August 31, 2010

8 Free iTunes Alternatives


Herer are 8 Best Free Alternatives for iTunes for Windows. Using these iTunes alternatives, you can copy songs to your iPod, and easily manage it. By  Ishan  April 27, 2010
Note: Most of these will not work with iPod touch or iPhone, and you would have to stick with iTunes for that. I am planning to do some thorough research to find some software that works with iPod Touch. Subscribe to my updates to know when that happens.

Sharepod:

SharePod is unarguably one of the most popular alternative to iTunes. It is very light in size, and intuitive to use. Sharepod can copy songs, videos, playlists, and artwork to your iPod. You can even create backup of your ipod music library with Sharepod.
One of the best feature of Sharepod is that you can install it directly on your iPod, so you can run it on any computer that does not have iTunes installed.
Download Here.

Winamp:

Most of the people are not aware that they can sync their iPod using Winamp. Winamp is a very effective free alternative to iTunes. Apart from just managing your iPod, Winamp is a full fledged media player too. So, if you have any media player installed on your computer, you can uninstall that, and instead use Winamp. This one software will manage your iPod, as well as play all your music. You might need to install iPod plugin for Winamp, if Winamp does not works for you out of the box (Winamp does comes with iPod support built-in).  Here is a detailed tutorial that explains how to use Winamp with your iPod.
Download Here.

CopyTrans Manager:

CopyTrans Manager is another free iTunes alternative. CopyTrans Manager is one of the latest free iTunes alternative, so it supports newer versions of iPod too. It is supposed to support iPod Touch as well, but that was a hit and miss for me.
Download Here.

Foobar2000:

Foobar2000 is another interesting media player. A great feature of Foobar2000 is that it is extremely low in system resources, and functioanlity can be expanded by using variousplugins. Foobar2000 also comes with iPod support, and is a nice free alternative to iTunes.
Download Here.

SongBird:

SongBird is another good music player that comes with support for iPod. However, I wasn’t able to find anything on Songbird’s website for iPod, but their are tons of articlesin blogosphere that mention Songbird’s support for iPod. I will let you try if yourself.
Download Here.

Floola:

Floola is a free alternative to iTunes that lets you copy songs to/from your iPod. Floola works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Floola can be installed directly on your iPod to play it from any computer. Floola lets you copy Songs, videos, and Artwork to your iPod.
Download Here.

Poddox:

Poddox is another iTunes alternative to copy songs to your iPod. Poddox has a pretty nice, and easy to understand interface, that resembles the interface of iPod itself. Poddox does not supports iPhone and iPod Touch at time of writing of this article.
Download Here.

FroddlePod:

FroddlePod is another easy to use free iTunes alternative. It supports all versions of iPod except iPod Touch.
Download Here.
Source: http://www.ilovefreesoftware.com/27/featured/8-free-alternatives-to-itunes-for-windows.html


More free iTunes alternative players including Linux:


Most people im sure would probably agree that Apple’s iTunes software isnt a lightweight application. I was wanting to put together a great list of free alternatives to iTunes that are actually worth checking out.
Foobar 2000 – A digital music management program for Windows users. It works with Windows 2000,Windows Vists Windows XP and Windows XP 64 bit edition. To use this program you will need 32 MB of RAM and a display with at least an 800 X 600 resolution. This program is compatible with MP1-4, MPC, AAC, WAV, SND, WMA, Ogg Valis, WavPack, AIFF, CDDA, FIAC/Ogs FLAC and AU. It also supports full Unicode and Replay Gain. Other great features include third party development potential and keyboard shortcut that are fully customizable.
Froddle Pod – Froddle is not as feature rich as iTunes but it provides access to the main features that iPod owners need: It can copy music and videos from and to an iPod which is definitely the main feature that any iTunes alternative should support. The software can also backup and restore all data that is stored on an iPod. Another feature is music normalization for all or selected music on the iPod.
Songbird – Built on the Firefox platform and works with iPods and other media players. In addition to many great features, Songbird has a plenty of add-ons, and because it’s open source, clever programmers will be adding more as time goes on.
YamiPod An interesting iTunes alternative, because you don’t have to install it on your computer at all. Just copy it to your iPod’s hard disk and then you can manage your songs from any computer running Mac OS X, Windows or Linux.
Winamp – Sometimes called the grandfather of Windows music players, Winamp is a full featured music manager, with integrated iPod support and will even play iTunes protected files if QuickTime is installed.
Amarok – A great iTunes alternative for Linux and Unix users. It works with a wide variety of portable music players including: iPod, Creative Zen players, iRiver iFP and T players, Nomad players, generic MTP players and generic USB players. Some of the features that this program has that you are going to love include: album covers, wikipedia integration, last.fm integration, superior visual effects, lyrics support and music tracking capabilities.
Banshee – Linux users are going to enjoy what Banshee has to offer. This free download allows you to do everything that you want to do with your digital music. You can import music, organize music, play it back, share it and rip it on a CD. This is a great program for people who love their music and who want to actively manage it.
Cog – Most people using Mac OSX feel that iTunes is the best option because it was designed for this platform. However, Cog is worth a look for Mac users, because it addresses many of the limitations that iTunes has. It can be used with the following file types: Ogg vorbis, Monkeys Audio, MP3, Wavpack, Apple Lossless, FLAC, Musepack, AAC and WAV/AIFF. Some of the features that make it a worthy alternative to iTunes include: gapless playback, auto updating, preferences, Growl support, global hot keys, seeking, feedback forms, last.fm support, and smart shuffle.