Sometime back we did a poll here at Make Use Of asking our readers about their favorite music player. I was just going through the comments in that poll and one of the comments about Media JukeBox caught my attention. It prompted me to download and try out this music manager and I can safely say that I finally found an awesome tool which can effectively manage the big and badly scattered collection of music files in my computer.
Media JukeBox has to be the best free music jukebox available which boasts some cool features which no other free music organizer can boast of (at least among those which I’ve tried ).
The user interface was the first thing which immediately attracted me towards this tool and tempted me to further play with it. Unlike other music organizers where you need to spend some time initially to understand the user interface, Media Jukebox’s interface is nice, clean, simple and stylish at the same time. As you can see in the screenshot below, the interface is divided into 4 panes on the right where the top 3 panes are categorised into genre, Album Artist and Album and the big bottom pane lists the corresponding songs with the various details in different columns. The left hand side is neatly organized too and lists the playlists, podcasts, plugins and drivers.
You can easily customize the entire interface by clicking on the ‘Pane‘ button just above the 3 panes on the right side. For example, I changed the pane view to thumbnails and now it shows the thumbnails of album art in the main pane.
Smartlists is a feature which sets this tool apart and honestly speaking this was a feature which I craved for. I don’t think other tools like Media Monkey have this feature or perhaps this feature isn’t easy to locate in other tools. You can consider a Smartlist as a customized playlist where you set the rules and accordingly it picks up the songs from your library and plays them. For example you may want to play the ‘top 50 hits of 1990′ or a combination of some albums and genres. You can set the rules and create a smartlist and play it whenever you like. You can create a smartlist by clicking on Edit - > Add Smartlist
After discussing my 2 favorite features of this app, I will now delve into the other features of this tool.
Overall, as I have already mentioned, I am quite impressed by this tool and will use it as my primary music organizer tool going forward. I recommend you try this free app and give your feedback in the comments.
(By) Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips and productivity hacks at Jeet Blog
Filed Under: Cool Software Apps ¦ Windows
Tags: music, music manager, music player
What really makes this the best player, is if you dish out the cash (or get it some other way…) for J River’s Media Center instead of Media Jukebox. Media Center is essentially the same program except it allows Images and Video as well. I use it to organize and play not only all of my music but my entire video collection as well. With a bit of editing and tweaking of the UI for Videos (I changed the panes and added tags so it goes Series/Movie -> Series Name -> Season #), I now am able to easily use Media Center to play videos and music as well as organize my images.
I then connected a somewhat old laptop to my TV, plugged in a wireless mouse, and voila an easy way to play videos or music and view images on your tv as well as your computer. Media Center has been a great all around media solution for me ever since I found it.
MediaMonkey definitely does have the “SmartList” feature. It’s call “Auto Playlist” and they live with all other playlists. To create one, you right-click on Playlists, choose new auto-playlist, name it, then define the criteria. Here’s a how-to:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/noframe/source/using%20autoplaylists.htm
MediaMonkey is by far my favorite media management tool.
That was my comment. Glad that you were won over by JRiver. You’ve probably only scratched the surface of what you can do.
Like Sean above, I also use the commercial Media Center which gives you even more features and control. But the free Media Jukebox itself is just an amazing player.
Now if only we could coax them into making a native Linux version I could finally quit Windoze. Media Center is honestly the only app that keeps me with Microsoft.
Staring at it and I thinks it’s iTunes clone. I’m still a Foobar fan. Thanks
Just to be explicit, are you saying this is hands down better than iTunes on PC?
It’s at par with iTunes I think
Hi Abhijeet
I was trying the Media Jukebox when I accidentally deleted a folder form the library. Now Jukebox will not let me import it back in. Is there a way to get around this?
Thanks.
Steve, when you are trying to re-import the folder you’ll first have to uncheck the box at the bottom which says- ” Ignore files previously removed from the library “. Once you click on it and uncheck the box you will be able to import that folder again.
Abhijeet
That worked. Thanks.
Thanks for the info on Media Jukebox. It is quite a nice player. Question: Is there a way to display the total running time for a CD while it is playing? Not the track time, but the CD on the whole.
Thanks.
It looks like Itunes, but from my experiences its a lot faster. Itunes would slow up my computer, media jukebox doesnt. IMO media jukebox looks better than Itunes.