The Lonesome Road

Honest confession : I’m a big - nay huge Winamp fan. Been using it a long time - right from version 2.xx onwards. The player has definitely improved over time and as of now my favourite features are

a) the search (matches ID3 tags as well as file names)
b) single button enque. Press q on any song in the playlist and it will play next - even if shuffle is tuned on. And it can be pressed multiple times on a file for the song that’s stuck in your head!
c) global hotkeys : I cannot do without this now. No matter what I am doing, a simple Ctrl+Alt+PgDwn makes winamp play the next song on my list.

The unfortunate part about winamp though is that it’s Media Library sucks - big time. So, I was looking for an alternative solution and I was pointed towards Mediamonkey. It’s something like iTunes for windows - and does a pretty good job.

Ok. Here’s the good news :

a) Has a standard iTunes type interface
b) Press F2 (standard rename) and get happy editing. Common properties for files can be set at the same time.
c) Can transfer files to an iPod (via plugin)
d) Generates auto playlists on the basis of selected critera
e) Out of the box support for common files (including ogg, which iTunes has trouble with)
f) Supports WinAmp as a player for it’s system
g) Supports quite a few WinAmp plugins
h) Inbuilt Shoutcast and other internet radio support
i ) Good tag-and-rename tool
j) Inbuilt file converter

Whew! Pretty good stuff. There were a few things that put me off though

a) No global hotkeys - I hope they fix this soon. The only solution I found was a paid plug-in.
b) The enque option does not work if shuffle is on.
c) Slightly off on the tree structure. Library does not provide a list of all songs on the system. You have to traverse to Library->Location->All. Though this can be resolved by clicking on one of the sorting systems provided - Title, Arttist, Album - you get it.

Overall, it’s a good software to use. I’ve switched over from WinAmp - and am just hoping that they put in the global hotkeys and fix the enqueue system.

Go bananas - use the monkey!