Newest version of iTunes sucks bad.

[J T]

I like using i-Tunes for organizing all my music. I love to use the "grouping" category for unique labels like "workout music" or "studying music" then I can just randomly dump from those categories into my iPod shuffle. I also think the new Genius feature is really cool if you have a lot of music, which I do.

When I'm not using i-Tunes though, I use VLC media player. It's great because it's simple, cut & dry, and will play just about any media format. Oh yeah, and it's free!

For online music, I buy from Bleep.

[Luke]

I only use Itunes for downloading podcasts that aren't available otherwise.
Sorry the new version sucks though, hasn't bothered me.

[lordofduct]

I hate itunes, have for a long time.

I have a small windows XP virtual machine with itunes just in case I have to recover my iPod... but I don't use it for anything but recovering my iPod.

As for playback, when I'm in Windows I use Songbird, and when I'm in Ubuntu I use Rhythmbox. I love them both.

[Hatta]

I tried Rhythmbox. I really think it needs a separate playlist and collection window. I remember any time I wanted to navigate around my collection and check something out, it would change what's playing. Annoying.

Amarok used to be great back in the 1.4 days. They really screwed that up. I have been meaning to give MPD a try, but there's so much else to do. For now it's mplayer from the command line for me.

[Marspants]

Foobar2000 is what I use, I find I can do a lot with it and it's easy to run. Winamp and iTunes always gave me more headaches then it was worth.

[lisalover1]

Nobody's mentioned Amarok yet. It's a great music player, and is similar to iTunes, but has arguably more features. Plus, it's open-source.

[racketboy]

I was a long-term Winamp person, but gave up on it when my library got big and it was a pain to organize. iTunes (despite the slowness and such) provided the functionality I wanted.

I've played with Songbird and tried to like it, but it just didn't like the interface as much.
I also have an iPod shuffle that I use for podcasts and some music (I use my phone for most of my music now), so I need iTunes for that pretty much.

I've always played around with the Zune software -- it's very nice and I was impressed (I still use it for video podcast watching), but it didn't strike enough of a nerve for me to use it more.

[nate]

ya I don't buy music...I use winamp and I just drag and drop files to a sony player. I navigate by folders.

I know winamp has a ton of interface for organising but I've never looked at it. seems complicated. I haven't got into creating play lists or anything...I just play>folder>etc.

most of the stuff I download is DJ mash-ups posted for free or indie rap artists posting stuff in hopes of feedback...or stuff I recorded on my desktop with audacity.

I get sorta confused using an app to organise the mp3 files. I like to know where the folders are and I just haven't looked into how the apps deal with it.

[RCBH928]

Although I am a mac person and believe in Apple,
I hate iTunes.

I am not sure how files are organized, its a mess.
The store is horrible to me.

Its great that you can download digital content, preview it, and get feedback about it but its very horrible to browse not to mention slow.

I am not sure why they have not took an internet website kind of approach. its very anti-intuitive .

Why a lot of people like Media Player Classic? Whats wrong with VLC

[wakeup]

I was also a long time winamp user. But I quit not because of my library (I keep it very organized), but because I switched computer and somehow it lagged. So, I switch to windows media player. It's a nice music player, I mean after you tell it to scan your library, you pretty much just type in the keyword of the album, artist or song to search and you'll find it with the linking album and stuff. I really like it. Before when I was using winamp, I had to look through directories. And best of all, the player is fast and never lags.

Itunes is horrible. The program uses up the computer a lot, starts up slow, is slow itself. I only use it to put stuff in my ipod because apple made so many programs don't work with ipod.

Of course this is coming from someone who uses a non-gaming computer, so all the slow stuff may not apply to people with high end computers.