Several months ago, forum member Liberal_Hippie recommended that I check out MediaMonkey to solve my desktop music and syncing needs. You may recall, I’ve often had issues finding a decent solution, since I prefer Winamp on my desktop, but their mobile syncing is abysmal. Recently, I’d settled on iTunes + Salling Media Sync, and for someone who just doesn’t care to mess with it (or is stuck with OS X), that’s still a fantastic solution. However, I want more control than iTunes gives me.
MediaMonkey looks and feels a lot like Winamp. It’s skinnable, which is fun, and supports extensions, though I haven’t really found any that I needed/wanted. Here’s what mine looks like (I’m using a Windows Media Player skin) when opened to my music library.
You can see, on the far left, is all of my sources, including local storage, portables, podcasts, and internet radio. In the middle is an iTunes-like view with Genre, Artist, Album windows and the corresponding song list below. On the far right is my current playlist – and I like that I can go searching through my library without interrupting the playlist. You can customize these views however you see fit, and there is a great searching utility there in the top toolbar.
One of the best aspects of MediaMonkey is its ability to help you organize your music, including advanced tagging options and organization. As you can see here, when you right click on a track (or a selection of tracks), you get this submenu. The Find More From The Same selection is easy if you want to listen to more tracks (in your library) from a selected artist, album, genre, etc. You can also see the buy link, which offers multiple options, including Amazon.
The Auto-Tag from Web feature is brilliant – it uses Amazon.com’s database to pull all the meta information (album, artist, album art, track titles, etc) and embed them in the track. You can even choose to automatically embed your album art as cover_front in the file, which will ensure it shows up in the Nokia S60 music player! Auto-Tag from Filename is also great, and allows you to use various tags to properly apply tags in batches. You can do the reverse with Auto-Organize Files, including creating a custom directory hierarchy. Notice most of these options also have keyboard shortcuts, which helps quite a bit.
One of my favorite things about MediaMonkey is the advanced auto playlist feature. You can see below, there are plenty of options, and best of all – you can limit the size of the playlist either by the number of tracks, total filesize, or the length of play. Adding filters is easy, thanks to a handy wizard that pops up. You can see below, this playlist automatically populates with tracks from the Light Rock genre that have not been played in the past 30 days, limited to 3GB. This automatically refreshes every time you open MediaMonkey, too, so it’s always up-to-date.
When you connect your device, you’ll need to connect in Mass Storage mode, also known as File Transfer mode. With S60, unfortunately, this is significantly different than connecting in Media Transfer mode. In Mass Storage mode, your phone appears as a USB drive, rather than as an MP3 player. As such, you’ll need to refresh the library after you sync, which is extremely annoying.
Fortunately, that’s the only real negative about syncing your phone with MediaMonkey. There is a smorgasbord of options for mobile synchronization, so we’ll take these one at a time, to show all the features. First, below, you can see it’s possible to sync any combination of playlists on the phone. You can also synchronize your Podcasts, as well as any audiobooks you might have stored. Along the bottom there, you’ll also see the option to simply cram your device full of random tunes, until it’s bursting at the seams.
Auto-Sync is somewhat of a misnomer, since it can either be done automatically as soon as you connect your phone, or manually. I keep mine manual, in case I need to connect my phone for some other task. You can also select to delete any tracks from the device that are not part of the Auto-Sync list, which is handy. Apparently, there is also an option to automatically add any tracks that exist on the phone, to the PC’s music library, though I haven’t yet figured out how to activate that option.
Since it’s possible that your phone doesn’t play all of your music formats, MediaMonkey also features an integrated music conversion tool, which can be used specifically when syncing. You can create your own rules, as well.
The last tab is my favorite – Device Configuration. This is where you have complete control over how your music is copied over to your phone. Not only can you specify a folder, but you can also specify a directory hierarchy, which you can see below, at the top of the window. You can specify a folder for playlists to be stored, and also specify a folder for album art (though this option is unnecessary if you have the album art stored on the actual music file).
Another great feature of MediaMonkey is its ability to be reduced to a simple toolbar entry on your computer, as seen below. This ensures that you can change the tracks or pause the music, regardless of what window or application you might have open. You don’t need to re-activate the MediaMonkey window, simply click on the Windows taskbar.
MediaMonkey has completely replaced both iTunes and Winamp on my computer. It’s a bit confusing at first, but after you explore a bit and get it setup to your preferences, it’s extremely powerful and easy to use. There is a freeware version, but does not include advanced features such as watch folders, autoplaylists, and advanced tagging. The Gold version is available to purchase for $39.95, and includes free updates to all future versions.
