It's simple but works perfectly; I don't understand why music players nowadays are such clunky monstrosities when the music should do all the talking.
Same here, I never understood why people were initially so enthousiastic about iTunes or other players after Winamp that tried to hide your audio files behind a convoluted GUI and that abstracted the files on disk into a crappy, opaque database.
For me a directory tree with well-named directories and files is still the least-worst solution and also has been, over time, the most dependable one. (On Android I use Music Folder Player due to this. iPhone I don't know, I don't have one.)
> For me a directory tree with well-named directories and files is still the least-worst solution and also has been, over time, the most dependable one.
This. My Music is very meticulously organized on the file-system level. Every single folder (sans Soundtracks and Videogame music) is organized like so:
My Music -> Artist -> Year - Name -> Track # - Title
e.g.
My Music -> Black Sabbath -> 1971 - Paranoid -> 01 - War Pigs.mp3
That's it. That's all I need. I've had it this way since 1998, and it still works, across myriad computers, file systems, and operating systems. One of the reasons I stayed with Winamp so long is that I could simply right-click on a folder and click "Play in Winamp", and I was all set.
All of these other apps that try to organize my music for me inevitably fail, because the tags are rarely complete or consistent. Trying to backup all my music to Google Play Music has shown that, time and time again.
These days I'm happy that I was finally able to get that functionality back with Audacious.
The problem is that when you use a library-based solution for management, you need to stay on top of tags.
I frequently like to create playlists based on the ID3 genre tag, so a folder-based approach doesn't really work. Folders also complicate things when you're trying to maintain separate music collections -- like a folder for ripped music vs storebought.
> Same here, I never understood why people were initially so enthousiastic about iTunes or other players after Winamp that tried to hide your audio files behind a convoluted GUI and that abstracted the files on disk into a crappy, opaque database.
I still use iTunes. The filing system on-disk is identical to what I was doing anyway.
iTunes Media > Music > Artist > Album > nn Song Name
(Indeed, I point Plex at the same folder and am slowly migrating over to using it rather than the built-in sharing for network playback.)
It's all that extra stuff that can only be done by storing data structures elsewhere: playlists, random by genre, etc, that requires the convoluted GUI and opaque database.
> Same here, I never understood why people were initially so enthousiastic about iTunes or other players after Winamp that tried to hide your audio files behind a convoluted GUI and that abstracted the files on disk into a crappy, opaque database.
A pure hierarchy can't handle compilations or playlists very well. A database, a real one, ought to be the solution - my best player experience was with Amarok 1.x which let you use embedded sqlite or connect to mysql/postgresql.
I don't feel like I want a whole lot from a player, but I do want to queue a track or two while leaving the player on shuffle, to play individual tracks out of a cue/flac, integration with some service that can tell me when a band I like is playing near me, and ideally a recommendations service too. So I've generally ended up with the heavyweight players.
I've been using iTunes since the day it was released 16 years ago, and while the UI has certainly gotten more bloated over the years (seriously Apple split out all the non-music-playing stuff like you've done on iOS already...) I've not once had a problem the dependability.
Even before iTunes was released I used MusicMatch Jukebox. Keeping ID3 tags and file/directory names and syncing things manually with files was always just such a PITA. And how do you even deal with smart playlists or even playlists in general in an efficient way with pure files?
And to the OP's point - it looks like iTunes raises my CPU's power usage from 0.3W at idle to around 0.7W, and that was with the UI visible - keeping my whole machine with display on still at around 5W, or easily powered by a USB phone charger.
The Bongo media player for GNU Emacs works very well with a well ordered file hierarchy. It uses an external backend for playback (mpg321, mplayer, VLC, etc).
It also has a fun feature: a playback item can be an "action", such as stopping playback, or even running arbitrary Lisp code. :)
> On Android I use Music Folder Player due to this
Thanks, installing now. I've had music organised in folders since the mid-90s and it's not correctly tagged. Google Play Music messes up most of it, looking forward to items finally playing in the correct order.
Same here, I never understood why people were initially so enthousiastic about iTunes or other players after Winamp that tried to hide your audio files behind a convoluted GUI and that abstracted the files on disk into a crappy, opaque database.
For me a directory tree with well-named directories and files is still the least-worst solution and also has been, over time, the most dependable one. (On Android I use Music Folder Player due to this. iPhone I don't know, I don't have one.)