I have been using MediaMonkey for a few
years now, and I love to tell people about it. Often, I get
questions from these people asking what makes MediaMonkey any better
than other popular media players such as iTunes and Windows Media
Player. I'd like to outline some of the reasons that I think
MediaMonkey is a better alternative than these other two widely
available programs by looking at some of the categories important to
a media player.
Install and Config:
Did you know that when you install
iTunes, another program called 'Quicktime' is also installed onto
your computer, whether you like it or not? Not to mention that the
iTunes installer also comes bundled with an Internet browser called
'Safari'. You already have Internet explorer and quite possibly
Firefox installed on your computer, why do you need another browser?
Lets take a look at the installers for
each program:
iTunes ~60+ megabytes
MediaMonkey ~6.55 megabytes
Windows Media Player ~Pre-installed on
most Windows systems; 25.2 megabytes to download and install
These kind of stats mostly speak for themselves. Why download iTunes when it would be 10x faster to download MediaMonkey? ;-)
Tagging and organizing:
MediaMonkey supports the standard
protocol in regards to file tagging. Tags are important because they
contain the information that tells you what the track is; everything
from Artist name, to title, album, and even album art is stored in
track tags. If your database file is ever corrupted or lost (for any
of these 3 programs), all track information not saved in track tags
will be gone.
When changes are made to mp3 track
tags, MediaMonkey will use the standard tag value when available.
iTunes would rather create its own standard in many cases. For
example, volume leveling information (replay gain soundcheck values)
are stored in the standard tag location for mp3 tags so that other
programs and devices are able to take advantage of these values to
play back these files at a leveled volume. When iTunes stores such
values, they save the value to a non-standard mp3 tag, so that an 80
digit code appears in the mp3 comment tag. You also can't forget the
fact that MediaMonkey will tag many filetypes besides just mp3,
including: ogg, flac, wma, m4a, m4p, mpc, ape, and wav files. As of
this writing iTunes can only tag mp3, aac, m4a and m4p files.
Windows Media Player also doesn't fully
support tag standards, as it won't save album art to track tags. One
especially annoying feature of Windows Media Player is that it will
automatically extract and resize album art stored in track tags into
the folder that your music is saved in, and hide the art as a
“protected system file”. Of course, with MediaMonkey you can
choose whether you'd like to save album art to the individual track
tags or to a folder – and MediaMonkey will never hide your files
from you.
Library (database):
Each program utilizes a database to
store track information because accessing track information from a
database is much faster than looking up the info for each track
individually. MediaMonkey uses an SQL database, which is much faster
and more capable than the XML databases used by both Windows Media
Player and iTunes. When you have a very large library (tens of
thousands of music tracks or more), you will undoubtedly experience
slowdowns on Windows Media Player and iTunes while MediaMonkey will
be just as quick as it was with only a few hundred tracks in the
database.
Playback:
While iTunes will undoubtedly receive
credit from many who enjoy its “new” 'Genius' feature, something
similar has been possible on MediaMonkey for several years with the
“ScrobblerDJ” addon, which has been refined and improved and is
now known as “Last.fm DJ”. If MM had it 3 years before iTunes,
just think of all the other features you're missing out on!
Device synchronization:
Hands down, MediaMonkey supports the
most portable devices. Windows Media Player supports synchronization
with quite a few devices, but famously won't support any iPods, while
iTunes only works with i-devices. MediaMonkey can handle them all,
from the infamous iPod to the Zen, and even to obscure devices like
the SWIMp3 (who wouldn't want a set of goggles with an mp3 player
built in??) MediaMonkey can even sync tracks to external drives,
including flash drives.
Add-ons:
Quite easily the best feature of
MediaMonkey, add-ons make it possible to do virtually anything with
your music collection. Want to do a quick “Find and replace”
across your entire library? No problem, there's an extension that
can do it. Want some custom-built nodes for your library, so that
you can see which artists appear under each genre? Go grab
MagicNodes, one of the longest-standing add-ons for MediaMonkey.
There are endless extensions available: find album art for all your
albums in batches, manage your album art storage in bulk, backup your
database and MM settings, fix case errors, create custom reports,
automatically tag albums and tracks by looking up info on the
internet, look up lyrics, preview tracks...
You also can't forget that MediaMonkey
is skinnable, so you aren't stuck with the drab gray of iTunes
(though there is an iTunes skin available, if you enjoy the iTunes
appearance!) In fact, there is also a Windows Media Player skin that
is virtually identical to the real thing. If you'd prefer something
more original, there are nearly 50 skins available for download, and
more are being made every day.
Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Player_11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes
