iTunes/MP3 Player Alternatives

[Kainos]

I am about to dump a bunch of old music I have on my PC and also on my ipod. Was wondering if anyone knows any good (ie BETTER) alternatives to the itunes platform

also any new mp3 players on the market that can compete? specificlly I was wondering if any mp3 players can use animated gifs on their cover flow/display

the only ones Im familiar with are

spotify http://www.spotify.com

zune http://www.zune.net/en-US/

[Boyiee]

I use winamp for music.

[Kiehl]

Samsung Galaxy for my music.

[rezn0r]

if you mean to manage the connectivity to the ipod/iphone, i used to use ephpod instead of itunes, but it did corrupt my ipod once or twice (over like 6 years). i don't know if it works with newer models, this was before the iphone 3g was even out... i've also used sharepod before which i know worked with at least the iphone 3g.

if you mean managing and playing a music library on the pc, i can't stand any libraries, i keep everything organized myself, manually, and i wouldn't have it any other way. tag&rename for the id3 tags, and then i am just sure to name all completed albums to my naming scheme (which happens to be [/albums/artist/artist - (year) album name], in general). i second winamp, winamp queue + windows explorer of my music nas = all i need.

[Caiyuo]

I don't know if you mean a platform to manage and purchase music or not, but if just the former, I use mediamonkey and foobar2000 with the spotifoo skin and can't really ask for more.

[Kais]

i used to use winamp cause their visualizer is fucking godly but it's kindda slow. switched to foobar2000 and i've never been happier
not sure about mp3 players; my mp3 is a cowon j3 but that's probably outdated by now (amazing battery life and eq shit through, never looked back once i bought it). people still use sansa clip+ with rockbox installed don't they?

[Boyiee]

I tried to switch from winamp to fubar2000 but wasn't happy with it, ended up going back to winamp. It was mostly the UI, maybe I'll try it again with the skin posted.

[Caiyuo]

Yeah foobar on it's own isn't easy on the eyes and more about functionality, but it has great community support. I prefer spotifoo but any of this guy's skins are an improvement: http://br3tt.deviantart.com/gallery/29497701

[rezn0r]

well after sounding like a moderate music snob i tried out foobar + spotifoo due to your recommendations and it's pretty awesome... so thank you. i need to get out of the habit of wanting to enqueue things from explorer to a single playlist though, i've been stuck in that mindset forever due to winamp (and not using the library function). i love how this will just monitor my music drive and update itself. the last.fm integration is pretty slick too. i'm happy.

[Caiyuo]

Well, if you want that functionality back I'm p. sure it can be enabled through File > Preferences > Shell Integration. I think it depends on whether or not it's installed in portable mode or not, though. If it is I'm not sure any of that applies.

[rezn0r]

and there it is, the option to 'Always send new files to playlist: ' is basically how i did it before. just made a 'Now Playing' playlist and i can queue away. this is great, thanks again.