Decent *FREE* music library software

[phil_the_bassist]

I know that I'm gonna get some abuse for this, but having a mac = I use itunes. That's the way it's worked, and I've not had any problem with the software as a library/storage/organiser and the new visualizer is the Mutts Nuts, but I've just found an old ext. hard drive with roughly 3.2 gazillion tracks in wma format.

Is there any software that will play ALL my m4a, mp4, mp3, wma etc files, INCLUDING all the stuff I've downloaded off of Itunes (more flame expected, so go ahead!) without havin to converting it to / will convert it all easily and quickly into a uniform format? If not I'll do the ol' 'download-it-onto-Mrs Ptb's-PC-and-burn-it-to-cd-and-then-redownload-it-to-my-mac' swicheroony.

Any help'd be appreciated!

xpx

[spinynorman]

Don't have a Mac myself, but the discussion [url="http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35551"]here[/url] suggests VLC, which I have the PC version of. It's not bad, but I think more of a universal music and video player than a library.

[url="http://vlc-media-player.en.softonic.com/mac"]VLC Download[/url]

[spinynorman]

Actually this seems to be the place to look

[url="http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/audio/manage"]http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/audio/manage[/url]

[Buzz]

[s]Winamp.

It'll play all those (might have to download an extra plugin or two, but it's really simple to do so, but I doubt you'll have to), and the library isn't bad either.

It's been my music player of choice for the past 5 years, I only use WMP when I want to listen to single albums/mp3 as it's tied into the context menu and won't disrupt my Winamp playlist.[/s]

Winamp is PC only, didn't read the op properly.

Edited November 3, 2008 by Buzz

[Dood]

The software isn't free, but I highly recommend "Anapod" [url="http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/"]http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/[/url] by red chair software.
Paying for this software is well worth it and gets round al the niggles that people have over itunes. The application is feature rich and includes some nifty time savers, such as being able to drag and drop MP3's straight to th eplayer and they are converted into iPod files on the fly... oh.. and you can drag the files straight from the player back to your PC/MAC

Creative MP3 player users have their own version of the software called 'NotMad'.. a play on the name of the ole Nomad software from creative. Same features and was pretty easy to use.

[phil_the_bassist]

Legends! Thanks guys, I'll have a look and decide what to adorn my mac with :-D


...I have to say, Anapod looks like the mutts nuts, esp if it can drag music FROM ipods!