Tired of the back-and-forth over iTunes sync and webOS? We don’t blame you, and frankly we’re a bit tired of it too. The folks over at MediaMonkey have a solution for us: the latest version of their media player software adds support for syncing to the Palm Pre to the mix.
In addition to the Pre, MediaMonkey 3.2 also added syncing support for the iPhone 3GS, the newest iPods, and Android devices. MediaMonkey now also sports jumplists and Aeropeek for Windows 7 users and much more.
MediaMonkey 3.2 is available as a free download; a Gold version is available for $19.95 and adds support for on-the-fly conversion and audio leveling, autoplaylists, and more.
Thanks to vara411 for the tip!
Comments
Nice I have to check this out
Nice. This is the plus side of Apple's power play. Others step up to fill the void, and replicate their products to also work with Apple's. Ten years from now, I can see ipod/Pre being a case analysis for how Apple unwhittingly opened the door for competitors to walk past I-tunes powergrip on media sales. Soon I-tunes will have to compete at market speeds instead of setting the pace on their own.
I agree, at least I think that was Palms thinking. They knew they were in a losing battle with Apple. Palm just somehow wants to be a caystist to opening the market up. If they can achieve that then they succeeded.
I don't think Palm set out to dethrone itunes, just a flip of the bird to Job's et al by stealing a capability "for a song" (sorry for the play on words). Orange (new Palm) is ex-apples doing what Jobs and ATT would not let them on the iphone. So i-tunes compatible was more of a personal pissing match, than market strategy.
Palm couldn't/didn't advertise "Itunes compatible", only the tech-prows know of this off/on capability. It saved Palm from having to create a state of the art interface, while directing Palm users to Apples content store. It was a wash between the two companies, an opportunity for synergy. But, being personal, Apple chooses to block it, creating headaches for themselves in other locations that could have long-term implications.
This is nothing new - The 3.2 update restores iPhone/Touch syncing that Apple broke with their recent iTunes and firmware updates. However, MediaMoney has always been able to sync with the Palm Pre, both in drive mode and in Media mode. MediaMonkey is awesome, and I highly recommend it.
Since the Pre mounts as a USB drive, almost anything can sync with the Pre, including MediaMonkey, WinAmp, Windows Media Player... iTunes is pretty much the only library manager that can't.
Can I be the first to say a great big I DON'T CARE about iTunes syncing. One of the main reasons I chose the pre over the iPhone (besides the awesome webOS) was the fact that I don't have to use iTunes. FREEDOM I appreciate what palm was trying to do, it just isn't a big deal to me. MediaMonkey looks like a nice tool though.
Agreed, I never warmed up to itunes, getting into the store part was way too easy, making the synch function like I wanted it to, way to hard. Of course, I'm not an audio-phile, so I don't need much help managing my media. If i want something new, I turn on Pandora and push it in that direction. If I like something enough to put it on the Pre, I rip it and drag it on. But Mediamonkey sounds like the best of both worlds and might be worth a trial.
MediaMonkey is very powerful but the implementation is so clumsy. It needs a complete redesign.
+1. It's a media player, not Microsoft Word. It doesn't need fifty buttons at the top.
not really sure about "all" these buttons you refer too, but you do realize its highly customizable...and typically every plug-in or script you implement will install a button...which you can ofcourse remove at your convience...I really like Media Monkey and now w/ the full Pre support using media sync is awesome...yay playlists
someone had mentioned you could sync w/ usb and media mode yes that is true but playlists wouldnt sync or at least werent being displayed in the Pre's Music Player or Remix ....and that to me seems to be the only key thing i notice from the previous version...so happy for this update
Let me second preandpixifan and say I don't care for itunes.
I have been using Media Monkey Gold for 2 yrs. It is the best program out there to organize and tag your music. its not so great to retrieve album arts but for everything else its awesome. it does have a million buttons because its does 2 million things. I highly recommend it.
Here, I was about to try to find an old itunes exe to put on my new PC so I could continue to sync, & now I don't have to, thanks guys (& gals)
http://filehippo.com/ is a good resource if you still want that old version of iTunes.
i dont care one way or the other about the syncing.
the feature i like on this update is the Windows7 taskbar integration.
Yawn. MS-Windows only. No MacOS, no Linux. (Unless you count running it under WINE (which they actually suggest on their site)).
Again, I am just fine with dropping music on the phone through USB mass storage. Works great
when you do that, how do you make a playlist? Do you make it on the pre itself?
Personally, I don't use playlists. Never have. I listen to music in random play at home, at work, in the car, etc. If I am not in the mood to listen to something, I just "tilt" (cue) to the next song.
But if you want to use playlists, you can create them on your computer as "m3u" files and copy those to the Pre. The Pre will then let you select and use those playlists.
If you get into the homebrew scene, the Music Player Remix is absolutely incredible! It allows you to make "flylists" right in the app, name them, and keep them on the Pre. No need in syncing playlists...unless you have a bunch already that you want on your Pre, but usually people (like myself) who have that much music can't fit their entire library on the phone, so you have to pick and choose anyway, so you could just make the playlists from your phone.
I've installed mediamonkey created a xxx.m3u file (for the playlist) where does it go. I've tried to place the file in the directory of my music at the upper level directory of the pre... but nothing shows up in the music player "playlist" on the pre. Does anyone know how to generate (via mediamonkey) a playlist that I can use on the pre?
Please pardon my newbie question.
