Main competitors

[danhackley]

What would you consider to be the top 3 competitors or alternatives to Mediamonkey?

My list:

1. iTunes
2. Windows Media Player
3. Songbird

[rovingcowboy]

1. mediamonkey 2.5.5.998
2. windows media player
3. winamp

[nynaevelan]

1. none
2. none
3. none

As primitive as MM is for playlist management, it far outweighs any other program I have tested and with the addition of skins and scripts, NONE is in the ballpark let alone a competitor. My requirements are very specific for playlist management and control over how and what is synced to my Zen's, MM meets my average needs and scripts meets my advanced needs. I am content.

Of course I do like to play with other programs just to find new features to enhance MM.

Nyn

[Lowlander]

I assume that Windows Media Player (with Windows), iTunes (for iPod/iPhone/iTunes store) and WinAmp (been around a long time and pioneer) would have the largest install base. I don't know about Foobar which even many MediaMonkey fans like for playback. Songbird is new and I'm not sure how much market it has gained so far.

[rovingcowboy]

1. none
2. none
3. none

As primitive as MM is for playlist management, it far outweighs any other program I have tested and with the addition of skins and scripts, NONE is in the ballpark let alone a competitor. My requirements are very specific for playlist management and control over how and what is synced to my Zen's, MM meets my average needs and scripts meets my advanced needs. I am content.

Of course I do like to play with other programs just to find new features to enhance MM.

Nyn

i just was going on what is mostly downloaded not how good they are compared with mm 3.

but the only one that comes close in the same features is mm 2. so not really much competition at all now is there.

[Sebastian78]

Worst thing any brand can do, is underestimate or not acknowledge that there is competition out there when you are selling a product. Being self centered, basking in your own glory, boasting about your own ability, actually being a fanboy of you own products.....will get you nowhere and in the end, make you disappear.

1. Songbird
- VERY strong competitor, big development team behind it, cross-over usage from Firefox/Thunderbird, ad-ons, tabs, LOOKS
3. iTunes
- A defacto standard mp3 player for anyone using an iPod and standard for a lot of people who don't because it's easy to use, looks great, works
4.Winamp
- Was the best, but added to many functions, became bloated, didn't implement a good enough ad-on function. Looks a mess!
5. Amarok (depends on the spread of Linux)
- Never tried it....but heck, it has to be better than WMP.
8. WMP11 (Does anybody use this?)
- It is there, it has some nice functions, but it wont let you do what you want, it does things without asking and it's to integrated with the OS..(PITA)

All 5 "competitors" have unique and actually some rather good innovations. I wish you could extract what works, what looks good and implement it in MM......

[Lowlander]

Any numbers on Songbird and Amarok?

[Lowlander]

Ok, trying to do an unscientific survey to see popularity of the before mentioned programs.

Code: Select all

Player                     Downloads on Download.com      Downloads on Softpedia.com
Amarok                     -          ?                   -         ?
iTunes                     -  8,734,268                   -   440,252
MediaMonkey                -  3,067,389                   -    68,765
Songbird                   -      9,793                   -    95,535
Real Player                - 44,694,198                   - 1,255,255
WinAmp                     - 12,404,218                   - 2,397,217
Windows Media Player       -          ?                   - 3,870,047

This is not scientific, doesn't show actual usage and includes upgraders, but is interesting nonetheless. Furthermore I don't know how total downloads are calculated as it could be from all version or just the most recent version. Also check out the music management total downloads list on download.com.

[Mizery_Made]

You gotta figure to, a good majority of people probably go directly to the source for their software. I've never once downloaded MediaMonkey from Download.com or Softpedia.com. It's always came from here, including the first time I downloaded it years ago.

[Lowlander]

And Windows Media Player is pre installed and updated through Microsoft Update.

This is why it's just an interesting survey not actual user figures. I do wonder though if the ratio between other sources and the 2 sources mentioned for downloads is similar or very different for the different applications. If the ratio is similar these figures are more meaningful.

What really stood out for me was RealPlayer, but I guess many downloads are for users needing to stream real media, not necessarily to use it's library or local music playback capabilities. And Songbird stands out for it's low download numbers on download.com.

