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I have an iPhone 6s and refuse to use iTunes on my Windows desktop. For all my media management I use MediaMonkey. I have a large music collection (something like 2 weeks of music now) and MM works amazingly well and allows me to sync to android or iphone. The only downside is you do have to have iTunes installed to get the USB drivers installed. I just disabled iTunes auto-start and auto-manage and haven't looked back.

For older iphones, you may be able to get away with Amarok, Clementine, or MusicBee, though I haven't tried those with my phone.

You could always just use iTunes, if you want something like iTunes.

Or you could switch to something that works, like MediaMonkey: http://www.mediamonkey.com/

iTunes has got to be one of the worst, most bloated, most annoying applications I've ever loaded on my PC

Have you tried Media Monkey? You can sync your files and not have to worry about iTunes (although it still has to be installed). I use it almost exclusively for all my media files.

That's the stupidest argument I've ever heard. The core problem with it is that it relies on the assumption that an OS and it's respective applications will break horribly at anything other than 96 DPI. While this is true on Windows (and indeed would make running Windows on a 200 DPI screen a prescription for eye strain), it is a Windows-only problem.

Sort of. Windows can lie about DPI and scale everything up, so that interface layouts don't break like they used to in the past. Se7en improved it by a lot, but it's still not good enough and requires a ton of work from application developers.

You can end up with this:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/120.png

The start menu looks fine, because Seven comes with 128x128 icons for everything, if I'm not mistaken. However, take a close look at Wordpad - the toolbar icons and the zoom on the bottom.

It gets much worse for legacy apps. For example, this:

DPI virtualization: http://a.imagehost.org/0342/SS-2010-05-15_01_14_47.png
XP-mode scaling: http://h.imagehost.org/0718/SS-2010-05-15_01_18_02.png

The first one looks like blurry shit (as I've said before), and the second one breaks the layout.

Font scaling and image scaling are solved problems, get with the times.

As you can see above, it's *not* a solved problem.

iTunes is "kindergarten" software, it's designed to be completely usable by non-technical people and does a less-than-average job. However, as a techie, I find the interface totally unintuitive.

I also hate the fact that it won't *JUST* download music to the device without touching my music collection. I am a bit anal when it comes to having correct tags on my music, I don't buy any downloadable music (and won't ever because again it's just for kids who haven't got the patience to listen to an entire album).

Fortunately, there is a better solution, Media Monkey which as of recent versions appears to support the iPod Touch very well, as well as other players, phones, etc. It also easily handles my collection of over 1200 ripped CDs and can convert to lower bitrates as you sync - plus it appears to work really well under WINE in Linux.

I've already turned off the intrusive iTunes startup services in Windows, I'll just leave it on the PC for any updates or app store purchases.

Slightly off topic ... MediaMonkey, one of the best music organizers. Check it out, especially if you think iTunes sucks.

WOW, insightful comments from AC. Who knew?

I second this. The only reason I even fire up iTunes is to install updates. Although obvious a link is always nice. It's periphery functions are also quite interesting. The ability to quickly search multiple locations (CDDB, Amazon, Amazon UK, etc) to fill in missing information works really well and the DJ mode for using during parties to keep wandering hands from snarking up your settings is a nice touch. It allows plug-ins and there is a healthy community of 3rd party plug-ins available.

Media Monkey is awesome. It has several features that come in very handy for music nerds.

You can:

Organize music and edit tags in your audio library with a powerful, intuitive interface.

Automatically lookup and tag Album Art and other metadata. (This seems to work very well).

Manage 50,000+ files in your music collection without bogging down.

Manage all genres of audio: Rock, Classical, Audiobooks, Comedy, Podcasts, etc.

Play MP3s and other audio formats, and never again worry about varying volume.

Record CDs and convert MP3s, M4A, OGG, FLAC and WMA files etc. into other formats.

Create playlists and let Auto-DJ & Party Mode take care of your party.