Like many of you, I'm the files-and-folders type. Direct USB connect, I'll managed my own collection thank you. I haven't delved into iTunes, exepct briefly several years ago, when I found it wanted to control my entire library, quickly deleted and haven't looked back.
My question is, will this work as a front-end interface should I decide to open another iTunes account, or does it still rely on having a desktop account, and it just sync's to hardware?
Thank you for the dumb question.. I've been at this for years, but sometimes I still feel like a babe in the woods.
I had a similar run with the itunes a few years back.
I am a files and folders guy too. media monkey has the option to just list your music for you on the interface without messing with your files and folders. one option that I was hesitant to use at first is that it can organize your music for you in folders based on the file tag. so u can automatically have all your music organized into folders Artist(folder)/album(folder)/songs(file) or whatever folders you want. before you do that ask it to save a copy of you library the way it was just in case you ever wanna go back. it works like magic
Like you I used to be a files and folders guy. Thats why I was so happy to use Songbird, which as I think is a fantastic alternative to iTunes, because I could "plug-in" a file browser and still have the advantages of a ID3-Tag based management.
That was the solution for me. Now I am using it more like iTunes but the change was comfortable as I could always access my files and folders if I wanted to.
Songbird also has an Ipod device support as a plugin which also works great for the pre. And it should work for Windows/Linux/MacOS alike. It is also open source and well supported. Why should I use anything else?
Thanks for your thoughtful replies.. think I'll stick with manual methods for now.
I will give this a try as an all around solution. but for now I drag and drop in USB mode and then use DioneSS Playlist Editor, it works great, instead of typing all those songs by hand? You can use it to re-list by any means, move indv. songs around, and have it save to the same folder. It's very useful. I just notice that you have to rename the Music folder to have the Music player recognize the changes to its structures?
I just don't update my itunes anymore, no big deal cause I
don't purchase music from Apple anymore either. With many new options to purchase music and smartphones being able to store and play music, the ipod is following the path of the pager.
I just downloaded MediaMonkey and I immediately noticed how well it works. I bought the Gold version since it supports advanced playlists which I need for synchronisation of my music library to my Palm Pre. I also like the fact that it supports Podcasts and I am now waiting for synchronisation to complete.
I am running Mediamonkey on Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Everything looks good at the moment. If you have a Windows PC, then get Mediamonkey and forget all other Sync solutions!
I wish I could use my Pre as a remote control for media monkey! Not using playlists, but just to browse and play albums and songs normally, without having to use playlists.
Any chance this update will allow me to use my pre and Media Monkey to play music through my home stereo?
there's an app that lets you use your pre as a remote for media monkey and other media players. I used it before he started charging for it and it worked fairly well. I haven't used the bought the current version so i don't know how that works yet.
http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/media-remote-wmp-itunes-winamp-ect
Thanks, but Mediaremote is not a full solution, as it will not let you browse your music files except through "playlists." As far as I know, you can't scroll through your collection by artists of albums, for example. At this point, unfortunately, there still seems to be no fully functional home music remote for the Pre.
I don't understand why people are whining about Mediamonkey having too many buttons. It is completely customizeable. If you mess with the settings you'll see you can disable almost all of the button toolbars. I use alot of them but I disable the few I don't use. You can also rearrange them to your liking. I have been using Mediamonkey for years now, it is the best jukebox out there with the best features. No other program comes close in music file organization either.
I tried and hated iTunes. Before the Pre.
Since then I've tried every media player I'vve seen mentioned.
Regardless liking or disliking Apple and/or the iPhone, iTunes is the best media player for syncing videos/mpt- IMO.
It's straight forward, the UI is nice and it gets the stuff on the Pre.
I doubt Palm was expecting anybody else to do anything.
The Pre seems to want the iTunes file format for albume art and video thumbnails.
If drag and drop, or other syncs that use folders, were "preferred" then I would think they'd build in methods to display album art, easily, and video thumbnails.
I updated with 1.2.1 and have since reverted to the same version of iTunes I installed on launch day.
Guess I'l have to do the same on my wife's computer for her upcoming Pixi.
I have used MediaMonkey for years and especially like the advanced configuration options for transcoding. For example, if you have a music library of mixed formats and bit rates, it allows you to create specific conversion rules. In my case, I choose to skip transcoding of MP3s and instead just have them copied over. But my WMA lossless rips are converted to the exact bit rate and format of my choice, keeping tags intact.
The PROBLEM with MediaMonkey and the Pre (or any iPod device) is that there's no built in AAC encoder, and their paid AAC plugin encoder is terrible compared to iTunes or Nero AAC. If they'd implement support for external compressors, it would be a perfect solution!
O.K., I'm new to iTunes (6 months) and I just got a iPod (2 months), and I've used iTunes to transfer songs to my Pre only once, so be gentle. I'm mainly directing this question to those who know MediaMonkey well and are familiar with other add-on programs to iTunes in order to compare/contrast.
I purchased a program called "TuneUp Companion" to work with iTunes to correct song information and find album art etc. However, after I rip some songs off of old compilation CDs and I erase all the info except song title and artist, TuneUp invariably just finds other "Greatest Hits" or compilation albums, not the original albums.
So my question for MediaMonkey folks: is its search engine better/does it find original album info and art? And just how do you use iTunes and MediaMonkey together? Do you open one or the other depending on what you want to do (for example, if I still wanted to buy something from the iTunes store)? Are there problems having both programs installed (i.e., will it be compatible with my new iPod classic?)?
Sorry for the barrage of questions, but I just don't understand how these third-party media programs work if you already have an iTunes library and you're syncing with an iPod.
Thanks!
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