Ventis Media has released a new version of its award-winning MediaMonkey music management software for serious collectors. With storage becoming cheaper and serious collectors building massive music libraries, MediaMonkey now supports multi-terabyte music collections with over 100,000 tracks. MediaMonkey 3 is available today in free and paid versions at www.mediamonkey.com.

“This release of MediaMonkey is a major upgrade over previous versions,” said Russell Samuels, VP Marketing at Ventis Media. “In addition to supporting the needs of serious collectors, version 3.0 is also slicker, more user friendly, syncs with more devices, adds Podcasting and Album Art browsing, and will appeal to almost anyone who feels that iTunes or Windows Media Player is too simple to meet their music management needs.”

The new release adds over 200 new features and improvements including:

• Much-improved performance for collections of 100,000+ tracks
• Classical music management: MediaMonkey 3 adds support for fields required by classical music collectors, and supports tags with multiple attributes (e.g. Artist field supports multiple Artists). Users can also create customized subcollections (e.g. a single library that has a Rock Music collection, Classical Music collection, Audiobook collection).
• Automated library organization: MediaMonkey 3 Gold adds automated file organization that can re-organize tracks in the background into specific directory and filename formats as specified by the user.
• AAC (M4A, M4P, M4B) tagging and playback
• Podcast subscriptions
• New UI and skins
• Browsing by album art, iTunes-style browser, or Vista-style navigation bar
• Automated volume leveling with per album volume leveling
• New audio engine with crossfading and silence suppression
• On-the-fly conversion and volume leveling for CD burning
• Syncs and levels volume on-the-fly for the latest iPhones, iPods, and other devices

“Our users told us that they wanted a Music Manager that can scale to 100,000+ tracks, so we designed MediaMonkey 3.0 for scalability from the ground up,” explained Jiri Hajek, VP Development at Ventis Media. “To support such large collections, version 3 adds automated library management for bookkeeping functions such as volume analysis and file naming. It also allows users to segment large collections into sub-collections such as Classical Music or Contemporary Music, each configured with custom views and playback rules. For example, a Classical Music collection can be configured to display Conductor and play with cross-fading disabled.”

“Our buyers are serious audiophiles with large music collections in lossless audio formats such as FLAC,” said David Chesky, CEO of HDTracks.com. “MediaMonkey is the best music manager for our users. It supports all of the high-end features they require, without requiring them to be technically advanced.”

About Ventis Media

Ventis Media is a provider of advanced music management tools. Founded in 2003, the company is headquartered in Montreal, Canada, with offices in the Czech Republic. MediaMonkey is an award-winning music manager and jukebox for serious music collectors and iPod users. It catalogs CDs, AAC, OGG, WMA, FLAC, MP3 and other audio files, including contemporary and classical music, audiobooks, podcasts, etc. It offers multiple tools for looking up and editing tags, and an automated library organizer to organize files on the hard drive. It includes a CD ripper, CD/DVD Burner, and audio converter for saving music, and advanced playlisting for creating music mixes. Its player automatically adjusts volume levels and supports a Party mode that locks the UI for use at public events. It syncs tracks, playlists, and podcasts to portable audio devices such as iPhones, iPods, MP3 Phones, and other devices, and supports hundreds of scripts, plug-ins and visualizations to extend its functionality further. It has won numerous awards including 5-star Editor rating on download.com, 5-star Editor’s pick award on Freeware Genius, and Winner of the Skytopia Media Player Shootout. For more information, please visit http://www.mediamonkey.com.

Media contact:

Dov Smith
press@mediamonkey.com
514.242.1776

MediaMonkey 3.0.2 is now available! It is primarily a bug-fix release.

Want to get your music library under control? Want to sync your music to your phone? Download it here.

See the what’s new file for all the details. Existing MediaMonkey users, please see the upgrade faq.

Want to get your music library under control? Want to sync your music to your phone? Download it here.

See the what’s new file for all the details. Existing MediaMonkey users, please see the upgrade faq.

Note: Users of versions 2.5.5.996/997 and FLAC should update immediately. More Information.

Want to get your music library under control? Prefer to manage your iPod instead of it managing you? Download MediaMonkey 2.5.4!

See the what’s new file for all the details.

“Our competitors are huge, but they’re also weighed down by proprietary technologies and audio formats,” explained Russell Samuels, VP Marketing at Ventis Media. “iTunes is closely aligned with the AAC/Fairplay format and works really well with the iPod, but doesn’t work with other devices and lossless formats such as FLAC. Windows Media Player uses WMA and works well with ‘Plays for Sure’ devices, but doesn’t synch with iPods. These types of issues have driven users to the open MP3 format and to MediaMonkey.”

Market research confirm users’ frustration with proprietary formats and preference to the standard MP3 format: The average iPod contains only about 10 AAC tracks purchased via iTunes**, while the rest of it is filled with MP3s. By the same token, eMusic has vaulted into the #2 position in online music sales thanks to its focus on selling music in the non-proprietary MP3 format***.

