I've been using MediaMonkey for a couple days now, and so far I'm very impressed. The installation was quick and simple, and importing my library of music was extremely quick - although it didn't seem to import all of the track data - specifically my ratings of each track. Not the worst thing in the world, but it would have been nice. Also, the user interface is a bit more busy than what I was used to in MusicMatch, but as I get used to it I'm finding a few things to be a huge convenience.
My initial impressions have been great. Here's a sampling:
AutoDJ
The #1 feature that I was looking for in a replacement to MusicMatch was AutoDJ. If you read my last blog post, you know that this was my favorite feature of MMJB and one that I couldn't live without. Great news! MediaMonkey has an AutoDJ feature. While it's not exactly like the one in MMJB, it actually functions more like what I was hoping that MusicMatch's AutoDJ would become. Rather than specifying the number and genre(s) of songs to pull up and then creating a static playlist of songs, MediaMonkey does it a little differently. All you have to do is turn AutoDJ on, and it will automatically fill up your "Now Playing" list whenever it starts to run empty. This is great. An unending list of music from my library without me having to fiddle with it when the playlist is finished. It just keeps on going until I stop it. It's like having my very own radio station. I can also foresee this function being very useful at our next house party.
The only downside I've seen to MediaMonkey's AutoDJ feature is that it doesn't let you pick songs by genre, etc. Instead, it chooses songs at random from the library. It can be quite jarring to go from Pink Floyd to Johnny Cash to Mozart to The Pixies. I'll need to research this a little more...
Track Tags
As I previously mentioned, MediaMonkey didn't import my song ratings - but it makes up for this with a very handy set of track tagging tools. The library offers the standard grouping and sorting options (by artist, album, title, genre, year, etc), but it goes one step further. MediaMonkey also includes a few custom groupings, including one called "Files to Edit". This group contains all of the tracks in your library that are missing key track tags such as artist, title, album, genre, year or rating. Wow! This makes it super-easy to find tracks that you need to edit to fill in the extra info. No more searching around for tracks with missing info. MediaMonkey puts them all in one place, ready to be edited when time permits.
Of course, MediaMonkey also helps you edit tags by looking for information on the internet (Amazon to be specific) and then lets you choose which info to add.
Full Player vs. Mini Player vs. Micro Player
Most media players/managers offer 2 modes for playing - the full mode and a mini player mode. The full mode shows everything, which is useful when managing your library, but cumbersome when you just want to play music. The mini player takes up less screen space, but usually offers less functionality. This is not revolutionary
MediaMonkey also offers what they call the Micro player, which is essentially just a tray icon that controls the player. While this is not a unique feature, what makes it cool is that you have 2 ways to control the micro player. By right-clicking on the tray icon, you can handle all your standard playback functions (play, pause, next/previous track, etc) via a set of menus. However, you can also use the left mouse button to do some cool things. Click the icon once to pause the playback and again to resume play. Click and drag the mouse left or right to skip to the next/previous track. Click and drag up and down to raise and lower the volume. Pretty cool.
Well, that's all for now. As I have more detailed info, I'll post it. However, I'm pretty confident at this point that I have found my replacement for MusicMatch Jukebox. If you'd like to give MediaMonkey a try, you can download it from www.mediamonkey.com. If you do, let me know what you think of it.
1 comment:
reading your story about Musicmatch I almost felt like I had written it myself. I will never forgive Yahoo, who by the way has now sold out to Rapshody...or whatever.
My biggest upset is that I not only purchased the lifetime upgrades... I was a subscriber, and bought quite a bit of music from them.
After abandoning Yahoo, I found an older version of Musicmatch (8.2) which works as perfectly as always.
I protect my music on a seperate drive, so when my computer crashed, I didn't loose the music. However what I purchased will no longer play since yahoo migrated all my licences, and they were lost with the crash. An expensive lesson. I will never again purchase Music downloads.
Take care,
Ron Butler
sillime@comcast.net
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