Category: MP3

Most, if not all, developers have a favorite media player. My tool of choice for audio files is MediaMonkey. I use it to listen to my MP3 music collection, Podcasts and Shoutcast streams. It is a powerful tool with advanced syncing, file organization and tagging functionality. The file formats supported out of the box include MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, MPC, WAV, CDA, M3U and PLS.

This is the first part of a 5-part review. Future posts will provide more detailed coverage of the following topics:

• Part 2: Podcasts
• Part 3: Streaming and Online Music Stores
• Part 4: File tagging and organization
• Part 5: Advanced Settings

The current version of MediaMonkey is v3.0.2. There Standard and Gold editions of the product. The standard edition is free, and the Gold edition costs less than $20. Here’s a breakdown of the features available in each version.

I found the extra features in the Gold edition to be worth the $19.95 price tag. Here’s a screen shot of the application with labels added for each part of the application.

One of the strengths of MediaMonkey is how well it handles large media libraries. It claims to handle libraries consisting of 50,000+ music files and playlists. I don’t have 50,000 MP3s but I do have a fairly large collection, most of which were ripped my CD collection, and MediaMonkey never breaks a sweat. I’ve tried managing my collection with other software, iTunes, Windows Media Player, WinAmp to name a few. WMP didn’t perform nearly as well, and iTunes was even worse. WinAmp did perform admirably, but it doesn’t offer as rich a feature set.

Upcoming posts will dive deeper into those features. In Part 2, I will talk about managing and listening to Podcasts in MediaMonkey. Stay tuned…