Sync iPhones, iPods, & MP3 players, converting & leveling tracks on-the-fly.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

Media Monkey?

And for the iPod guy who "didn't want to manage his tunes by drag and drop" say hello to my friend Mediamonkey who is quite good at that job. Sure you could use WMP11 for the job as well, but the monkey just has IMHO a much nicer layout and experience. And with both WMP11 and the monkey it really isn't hard to cook up playlists like "Songs I haven't heard in a month" or "songs I like on weekends". After dealing with some of my customers headaches with iPods I have my whole family on the Sandisk M series. They are built like tanks, run on a single AAA battery so if I run out of juice while I am out I can pop into any gas station and be jamming again in under 3 minutes, and if a family member wants to get a bigger player or needs a copy of the songs they have on their Sandisk it is just Ctrl-A Ctrl-C Ctrl-V, can't get much simpler than that.

If you want an iPod because they are pretty or you like the GUI that is fine, but after dealing with just about every kind of MP3 player known to man I'll stick with the Sandisk or if I want a HDD based the Cowon. Because I do enough tech support at work without dealing with it at home.

Thankfully, MediaMonkey supports newer iPods and iPhones. iTunes is like torture for power users with large libraries. Too bad that MediaMonkey only supports Windows.

I might stop being spitting mad.

I hate:
2. Stupid itunes making it a hassle to give my wife a copy of something WE own legally (or often was free in the first place).

Try Mediamonkey. http://www.mediamonkey.com/
Works as advertised.

Not slashvert, just a happy user, with loads of Macs & PCs, iPods, bluetooth in the cars...and three teenage girls. Junked iTunes early on, never looked back.

how do you get that music onto the iPod? Oh yeah, you need to install iTunes

iTunes is nice on OS X at least. There are plenty of alternative ways of getting the music on there if you don't like iTunes. Windows friends seem to like Mediamonkey or WinAmp.

I happen to like MediaMonkey. The free version may not meet all of your requirements, but for $20 I think it will. http://www.mediamonkey.com/

Try MediaMonkey. It's similar to Winamp's speed and relative unbloatwareness, but unlike Winamp, it doesn't seem like it's going to be sold to the next Yahoo, AOL, or M$.

I've recently switched and couldn't be happier. Here's a in-depth review should you need convincing.

Yup, iTunes is a pig on windows. That's why I use Mediamonkey when I'm using windows. Muuch better file management, not a memory hog & it syncs to my ipod...

Get a copy of Media Monkey and use that to convert the format if you really, really, have to. Just select all your media and then shift+cntl+c. Please write a complaint letter to the manufacturer though, and there may be some loss of quality.

I was frustrated by MMJB for quite a while, but I couldn't find another product that tagged my files as well. I finally gave up when the application would just crash on me at start-up. I have finally found my nirvana: MediaMonkey. I only use the free version and it does everything I want, including helping with renaming, creating folders based on ID3 info, searching for duplicates, adding album artwork, conversion from flac and other formats to MP3. I highly recommend it.

I used to use Winamp as my media player (also used MMJB around the 1990s I think) and, after trying several Media players to replace Winamp (I dont like Winamp media library management) I kept returning to Winamp + folders. That is until I read here on slashdot about MediaMonkey, I *really* really recommend it, I have been using it for about 1 year and I do not regret it. I still have Winamp installed but never really use it. I use MediaMonkey for my music library and VLC for video.

Of course if you are on linux amarok might work for you... I have always felt it is very unstable and "fragile" as it keeps crashing on me whenever I use it.

Itunes since version 4 has been a beast on windows, I had switched to it (from Winamp) because it honestly seemed the best music player, but its got bigger, slower and more encumbered since version 4 was released. I'm actually using windows media player 11 right now because it provides me with the features I want in a music player (sync music to phone), its quick and handles all media.

