I created this guide just for people who do not want to waste time tinkering and customizing the aesthetics of a media player and just want a polished, hassle free experience.

I researched and used almost every program out there that manages music. I never could find something that fit perfectly for me. GUI (Graphic User Interface) is very important to me since I want my data shown in a clear and consistent manner without feeling aggravated. I tried out Foobar2000, Winamp, iTunes, Windows Media Player 11 and none of them could manage my whole music library.

Finally, I found a solution after trying all these programs. I needed to use several programs that were excellent in one area of music management. For example, I need a program that could easily tag and rename all my files while providing a nice, clean interface.




Tagging and Renaming:

Mp3tag - http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

It provides a clean interface and allows you to save tags in different formats. I'm not an expert and did not go into the details of which format is better than the other. This lightweight, nifty program allowed me to edit every minute detail of my mp3 files.

One disadvantage of Mp3tag is that it cannot find high resolution album art for you.



Cover Art/Album Artwork:

iTunes

Even though you DO need to create an iTunes store account and enter your credit card details, it outweighs that disadvantage by providing high quality album art. It managed to get 90% of my albums. The rest of the missing cover art was found in either:

http://www.allcdcovers.com
or
http://www.albumart.org

Note: iTunes does not automatically embed artwork. If you want to force it to embed, then you have to:

Right click the selected song file > Get Info > Artwork > Copy and paste or drag and drop the album art then click "Ok."

If you want to one album artwork to several song files, then follow the same steps and instead of seeing a similar screen, you see a screen named "Multiple Item Information." In that, just drag and drop the artwork into the "Artwork" section and click "OK".

If you do not use iTunes, then use Mp3tag's artwork function. Open Mp3tag and to the left you will see a square with a faded gray CD icon in it. Drag and drop the image into it and MAKE SURE that you click the Save icon in the toolbar. Again, this action can be done to several songs too. Just select the songs you want to apply the artwork too and follow the same steps.




Organizing:

iTunes - http://filehippo.com/download_itunes/

Even though many call this bloatware since it also installs support for portable Apple products and has a service called "iTuneshelper.exe" continuously running in the background, I found peace with this software. I do not have an iPod and do not plan on getting one. You may ask why I use this program out of the other free media player software. The reason is that I love how it can organize my media library and sort it without a hitch.
Specified folder > Artist > Album > Songs
I don't need a customized, manual task of ordering it by genre and don't care about it so it is perfect.

Note:
== Make sure you copy and EMBED the artwork into the song by either using Mp3tag and copying and pasting or manually selecting the song(s) and right clicking and copying it into the artwork tab because iTunes does not do that as default when it downloads artwork for a specific song.
== To stop iTuneshelper.exe from running, you can just go into your task manager and close the program then go into C:\Program Files\iTunes and delete "iTuneshelper.exe" and its folder.
== Make sure you point your shorcut to iTunes.exe if iTunes restores IPodservice and iTuneshelper.

|| Optional (If you do use iTunes as your primary audio player) ||

I never could find software that could back up my play counts or "date added" or the ratings globally and allow me to use that data in ANY media library software of my choice so I decided to stick with iTunes.

Managing media library data:

iTsfv - iTunes Store file validator

Offers various features and helps you customize iTunes' management of your media library. Most importantly, it backs up three features I mentioned above. It can also help you delete tracks that do not exist anymore and even back up and restore your whole media library so it saves you the hassle of adding your tracks back into iTunes again.
My description does not do it justice so you can find out more about it on this thread:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=524573

(Download links can be found in the thread)



Miscellaneous:

MusicBridge: http://www.download.com/3000-2141_4-10742870.html
iTunes <--> WMP x.x

I wanted to sync my ratings and playlist with WMP11 and vice versa and found this cool app. It basically allows you to move your ratings back and forth. Personally, I transfer my ratings to WMP11 since it saves them globally/permanently (the ratings are visible in Vista's Windows Explorer).

Multi-Plugin: http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showthread.php?t=41188
(Warning: Only supports iTunes version 7.0.x)

I use this to customize the GUI of iTunes since the bland brushed steel look does not fit Vista. There are other nifty features included which I do not use/see as trivial so visit the link to find out more about this addon.


Edit: I did not explain Audio Ripping and Audio Normalizing since most users don't seem to care about it. However, I do so here are the links to my favorite audio ripper and normalizer:

Exact Audio Copy: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/
MP3Gain: http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/faq.php

Any corrections or specific issues you would like me to edit in? PM me.