According to Clayton M. Christensen, the Harvard professor and author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, during the early phases of an industry “a proprietary solution is almost always the right solution — because it allows you to knit all the pieces together in an optimized way. But once the technology matures and becomes good enough, industry standards emerge. That leads to the standardization of interfaces, which lets companies specialize on pieces of the overall system, and the product becomes modular. At that point, the competitive advantage of the early leader dissipates…”****

“Being as small as we are, MediaMonkey has no alternate agenda of selling specific devices, or marketing a particular music format. Serious music collectors appreciate a music organizer that focuses on their needs and supports a broad range of formats and devices.” commented Jiri Hajek, VP Development.

MediaMonkey is available at http://www.mediamonkey.com

• See: http://www.download.com/sort/3150-2141_4-0-1-4.html
• See: http://www.itunesperipod.com/ & http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/12/apple_itunes_2006/
• See: http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/emusic.ars
• See: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060109_432937.htm

It also includes support for DRM-protected tracks downloaded from Napster and Yahoo music, along with FLAC functionality for serious audiophiles. With FLAC encoding, tagging, and auto-conversion, MediaMonkey is now an excellent platform for lossless audio. Users can copy their CDs losslessly, play, organize and tag them, and synchronize those tags to their iPods by using on-the-fly conversion.

“MediaMonkey has developed a reputation as one of the best music managers, and one of our goals in this release was to improve some of its non-management features. We’ve added Party Mode so that it can be used in public places without worrying about alterations to the library and Auto-DJ so that tracks can be set to play automatically even when a playlist runs out,” said Russell Samuels, VP Marketing.

“In addition to making sure that MediaMonkey has the best iPod support possible, we’ve also added MP3/Data CD/DVD burning since a growing percentage of car stereos now include MP3 CD playback,” added Jiri Hajek, VP Engineering. “With a single click, users can burn a CD that is navigable via their car stereo.”

MediaMonkey supports CD, MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, APE, and MPC formats along with many others via plug-ins. It catalogs, plays, rips, burns, converts, tags, creates mixes, and organizes large music collections. MediaMonkey is available now at http://www.mediamonkey.com.

“For those of us who can’t afford an iPod, MediaMonkey now offers the rest of us a similar synchronization experience–it will now synchronize tracks and playlists to almost any portable audio device that is a USB mass storage device. If you can copy files to it in the Windows Explorer, it’ll synch with MediaMonkey,” said Jiri Hajek, Vice President Engineering at Ventis Media.

“Whereas a large segment of the online music world is developing online music services that are compatible with a particular client and a particular portable audio device, MediaMonkey’s philosophy is to be able to support any online service with any audio format, using any portable audio device” said Russell Samuels, Vice President Marketing at Ventis Media. “We continue to believe that most consumers want choice: choice of software, choice of format, and choice of portable device. We’re building a product that aims to satisfy these needs, while giving online music stores a tool that they can customize to their liking.”

MediaMonkey supports CD, MP3, OGG, WMA, APE, and MPC formats along with many others via plug-ins. It catalogs, plays, rips, converts, tags, creates mixes, and organizes large music collections. MediaMonkey is available now at http://www.mediamonkey.com.

“Most consumers obtain their digital music files from multiple sources: their own CD collections, online music services, and their friends. All of these files will be encoded and formatted differently, and most serious collectors will want a single application to organize them, level the volume, add lyrics, export them to other devices, and play them–no matter where they come from. Our mission is to build the best music manager possible and let other companies worry about building online music stores,” said Jiri Hajek, Vice President Engineering at Ventis Media.

“To date, each of the online music services has required its users to install a custom client: MusicMatch Jukebox for the MusicMatch service; Real Player for the Rhapsody service, and so on. That’s like Amazon forcing you to use an ‘Amazon browser’ in order to shop at Amazon, even if you prefer the Mozilla browser” said Russell Samuels, Vice President Marketing at Ventis Media. “We believe most consumers want choice: choice of software, choice of format, choice of purchase venue. We’re building a product that aims to satisfy users regardless of formats and services used.”

MediaMonkey supports CD, MP3, OGG, and WMA formats along with many others via plug-ins. It catalogs, plays, rips, converts, tags, creates mixes, and organizes large music collections. MediaMonkey is available now at http://www.mediamonkey.com.

“If you’re tired of using one program to organize your music, another to level the volume, and yet another to play it; if you’re sick of the adware and the bloatware then MediaMonkey is what you’re looking for,” said Jiri Hajek, Vice President Engineering at Ventis Media.

“What makes MediaMonkey different from most other players is that we don’t have any vested interest in a particular music service or format,” said Russell Samuels, Vice President Marketing at Ventis Media. “Real Player works with the Rhapsody service; Microsoft Media Player is geared primarily for WMA files; Apple’s iTunes only supports the iTunes store. That’s like having a web browser that can used to purchase books only from Barnes & Noble–that’s where Players are at today. MediaMonkey will be format and service agnostic.”

MediaMonkey supports CD, MP3, OGG, and WMA formats along with many others via plug-ins. It catalogs, plays, rips, converts, tags, creates mixes, and organizes large music collections. MediaMonkey is available now via http://www.mediamonkey.com.

If you’re interested in testing the beta, please check out the beta forum.

You can also purchase Songs-DB Gold, which brings some even better features, for only $20.