I actually prefer VLC to foobar2000. However, I still prefer classic Winamp to to all other music players, and I wish I could get Apple Music work in the same interface. I like 100% of the classic Winamp player UI/UX.

- I like the separate player, playlist, EQ windows.

- I like that I can re-arrange the windows, and resize the playlist separately.

- I like that the main player has a little EQ built in.

- I like the layout of the main window. It's perfect.

- I like the layout of the playlist window, it's also perfect. I can add "directories", "albums", etc. and again, I can resize the window.

- I like the skins. I like the classic skin, but I also love the Sonicated skin. I still have it on my Windows laptop.

- Conversely, I really dislike the "native" UI elements.

- I like that lack of rounded corners on the classic Winamp windows, such that when windows stick together, they appear as whole, and I can drag them around as one.

Mostly, it's a bunch of seemingly small and aesthetic things, but if a player doesn't have those things, I might as well just use iTunes.

Foobar is what I use to play music. Example of quality, performant, timeless software.

My newest discovery with the iOS version of foobar2000 is that it can read the files for things I have bought on iTunes and downloaded through the Apple Music app without a subscription. I was trying to go back to an iPod but lack of Bluetooth killed me.

This seems like the best of both worlds for me.

I buy mostly music on Bandcamp and iTunes/Music is my sole driver for my 30k local song files. It's unfortunate that it has been neglected over so many years. There is a plethora of well known bugs and the sync with iPhone works most of the times, but not always and is in general quite cumbersome. The UI has become ridiculous over time (for example: it features two search/filter fields). It would be an easy mark to simply fix and polish it a bit. Sad.

I feel like iTunes/Music gets worse with every version, to the point where I've effectively abandoned it finally after macOS 26.

My music collection is some tens of thousands of files served via a DAAP media server - since macOS 26, Apple Music will only play music for 5-15 minutes before giving up and just stopping.

For years, it's had a trivially reproducible bug where pausing Apple Music while playing from a DAAP server, then restarting the DAAP server will crash Apple Music.

After trying basically every airsonic/subsonic/plex/etc. alternative, I finally settled on simply using foobar2000 to play from an SMB share.

It seems like most of the iTunes hate has historically come from people who used iTunes on Windows because they needed to use it to sync their iPods. Apparently it wasn't very good on Windows?

I do agree that it had been getting worse and worse on Mac before it was rebranded "Music" in 2019.

iTunes/Music has its merits but in my opinion has been in decline since between versions 6 and 10 depending on the aspects being spoken about. For most of its existence it was subject to constant bloat and always felt a bit "off" compared to other Mac apps due to its nature as a cross-platform Carbon app full of bespoke UI widgets, and though its feature set got pared down and it technically became AppKit-dominant in the transition to "Music", it still doesn't feel right and is out of step with the rest of the OS.

A proper AppKit iTunes-style player with the best parts of iTunes across versions but without the bloat would be a beautiful thing. Even better if it's FOSS so it doesn't get abandoned a few years down the road, as paid players tend to. While there's several apps in this general direction like Doppler[0], nothing really nails it satisfactorily.

[0]: https://brushedtype.co/doppler/

I also hate the idea of streaming, but I have been super lazy in the past

I have listened to 44,000 songs on Spotify over the last 13 years. It has brought me a ton of value, but I would love to move back to owning my music as files. I've been getting fancier with managing self-hosted infra at home, especially using AI to help me out.

Maybe I'll get back there, but I also can't imagine only listening to 500 songs!!!!

ITunes and Aperture were the apps that made me buy my first mac. Music and photos were just handled so easily, unlike anything else that came before. Smooth, intuitive and quick, everything else felt stale or broken.

These days Aperture is long gone and Itunes will let me make playlists where if I own the song, I can't play it cause it's not synced. If I don't own the song, it plays fine.

It's like nobody cares anymore, and back around 2008 that was the killer feature of the Mac - it was the computer and OS where it seemed like someone cared, about every little thing.

Quasi-normie computer users: Linux will never take off on the desktop. I want to use my computer, not spend all day configuring it.

Also quasi-normie computer users: Windows/Mac is great as long as you go into Settings/the registry/PowerShell and disable all the user-hostile anti-features first.

I imagine the shittiness of iTunes doesn't really show up as much with a music collection as small as 500 files. I remember it being a slouch with more files. I'm currently at 73,000.

complete opposite, i hate it

you're crazy

> I still manage my own ~500 file mp3 collection

Huh?

Just checked my 'collection':

     Total Files Listed:
           17250 File(s) 232,520,192,270 bytes
            6431 Dir(s)  1,053,563,486,208 bytes free

Not audiophile scale, for sure - but only 500 looks quite low. No wonder iTunes can manage it snorts.

At 26MB setup package it most likely doesn't.

There's no source code? Why is it on GH then.

If by OSX you mean macOS, yes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45928363

My first thought. The title is so typical for this kind of projects.

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