Very useful. I don't use iTunes as I don't like it on Windows. Overall very good tutorial.

Thanks, I appreciate your feedback.

Good guide but iTunes on Windows isnt as good as iTunes on the Mac.

I'd never, ever let iTunes near my music again. Checking the box saying 'let iTunes manage you music' wiped out 8Gb of MP3s.

^ That's quite unfortunate.



That's what I heard too. Oh well. It seems like Mac has more polished entertainment software.

Yeah, i prefer to manage my music myself with a simple tagging program. From past experience programs that manage your music library mess up the tags or deletes/moves certain files.

The album art sites are handy though

I dont think it has wiped out your music. It just moved them to its own folder so iTunes can manage it which was what happened with me. Otherwise thats quite unfortunate.

U could have done better if wisely used the masstagger function in foobar2000.

Useful guide, thanks!
Another alternative to Mp3tag is Tag&Rename which I highly recommend! (though I've never tried the former)
I love the easiness and simplicity of how it can get tag information (including embedding album art) from Amazon with just a few clicks. I only use winamp as my music player and nothing else

Whoever rated my guide a 1 star, thanks.

Nice guide. I agree with iTunes being the best with regards to organizing. I've tried winamp, wmp, foobar and about 5 others i can't remember the name of. That being said, iTunes sounds terrible IMO. The best way if you don't want the added features, is to install 7.0 and not 7.1 and run multi plugin. That way you can use the itunes front and features with the sound of foobar and it's millions of plugins.

I agree. That's what I do but I didn't include it in the guide because people hate installing all these plug ins to just get one feature. Too much of a hassle for the regular computer user.

Really Nice Tutorial , Thanks

Personally I would just have used Foobar for pretty much everything here, faster and easier, and more powerfull.


The best way to organize your music isusing folders anyway, tags are too limited to be used exclusively. If I wasn't such a lazy ****** I would write a guide for foobar, but I am

Glad you find it useful.



I went back to iTunes after customizing Foobar2000 because I preferred my music to be organized automatically when I add them into the library.

Artist\Album

Yeah, iTunes for Windows isn't very good, especially when it comes to managing music unless you mess around with some of the settings. I personally think Foobar is better, and you get customize it to look a lot more awesome than iTunes ever will.

I completely agree. However, I have to stick with iTunes since it offers these key features:

- Automatic File Organization
- Access to High Resolution Album Art
- Clean Interface
- Media Library

Foobar and Winamp cannot automatically organize my files and it's quite a hassle to change all those customization features.

Multiplugin + iTunes will be my pick until something better comes along.

the only way to properly organize music is with folders anyway.


How else can I used sub categories as I wish, such as putting my anime music in the anime folders and then having the artists under there again instead of just mingling them with all the other artists.Japanese song and artist names just mess up the sorting of umusic when you use tags anyway, not to mention songs with guest rtits and crap. tags are a pain. But if you must use them the latest foobar version is defintely the easiest tool to fix tags and such with their new itnerafec and tag editing. Just select everything inthe folder for that artist and write the correct artist name in the artist field, no windows or scripts or anything. need to fix the album name, same thing.

and best of all, not need to have buggy, resource hogging badly coded Apple windows apps installed.

^ Very true.
Fortunately, I do not really care about the organization of folders.
iTunes' default Artist\Album works perfectly for me. I just type in the "Genre" and create auto playlists that will separate my Anime, Japanese, French and the rest (Alternative, Electronic).

And how can't they organize your musi automatically ? foobar does it automatically for me in any possible way I want, wether I use the built in album list for treview, or facets for a different way to do it. you really need to try the ltest foobar, o need to customize the UI and if you want to it's easier than ever. and finally ccolors unified all over and easy to change so you can get the colors you want without editing all over the place.



Ah, but what if I want it sorte so I can see all the albums that are under first the ANime folder and then again under the Macros 7 folder. With tags you don't really get this tiered sorting ability.

Thankfully, I do not play around THAT much with the organization of my music.

It wouldn't have deleted all your music, it just moves it to My Music > iTunes > iTunes Music.

I don't personally like to use iTunes but I just keep it for the sake of high-res album art.
To get rid of unwanted services, here is what I do: just find respective executables and remove all permissions. e.g. iTuneshelper.exe
Click to view attachment
You might see some errors in system log (I haven't checked) but this is very effective.

Thanks for the input, Dhan. I'll edit that in.

