iTunes is probably the most popular software to manage own music library, but there are very good iTunes alternatives around, more lightweight and with interesting features.
MusicBee: the first choice of the various iTunes alternatives
MusicBee – it’s available for Windows 7/8/10 both as installer and portable version.
It claims to be the Ultimate Music Manager and Player, and it has many features:
– Modern and elegant graphic interface with skin support
– Over the main player you can choose between Mini and compact player
– Various languages available
– Auto tagging feature to clean up your messy music library.
You can also manually edit tags as well as edit the cover image.
– 10 or 15 bands equalizer and DSP effects
– Utilize high-end audio cards with WASAPI and ASIO support
– Listen to music without interruption with gapless playback
– Upmix stereo to 5.1 surround sound, or resample track to lower bitrate
– Use logarithmic volume scaling or normalize volume streaming
– Supports some WinAmp plugins to enhance your music
– Device sync (it supports many devices).
Support playlist and podcast sync and convert formats on the fly if your device does not support certain formats.
MusicBee isn’t only a fully featured audio player, it supports web radio stations and integrates with SoundCloud and Last.fm services, it also has CD ripping feature.
MediaMonkey: a fully featured software that manages also videos
MediaMonkey – available in free and paid Gold versions.
The free version has various features:
– Manage a movie / music library from 100 to 100,000+ audio/video files and playlists. Organize, browse, or search music by Genre, Artist, Year, Rating, etc.
– Supports most common audio and video formats
– Automatically identify movies and tracks that are missing information, whose tags are not synchronized, or that are duplicated elsewhere
– Includes a powerful tag editor
– Automatically organize and rename music / video files on your hard drive into a logical hierarchy
– Manage playlists
– Use the File Monitor to automatically update your music library or video
– Download audio content using the integrated Podcatcher, or use the web downloader to download media files from any website
– Device sync with Android, iPhone, iPod, iPad, etc…
– Share Audio/Video files with UPnP / DLNA devices, eg. TVs
– CD ripping using different encoders (LAME, M4A, OGG, WMA, FLAC or ALAC)
– Convert audio / video files from almost any audio / video format and preserve tag information
– CD burning feature using integrated software
– Volume levels adjust automatically (using Replay Gain and MP3 Gain technology)
There is an equalizer and hundreds of available dsp audio-effect plug-ins
– Visualization plugins, reports e statistics, customize the interface using skin
– Support addons to customize and extend program’s features.
Clementine: a modern and multiplatform music player
Clementine – it’s a modern music player available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Raspberry Pi.
Some main features:
– Search and play your local music library
– Listen to internet radio from Spotify, SoundCloud, Digitally Imported etc…
– Search and play songs uploaded on cloud (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive)
– Create smart playlists and dynamic playlists
– Play audio CDs
– Lyrics and artist biographies and photos
– Transcode music into MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, FLAC or AAC
– Edit tags on MP3 and OGG files, organise your music. Fetch missing tags from MusicBrainz
– Discover and download Podcasts
– Download missing album cover art from Last.fm and Amazon
– Native desktop notifications on Linux and Mac OS X
– Remote control using an Android device
– Copy music to your iPod, iPhone, MTP or mass-storage USB player
Helium: essential features to manage own music catalog
Helium – a music cataloger, tag editor, cd ripper, audio converter, mp3 and flac analyzer, duplicate finder, player and music scrobbler.
There are additional free software to download: Helium Streamer allows to access to your entire music collection, on any device. Helium Remote to control Helium while away from your computer. Helium Converter, a fully functioning application that enables you to convert your audio files into many different formats.
The programs are available for Windows.
foobar2000: a minimal music player
foobar2000 – a popular Windows music player with simple and clean interface. Main features:
– Supports different audio formats
– Gapless playback
– Easily customizable user interface layout
– Advanced tagging capabilities
– Support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component
– Full ReplayGain support
– Customizable keyboard shortcuts
Dopamine: a simple music player
Dopamine – makes organizing and listening to music as simple and pretty as possible.
Clean interface with dark theme support, Taskbar and System tray controls, notifications (with or without controls), 3 different players (Cover player, Micro player, Nano player).
You can choose between various languages.
It’s available as installer and portable version and requires Windows 7, 8.x or 10 and .NET Framework 4.6.1 or later.
These programs are very good iTunes alternatives to manage own music library, not only because they are lightweight about resources usage but also for unique features that the Apple software misses.