I *tried* to use iTunes once also but find it really horrible. I felt as if I just cant do anything with my music library, in that way i felt iTunes similar to what what the GNOME ppl do (remove every feature for the sake of "simplicity" until you cant do anything). I used to use Windows Media Player also, which I really hate. Usually I returned to barebones Winamp... (I've got my 60GB mp3/ogg/flac/ape media library ordered by folders/subfolders).

All that nightmare was ended when I found MediaMonkey from another poster here in Slashdot. I have been using it for almost one year and I wont look back anytime soon.

As a side rant, my brother is visiting me in the UK, he's got an iPod (I dont like them for the lockdown and DRM, I have a great OGG/MP3 Samsung YPZ5)... he was making fun of me because of my "hatred" against apple... until he needed to delete some songs from his iPod... and the only way to do that? using iTunes... but as I do not like Apple software (not iTunes, nor Quicktime...) I do not have it installed in my computer... therefore he is locked out, with his piece of shit brick until he can find a PC that allows him to install iTunes... on the other hand every PC where I connect my el-cheapo YPZ5 sees it as a external memory and I can add and delete music as I please without downloading any spyware or adware.

You need to get Media Monkey and set up your portable devices with custom convert-on-the-fly sync rules. It's easy - even I managed to do it. If you've got a pretty static collection, you can convert-sync to another directory. That's what I did when my wife got an ipod - converted the 80GB of FLAC to 15GB of MP3, then let her sift it down to the 8GB of her device memory by cutting out the chuncks of my collection she never listens to. She's happy with iTunes, and I rip all our CDs and just give her an MP3 copy, so there are few tears involved.

I used to use foobar, but it takes a bit of customization to really be useful as a full-time app, and I don't have that kind of time or patience. MM does most everything for me, and tagging is pretty easy. Version 3 is looking to be pretty cool.

APE is just another lossless. Foobar2000 is a quick and dirty way to transcode, and lossless-lossless is (naturally) lossless - so you can swap out to a new format in the future if you really decide you hate what you're using. I actually converted my whole collection with foobar once - took about 3 days, but it worked. I always delete .cue, etc. and just keep the base files when I useually download from the net. I always have to go in and clean up the tags anyway - even on my own rips - since I'm particular about my genre and album-artist settings.

mediamonkey claims to handle 50K+ files without slowing down. It's amazing what you can find in seconds with google =) The search was mp3 media manager.

Check out MediaMonkey.

It imports virtually all settings from iTunes and is extremely customizable. You can also use most Winamp plugins with it.

MediaMonkey (http://www.mediamonkey.com/).

It is basically WinAmp with more database functions and so forth... give it a whirl. It's great for tagging (uses Amazon and even fetches album pics) and has iPod support. The down side is that some features aren't unlocked until it is paid for (cracked, serial'd, etc).

Supports most WinAmp plug-ins too!

For Windows give MediaMonkey a go. It's like AmaroK, with quite a few nifty features.

Try MediaMonkey. Way better than iTunes in almost every way, except of course iTMS integration which I don't care about. Drag-and-drop to any folder to change the corresponding tag, totally customizable, looks great, works great. (Yes I tried Foobar2000 and all the others, but MediaMonkey's the one I've stuck with.)

Check out MediaMonkey, Its what I have been using for years now, and it is really good.

Stupid name, great product. It supports MP3, OGG, FLAC, APE; organizes tracks (renames/moves); tags all supported formats; imports metadata and Album art from Amazon; and allows for custom scripts.
http://www.mediamonkey.com/

well, if I may, I'll add Media Monkey. Even though the complete version isn't free, this is the best playlist creator, mp3/CD player I've seen so far. I've installed it to my sisters and also to my mother and they loved it. It can index everything you've got and gives you an easy way to update batches of ID3 tags.

Just think, in a year or so it could be the next iTunes killer..

Sorry, the role of "iTunes killer" has already been filled.... Media Monkey replaced Winamp for me a long time ago.