MusicBridge sounds awsome.

iTunes? Yeah, uh, no. I would recommend foobar for the minimalist and customizing enthusiast, and WMP11 for the organizational freak.

this may be a stupid question but....


if i bother tagging my mp3's, will the tags just get wiped out if i burn a cd (thus getting converted to .cda) ??

or will the tags stay even if i rip the cd back to my hdd?

cause i spent a couple hours tagging all my songs and i'm hoping all that didn't go to waste

WMP11 does not automatically organize the songs and it has a clunky interface.



You WILL lose your tags if you change it into .cda format. A great example is when you buy a CD and rip onto the computer you will discover that the 11-15 songs are not tagged and just given the generic "Track x" name.

To avoid losing the tags, you need to burn a MP3 CD while allows you to burn up to 500 songs I believe (depends on quality, its ~125 for me.) The only problem is that you need to make sure your CD player or the CD player in the car is MP3 capable or it will not be able to read the MP3 CD. MP3 CD's are better than the conventional CD that burns according to the number of minutes of have instead of the amount of space.


It is awesome.

Gonna tut

Don't mention it. I knew people shared the same desires to manage their music without having to learn too much.

Yeah it does. Tools -> Options -> Library -> Rearrange music in your rip folder, using rip music settings
Whenever I get any new music, I drop it into my 'Music' folder, add it to the library in WMP, and within about 5 mins, it's moved it to the right place, found the album art if it can, added missing tags etc.

You're right! I forgot all about that!
I still can't stand WMP11 for some reason. The interface felt clunky to me compared to iTunes.

Just curious but does this include trying the Foobar2000 9.5 Betas?
The new interface is very easy and very customizable.

That's like saying a school bus handles better than a cement truck.

iTunes fits best for me and I don't want to keep changing media players just for the fun of it.

Then I'm confused at the purpose of this guide.

First sentence of my guide:



Thanks for just criticizing me because you saw the words iTunes and music management and felt that it was a horrible combination.

i prefer using one program(foobar) instead of 3 tbh...

i wonder why nobody mentioned RealPlayer. I like to organise my library manually, already have all my mp3s(~11gb) arranged in tons of folders, so i just have realplayer import them to the library and fetch and correct all the details(composer, producer, album art).
But maybe that's just me, anyone here tried organising with realplayer before?

Darko

I really want to question whoever suggested that Neowin should a thread rating system.
What have I done wrong to get only 3 stars?

/rant

Some people are just asses. I rated it a 5 for you. Great guide btw.

That's an excellent guide, htwho!

Thanks.

Never got used to boo's and low ratings on the internet. >_<

This is nice...since I use iPod, iTunes is a better option, although it is quite slow.
Wish Apple did something about it.
But a nice guide nonetheless! I never knew about iTsfv, MusicBridge or multi plugin!

This will be my last post in this forum. Bye.

I for one, appreciate you putting this together. It's just what I've been looking for.

No, never tried Realplayer. But it really can't be much easier than using other prograns like Mediamonkey. I'm currently in progress going through 20GB of music getting rid of info, changing artists, getting album art, etc...

I use mediamonkey, it is great, and i do believe it can do everything u listed. (not to knock ur thread down)=)
Something i didn't notice your article had, was the ability to actually restructure where your files are located. Mediamonkey can move every single song (after tagged), in any kind of order/format. So any category you could possibly put it in, you can arrange it in appropriate folders in windows. Also it can add the album art (from amazon) directly ONTO the song. I preffer this immensely over the way windows/itunes handles it because they simply add it to a folder, as a hidden files, while mediamonkey embeds the image into the song. By doing this, ANY media player can show the album art, where as there really isn't any interchange-ability among media players.
Though mediamonkey is also a media player, i use windows media player, cuz i find it easier and sexier. searching is a snap, and if i remove a file, i dont worry about it being added, or telling me that the file is not there anymore. If i rename a song in windows, windows media player knows, and it adjusts everything appropriately. it monitors my music folder. I will grant you that media monkey's interface has so many options everywhere, not a sexy UI at all, but for the easy tasks discussed, its easy to figure out.
I think one of the reasons wmp11 is considered clunky is because of the navigation, having to go from "now playing" to library, and then sub-sections. they could possibly tidy that up. i do find itunes to be simpler, and last time i tried it on windows, a little slow to startup/close. I do use itunes on my mac though, and its speedy on there.

Thanks for the tip on MediaMonkey - I checked it out. It seems really good...interface is not that great, but seems like it'll assist me in getting myself organized with my music files.