I have a fairly large and idiosyncratic collection of music recordings and I’m getting a bit leery about using Music as my main player/management app.
Searching around I see that there is IINA, Elmedia, Pine Player, etc.
Anyone here use Music alternative apps? What can you tell me?
My needs are simple: a player, able to easily edit meta data including album artwork. Integration with an IOS app would be a bonus but not essential.
My story: Lately with Music I’ve noticed frequent “album splitting” which I guess is a thing. CDs that I’ve burned to my library are suddenly appearing as two albums with a few random tracks appearing in a second album. I’ve gone back and repaired these incidents, but the invasive nature is kind of freaking me out. I don’t like the “big brother” aspect of Apple looking at my music library and deciding what it thinks is right. I do not subscribe to Music or Match (as far as I know—which is another creepy topic.) so this is the main reason I’m looking to move away from the Music.app.
Curious what others think about this topic?
Cheers.
I’ve given up trying to fit all my music into one app.
I use iTunes just for my own downloaded music which I organise on my laptop but certainly iTunes can get in the way of what I want to do with my own music.
I use Virtual DJ as I can stream Deezer tracks (for private home DJing). So I’ve moved to Deezer for my streaming and this is where I do most of my research … unless it’s not available there … then I use Bandcamp and that’s what I use to buy music as the artist gets more money especially on Bandcamp Fridays.
Deezer has more audio settings than iTunes. Not so good on other things.
I keep a Spotify free subscription as most of my friends are on Spotify and it’s good for sharing playlists. Wouldn’t use it for listening as I hate ads interrupting my listening.
I’m still using iTunes in Mojave so I’ve yet to use Catalina’s Music app. I’m thinking of detaching my large music collection from iTunes/Music when I upgrade to Big Sur (mainly because I haven’t connected my music to Apple Music, and won’t to prevent metadata rewriting), so I’ve been thinking about this question as well.
Years ago I tried Clementine (Mac/Windows/Linux) and liked it, but it apparently hasn’t been updated since 2016. It may still be good but I’d prefer to use an app that continues to be supported.
I own Vox and it’s okay but I prefer an iTunes-style, multi-column player to Vox’s small window.
I’m intrigued bt Musique (free) and Swinsian ($25), neither of which I’ve used.