-fruitify my iPod shuffle in a previous DIY article. It finally came time to take the battle from hardware to software.
Lets get the facts out of the way. iTunes does a great job of consolidating just about everything music related into one program and interface. But if you want total control of your own music, iTunes becomes more of a brushed steel dungeon than anything else. Perhaps the most unforgivable flaw in the software is its inordinate use of a system's resources to operate (at least, for those of us in the Windows world). When my desktop can run Crysis flawlessly at the highest resolution settings, which, amazingly, looks like this:
...yet still hangs up when scrolling through an iTunes playlist, I know that there's something seriously wrong. My theory? Apple de-optimizes their code for the Windows versions of iTunes. Jerks.
Which brings me to my criteria for what I looked for in an alternative. What I needed was efficient, clean, and customizable software that was light on the system demands. And behold, after much testing and experimentation, here are my picks for anyone wanting to follow down the path of liberation:
Foobar2000 - The Alternative Player
Foobar is an incredibly lightweight and heavily customizable program. And a quick google image search will yield some some outrageously cool downloadable themes. All the internal windows are modular components... so you could, in theory, have a viewer composed of 6 album art screens and nothing else (not that I'd recommend it). Even on my laptop, the program loads up in less than a second. And unlike iTunes, scrolling through playlists happens in real time (on snap!). As an added bonus, you can set your library to mirror your actual directory structure, which means that if you're neurotic about organization (like I am), you can reap the benefits of your OCD-ness from within the program itself. Nice.
Go download Foobar2000 for yourself already.
Windows Media Player - The Alternative Ripper
Really, why mess with success? WMP works just fine at ripping music CD's. And it's a simple matter to set your preferences to automatically tag the files the way you want them tagged. You get this step right, and you'll almost never have to go back and manually tag a track again.
Windows Explorer - The Alternative Tagger
But if you do find it necessary to get under the hood and input or delete some tags, you can use windows explorer to get the job done. Explorer in Vista is a dream when it comes to tag organization, but you can achieve the same result in XP as well. Just right click on the file, go to properties, then the summary tag. Not only can you view the tags, you can edit them as well. If you're looking for a third option, just load up your library from within Foobar itself and right click the song to edit it properties. From there, you should be able to both view and edit your tags.
Amazon.com - The Alternative MP3 Store
People use the iTunes store because it's convenient. But even if you're mostly against buying DRMed content, you can slip up now and again and buy a few tracks here and there. And before you know it, you've salted your music library with tracks that can't be moved, shared, and sometimes, burned (yes, even the brute force burning of DRM files sometimes fails for no reason under iTunes). Really, you should be buying CD's in the first place and ripping them at a high quality, but if you're not much for the "going outside thing," shop at Amazon. DRM free content rocks (and all the cool kids are doing it).
SharePod - The Alternative iPod Loader
So now that you've got your player and library set up, the final program you need is SharePod (Windows only). This free and tiny program can actually be stored on your iPod. Just plug it in, load the program, and you've got a mobile solution for loading files to your iPod. As a bonus, you can actually pull songs off the iPod as well... (a huge limitation when using iTunes). SharePod and Foobar2000 are also fully compatible. You can have both open and just drag and drop from your playlist onto SharePod. You'll be loaded up and good to go in seconds. You should probably download SharePod immediately.
With the addition of these two programs and a bit of effort, I have created a more truly portable music library than I've had in years. I can literally copy both programs and my music onto a USB key, and set up shop on any computer, anywhere I go (in a legal way, of course). No DRM to worry about, and no completely wonky library on reload.
Breathe deep readers. That's the smell of digital freedom.
