MediaMonkey focuses on the needs of the serious music collector, providing Music Management facilities that are second to none, however, you may decide to retain iTunes if you want to continue using it for the following:

• Podcasting. MediaMonkey relies on third-party podcasting apps such as Juice.
• Support for .m4a / .m4p / .mp4 files. MediaMonkey offers playback support for these via plug-ins).
• Video Support. MediaMonkey does not include Video support.

Install and run MediaMonkey. When it is run for the first time, it will scan your hard drive / network for music and then import additional ratings and play history information from iTunes so that all the information you've painstakingly entered will be preserved.

Plug your iPod into the PC. Windows will pop up a dialog box* asking if you wish to Synchronize the device with MediaMonkey, and if you choose to synchronize you'll be presented with the Device Profile configuration menu.

It lets you choose which directories, artists, albums, or playlists are to be synchronized, along with basic synchronization settings. Note: if you only plan on moving/copying tracks manually to your iPod, you can skip this step entirely.

*If you're not prompted to synchronize, just click the Synchronize iPod button in MediaMonkey and you'll be brought to this menu if iPod Synchronization has not yet been configured.

Auto-conversion, included with MediaMonkey Gold, allows you to automatically synchronize tracks no matter what format they're in, converting tracks on-the-fly to a format that is supported by your iPod, while retaining all metadata.

Auto-conversion can also convert tracks to lower bitrates to make more effective use of the limited storage capacity on your iPod. This is especially useful for users who store music in lossless formats such as FLAC.

For serious collectors who want to store all their music--no matter what format it's in--to an iPod, nothing beats MediaMonkey.

After configuring your iPod's profile, you'll return to the MediaMonkey Explorer where you can browse the tracks on the iPod by Artist, Album, etc.

You can manually copy tracks from the iPod to your PC (or vice versa) via Copy and Paste from the iPod node to a directory in MediaMonkey's My Computer node.

Or, if you wish, you can update track tags or playlists on your iPod directly within MediaMonkey.

MediaMonkey gives you the level of control that you want over your iPod.

If you prefer to use automatic synchronization, you can just press the iPod Synchronization button and all of the tracks that were previously selected for Synchronization will auto-synch.

When the tracks synch all attributes such as album art, play history, soundcheck data, and ratings are synched, as would be expected.

If you want a serious iPod music management tool , MediaMonkey is for you. Check out our download page to see which version is for you.