Apple music player alternatives

[pig pen]

I have been absorbed into the collective and swapped my old phone for an iPhone. Now, how do I get a replacement for the crappy music player that comes with the phone? There are so many music apps that I can't make heads or tails of what to get. The main thing I am looking for is the ability to shuffle based on albums (unless there is a way to do that within the player).

I have googled the issue and most of the apps I have seen mentioned seem to solve a lot of problems that don't seem like anything meaningful.

[steve(thelil)]

I think you can shuffle within an album (not sure) on an iPhone/IOS/ w/iTunes. However, I think that with the current versions you can no longer shuffle within a genre or across genres, which I miss.

That said, I bet you'd find any other music player alternatives frustrating (and maybe more frustrating) in other ways. So much about Apple hardware/software is intuitive that one tends to take it for granted.

[pig pen]

[steve(thelil)]

It's the software. But it's still weird. I wonder if there are more ways to shuffle but I simply haven't looked to them because you don't do it the same way I used to. BTW, when I first got my iPhone, the operation and functions of the player were virtually identical to my old iPod's, FWIW.

[Monte Smith]

Most of the complaints I hear about Apple, I don't understand. Because Apple products are great. But complaints about iTunes, I totally agree with. Because iTunes sucks.

[Tom Storer]

I read somewhere that the reason iTunes stands out among Apple products in its sucky interface is that it was developed by another company that Apple acquired and was then just rebranded. And indeed Wikipedia confirms this: "SoundJam MP, developed by Bill Kincaid and released by Casady & Greene in 1999, was renamed iTunes when Apple purchased it in 2000."

I just looked at the iPhone music player and couldn't find a way to shuffle albums either.

What's funny is that before the iPod etc. made "shuffle mode" a possibility, it was never missed. Now it is a need.

[steve(thelil)]

Not having any alternatives to compare it to, I'm basically quite happy with iTunes. The main thing I use it for is podcasts. For me the ease of subscribing to podcasts and transferring them to my phone - you basically do nothing except connect the computer to phone- is fantastic.

[pig pen]

[bluenoter]

[Chazro]

I'd say 90+% of the 3300 songs on my pod are from my CD/LP collection. I very rarely download complete recordings (I cherry-pick my favorite tunes). For a longtime 'compilations' recorder like myself my pod is my ultimate 'greatest hits compilation'! Set on shuffle songs/no repeat, it's become my favorite source! For example, while typing this I heard Los Lobos/Michael Brecker/Celia Cruz!;)

[John L]

[Coda]

I use the Amazon Cloud player on my iPad: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/29/amaz ... es-to-mac/

It has a shuffle and can toggle between music stored on your device and up in their cloud. If you have Prime you get space for music.

[LennyH]

[Chazro]

While I've heard endless tales of iTunes suckage, I've never had a glitch, go figure! I've never done cloud sharing or even a podcast but I haven't a clue whether that means anything. It certainly shouldn't, right? I do have a problem that, being computer illiterate, maybe one of you guys can suggest a cure. I filled my 30GB pod and bought a 160GB with the idea being to really load the sucka with my tunes. Well, I'm not even 30% done and my computers run out of disc space! It's my older unit that I ONLY use for tunes and photos but....I've even downloaded the pix to disc and deleted them from the computer, I gained some space but quickly used it up. Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

[Monte Smith]

iTunes never fails to mess up my album art. Should be such a simple thing.

[John L]

[John L]

[Chazro]

@John L - thx buddy! Exactly the type of info I was hoping for. I briefly went looking and like in all things electronic, the variety and costs are all over the place! I'll be digging in over the weekend to figure out what to get. Might you have any product recommendations that I could use as a starting point?

[Chazro]

Thx Scott! But I'm not using a mac. It's an old HP. Whenever I look for new 'toys' I try to find the recognized 'giant-killer' within the category. Great performance, great build quality, and CHEAP!;)

[John L]

Chaz - Yes, Western Digital makes quality external drives for PCs. I would only strongly recommend again that you get at least two and back everything up. Western Digital external drives will fail eventually, and often without warning. There is no way to stop them from wearing out with use.

[jtx]

Old thread, but new advice. To store music, I would recommend NAS with redundant drives, which has now become affordable. Western Digital has the EX2 (2 drives) and EX4 (4 drives) My Cloud devices available now.



I have just ordered the 8TB version of the EX2, which really means 4TB of storage. I get the feeling I will fill it up rapidly, but it will provide a much more dependable location for all of my music files than the single 1TB external drive I am using now.

I keep it really simple when it comes to a software music player: foobar2000 ()

And for portable playback, I used an older 80GB iPod with Rockbox installed on it (so I can use whatever lossy encoder I want).

Neither of the above have any issues with album art at all.

[LennyH]

I'm ready to ditch iTunes if I can find an alternative. I've got like 11,000 tunes, IIRC. I don't know whether it's because of the number of songs chokes iTunes or whatever but now I can't even use the search window. If I want to find a certain album or artist, I type something in and the program freezes immediately. crtl-alt-delete and shut down every time. It blows.

[Ron Thorne]

[jtx]

I am running 8200 tracks currently on Foobar2000. No issues at all. It has a more rudimentary interface when compared to the slick iTunes presentation, but it just works once you have it customized for your own setup.

I should also add it has a lot of plugins available for just about every audio format out there, so if you ever needed to transcode a FLAC or 320 kbps MP3 into a smaller MP3, AAC or any other format, it can handle it.

[LennyH]