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How Do You Manage Your Music?


Question

Is iTunes any good?

 

I am not a fan of Apple but it does seem to be the best way to manage a library of music, of which at the moment I do most of it manually using MP3Tag.

 

I don't really want a large bloating program on my PC but something to manage music (download and tag accordingly) and perhaps play random songs from selected folders.

 

I am not interested in purchasing any music through the program.

 

I didn't know if good old Windows Media player would be good enough, but isn't it just a player?  I'd also prefer the program not to sort my music into it's own sorting method (as the moment) as I have the bulk in one folder arranged by name.

 

Thanks

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Just use Amazon for some of the ablum art if you need it..What I do lol

 

Amazon? Really? They don't even carry artists & producers that are in Trap Music.

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I got totally obsessive on this subject, like a golfer who's swinging away at the 14th tee at midnight in a thunderstorm trying to figure out how to shave a few strokes off his game. So I wrote my own program to do it in C#. It was a learning experience, and a lot of fun.

 

Artists: 433

Albums: 1,126

Tracks: 14,953

 

Total Size: 123.99 GB

Total Duration: 42 Days, 18 Hours, 52 Minutes, and 16 Seconds

 

Organization

 

Disk Structure:

mmedia > audio > music > [Genre] > [Artist] > [Album]

 

The music folder is watched by a FileSystemWatcher. When a new album or artist is pasted into music the following is automated:

 

Album cover is downloaded from Google Images

Artist bio info is parsed from Last.fm and Wikipedia

Artist images are downloaded from Last.fm

 

Audio tags, including ratings and file and audio properties, are parsed and then stored in a local SQL Server database (over 40 fields per track). The new database rows are then synced to a non-local SQL Server, and the files mirrored to the same server via FTP.

 

The new database rows are converted to XML and stored in a file in the album folder (album.xml) and artist folder (artist.xml). A new full xml database of the entire library is made ever few days. File, album, and artist IDs and a few other properties are saved in the file's properties.

 

The database and xml files are also updated on any change to a file's tags, rating, location, etc.. Play counts are tracked for tracks, albums, and artists, as well as playtimes. It can also write and track file tags (keywords), and allows the creation of custom properties for tracks for organization, such as "favorite".

 

After creating this system, I then wrote an online interface to it and eventually a local interface, all in HTML5, AJAX, and jQuery (and ASP.Net/.Net). It had a kiosk view that displayed track info, album and artist images, and the artist bio. It also allowed browsing the collection through searching, or by artist or album with images, and by listening habits.

 

I created a media player for my desktop (an html desktop in a WebBrowser object) that remotes WMP using an existing plugin. So, I can control WMP from the desktop, load dynamic playlists based on the database (4 Stars, not listened to in last 6 months, etc..), keep bookmarks for long radio shows and audiobooks, etc..

 

Other than that, WMP :rolleyes:

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