Better Jukebox Software for Bigger Libraries?

jimjenkins1975 asks: "I recently ripped and encoded my entire CD and Vinyl library, as well as merged my home and work computer's libraries (I work at a music company so my work library is very very large). It resulted in well over 750 GB of MP3's. I was hoping to get away with using iTunes to manage this, however the XML database file has grown very large, and the application itself is non-responsive or very sluggish at best, once it has loaded up (a process that takes several minutes itself). Is there another application (preferably for Mac, but I do have a PC) with similar features out there that can handle a library of this size with aplomb?"

Comments

Amarok in Linux

[rhythmx]

As a GNU/Linux user, even though I refuse to run KDE, I have had the best luck with Amarok. My archive (only about 150 GB) is nearly entirely rips of my albums. It has just about the best interface I have seen for dealing with a large (and sorted) archive. The features I like most are album cover manager, last.fm integration, ipod-style (artist->album->track) menus, the wikipedia info and lyrics based on context, and the random-album play mode.

There is a gnome equivalent but it is not quite as stable. I can't speak for the MacOSX crowd, but when in Win32 (rare these days) I reluctantly choose to use Winamp.

Some tips from my experience:

• Be an ID3 tag-nazi - No player can compensate for 750 GB of badly named media. MP3Tag is your friend for batch editing ID3 tags.
• Sort all your files using a resonable naming system. I use '/path/to/archive/%Artist%/[%Year] %Album%/%02Track% - %Title%.%Ext%'. This comes in real handy for writing scripts to deal with an archive to large to manage by hand.
• Backup. Backup. Backup.

Re:Amarok in Linux

[Curien]

Question asked and answered. Discussion closed. Next!

Re:Amarok in Linux

[willpall]

Don't forget that Amarok can use PostgreSQL or (I believe) any other standard database for handling it's database. I'm sure that will make dealing with 750 GB of music MUCH more efficient.

Re:Amarok in Linux

[phoenixwade]

I'm sure we'd have heard a lot more about it since it was first suggested in 2002. We might if we could still hear......

Re:Amarok in Linux

[twistedsymphony]

From:

So I think the real answer lies along the lines of what would a database pro do if his application got so big it started to slow down on his existing hardware?

To:

Your explanation is completely contrary to my experience in dealing with DBA's. When dealing with code they did not design or implement...

Nice switch there...

As someone who designs lots and lots of database application, managing nearly 30 years worth of engineering data, as my full time job... I'd be looking for a new job pretty quick if my solution to every performance slowdown was to just throw more hardware at it.

If your saying: How can I get iTunes to run faster then yes, throwing more hardware might be the answer but that's only because you don't have access to the actual code that runs it... there isn't much of anything you can do about it. Chances are when friends and family ask for help getting things to run faster "buy faster hardware" is the only thing a DBA would have to offer because they didn't build any of the applications in question.

Though, you posed the question as if someone was building an new application from scratch, or at least had the ability to modify an existing application, in which case any DBA worth hiring would look for ways to optimize their queries. Nevermind the fact that iTunes uses XML to manage it's data as opposed to a more conventional database.

Sometimes better hardware is the answer, but it's never the first one you go to. More often then not in the business world you're required to build your application within the constrains of existing hardware.

Mediamonkey

[afidel]

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.

Quod Libet, of course

[keitosama]

Quod Libet is a fantastic GTK+-based music player designed for gigantic libraries. There are so many ways to search in it (for instance, you could search for &(genre=pop, genre=rock, #(lastplayed > 30 days)) to find every pop rock song you haven't been listening to for the last month, if you've got the tags right), so finding the tracks you're looking for shouldn't ever be a problem either.

amaroK

[wall0159]

amaroK works really well for me on ~14000 tracks (80gb). It uses either a mySQL or SQLite database for indexing, so I would expect it to scale pretty well. It supports mp3, ogg, aac, wma, ipods, irivers, ... it's the best and most flexible music player that I've seen.

Amarok again, but with some tips

[aitikin]

Amarok is by far my favorite "jukebox" program. There are only two things it doesn't have that iTunes does and those are the jukebox look (coverflow) and the APE (air port express) integration. Now, you mentioned OS X. Amarok is a great program, and when it's finally ported to Qt4, I will no longer use iTunes unless I have to. Here is a guide for getting Amarok running in OS X, and here is one to get it running "natively". There's a bit of a conversation as to an .app package for it.

mpg123

[Zork the Almighty]

I use mpg123 and the file system hierarchy to organize and play my mp3s. I have no idea what the hell you kids are talking about.

well over 750 GB of MP3's

[Anonymous Coward]

Torrent, please?!