[Lowlander]

Found another list of what media software people actually are using: Wakoopa. WinAmp actually is listed as a player.

[Peke]

From what I watch on Cnet Songbird is not classified as fully featured Manager but more like MediaBrowser for WEB http://download.cnettv.com.edgesuite.ne ... ngbird.m4v

Here is what they said about MediaMonkey last year about MM 3.0 http://cnettv.cnet.com/mediamonkey/9742 ... 03295.html and MM2.5 http://cnettv.cnet.com/organize-your-mu ... 23906.html

[Nebbin]

I've always assumed the main competitors to be:
1. WMP (pre-installed, and so many people don't bother trying something else - but I found it unable to do what's required for my collection, and slower)
2. iTunes (INCREDIBLY sluggish on my computer, and thus too painful to use in any meaningful way. Though, at least it has iTunes Store and iPod video sync - also I've found that it's better on MAC than PC due in no small way to applescripting)
3. WinAMP (long time userbase, but fiddly with multi-windows and less powerful than MM3 even with a huge plugin db)
4. Songbird (up-and-comer, but still far too light on features. Clean cut UI, and I like the tabs (which would need expanded capabilities to be of any use for me - not just web interfaces). Maybe someday...)
5. Amarok 2 (still under heavy development, and although a decent player I still prefer MM (PC version still in beta))
6. foobar2000 (big among audiophiles, but overall a seemingly small userbase.)

I like some features in each one, but overall they don't seem to match up to MM at the moment. This doesn't mean MM is perfect (far from it) so I hope the devolpers are also aware of the strong points of each competitive product, and are feeling out ways to incorporate those strengths.

[mattisse]

After stumbling upon this topic, I thought it might me a good time to re-evaluate a few of the music managers I'd installed and tested in the past.
Feature-wise I only found one strong competitor for MM, the Helium Music Manager, which is unfortunately not free. All other programs had to many flaws at one point or another to qualify as my all-in-one music manager.

What impressed me about Helium was that it offers pretty much all the features MM does (it appears as the authors took a very close look at MM, even built in an import function for MM 2.5 libraries). But it also has some extras, that many MM users are eagerly waiting for. This includes multiple libraries, advanced multiple artist tagging, nested genres and also the management of artist information and links between artists.

The advantages of MM lie in the better tagging capabilities from external sources and of course in the availability of some excellent scripts.

A few thoughts on other music managers:
WMP: Too light on features, not extensible, not configurable enough for my likings

iTunes: nice looking, but also too light-weight, necessary extensions are hard too find especially on Windows

Songbird: shows great potential but still lacks a lot of key features. It seems to be aimed at iTunes user as the authors keep the features pretty simple, so I think it might never give power users enough control. But there are already some awesome add-ons and I like the way the community is involved.

Winamp: Was my favorite player. But that was year ago. Never liked it for actually managing my collection because the GUI is too messy

Foobar: Pretty good extensibility through plugins, but out of the box it's too rudimental and time-consuming to set up.

[Melloware]

Worst thing any brand can do, is underestimate or not acknowledge that there is competition out there when you are selling a product. Being self centered, basking in your own glory, boasting about your own ability, actually being a fanboy of you own products.....will get you nowhere and in the end, make you disappear.

Sebastian,

This is very very wisely said. To add my two cents to the topic, I have been using Mp3's since 1998 and have seen the entire progression of software music players through the years. I started on Winamp, but hated that it didn't catalog my music. So I wrote my own cross platform music player which used a database and could catalog as well as play my music called Jukes... Basically giving it features I WANTED but hadn't found in other applications.

And then I found MediaMonkey last year. I have tried all the rest, and then I tried the best. MediaMonkey does everything I have ever wanted in an organizer and player. It does everything that I always wanted Jukes to do but never had time to implement. It has features I would have never dreamed up, and now I can't live without. I know how fanboys sound and they are blind to shortcomings in software (think Apple fanboys), but this application ROCKS!

I would say the only one that has come close to it that I have used is J. River Media Center.

Thank you to listening to my two cents.