There’s a plethora of music players to choose from, among which iTunes and Winamp usually have the upper hand. However, if you are curious enough, you might find that lesser known alternatives like MediaMonkey offer a reasonable amount of features and tools to organize and equally enjoy your music library.

MediaMonkey automatically scans your PC for all types of music formats. If you have playlists from other programs, it’s good to know that the application also adds m3u files, sparing you the pain of having to recreate them. The file explorer view on the left lets you easily navigate your music collection by categories like artist, genre or rating. You can convert tracks into any format you wish, depending on what size or quality of sound you’re looking for. MediaMonkey also lets you analyze and adjust the volume of tracks to increase your listening experience.

MediaMonkey has made its reputation on its advanced tagging management feature. Every time a track is added, the program will verify its tags. You can automatically fill in missing details with info from Amazon or Filename. The program can clean up your tags, move information into the correct categories and synchronize tags for selected tracks. You can also rename and move multiple files thanks to the auto-organize function. MediaMonkey also supports Winamp plugins and visualizations plus skins can be applied to spice up the interface.

If you want to make your own mix CDs, you’ll be happy to know that MediaMonkey rips and burns CDs and DVDs. Create a virtual CD of your favorite tracks and let MediaMonkey do its job. Budding DJs will enjoy the auto-DJ mode, which mixes tracks for you and the Party Mode, which blocks your configuration but lets anybody play their favorite tune. MediaMonkey’s versatility doesn’t stop there. The music manager also lets you synchronize with your portable music devices like your iPod or iRiver.

If you feel like completing your library with a couple of fresh albums you can browse sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble or AllPosters and purchase tracks. However, unlike Songbird, where you can type in a URL, browse and save your favorite music blogs and sites, MediaMonkey only allows you to browse their selection of online stores.

We were disappointed with the web radio selection, which only features Shoutcast and Icecast, and were surprised to see no sign of podcasts anywhere in the application. However version 3.0 is planning on incorporating this to the application.

Despite these drawbacks, we recommend MediaMonkey to anybody looking for a solid alternative to iTunes or Winamp. This original music manager is more than capable of organizing a very large music library and offers advanced tagging management rarely seen in other music applications. While the browser and web radio are fairly limited, MediaMonkey allows you to rip your custom CDs and connects to most portable music devices. If you really take a liking to MediaMonkey, cough up a few bucks and upgrade to the Gold version, which will open up all of the program’s functionalities like finding missing tracks or creating auto (smart) playlists.

Download MediaMonkey 3.0.4.1185 in Softonic

If you're a bookworm and you've literally got books all over the place, then why not get organised by cataloguing them all in a database.

And what better tool to do it with than Book Collector which is like the iTunes of book cataloguing. This simply but impressive program allows you to browse through your collection from the comfort of your PC enabling you to share and rediscover old titles that had since been consigned to a dusty bookshelf. You can order your books by author, title, publisher, year or cover art. The clever thing however is that you don't need to scan in any of the cover art - it downloads everything you need from a database simply by using the ISBN number. You can include personal details like purchase date, store, location, whether you've read-it as well as catalogue chapter lists, characters and book creator credits. In addition, the program links book entries to e-book or audio-book files. In addition to downloading cover art, it downloads a quick synopsis of each book which is great for writing reviews or sharing titles with a friend. The only thing lacking maybe is something to save your favourite quotes or pages in and possible a link to the publisher's site for the author's latest releases.

An excellent tool for bookworms that will help you get even more out of your book collection.

Download Book Collector 5.2.2 in Softonic

iTunes includes a feature which allows the user to automatically download album artwork for selected tracks but this is not a feature which ever feels like it has been properly implemented. At various times, without warning, users experience the error 609: basically that for some reason, iTunes couldn't download what the user wanted. With a complete lack of assistance in the Apple support forums, the company has left the door open for yet another 3rd party fix.

The aptly named FixTunes deals with the 'artwork not found' error, as well as fixing pretty much any tagging error that's afflicting your music library. Simply start-up iTunes and FixTunes, select the tracks you want to find artwork or information for (or just select your whole library) and set FixTunes to work, downloading all the required info with the minimum of fuss. Check the data and then click 'Fix' to apply it to your library.

FixTunes is particularly useful because it does away with the hassle and work which other 'simple' tag-fixing programs always seem to entail. Using a database of over 4 million songs, along with a clever percentage-based accuracy measure, it will only fix what it's certain about, leaving you to decide for anything below a certain threshold. In testing, we found zero false-positives and a reassuring number of 'not identifieds' which just needed a small change to the detected data, and all without typing a word.

An essential, easy to use tool for anyone looking to fix the artwork or tags in a large iTunes library.

Download FixTunes 4.6 in Softonic

Sometimes, the most popular apps are not always the best choice. For instance iTunes, which may be too big a download for someone who just wants to manage the songs stored in their iPod. If this is your case, take a look at this little app.

Its name is Yamipod, an acronym that summarizes this program’s main function perfectly well: Yet Another Manager for iPod. That’s it. Without even needing to install it on your system, Yamipod will take care of your iPod content management, providing you with a clean interface and simple, easy-to-use tools.

Once you copy the program to your PC, you can run it straight away, although it won’t really work until you plug in your iPod. Yamipod will then scan its contents and list all your MP3 folders and files on its interface. Also, the program does not launch automatically when you connect the iPod to your PC, which may be a nuisance for some but certainly a relief for others. I prefer to take control over when and why my software starts up.

Yamipod’s simple interface displays a list with all the songs stored in the iPod and allows you to perform different managing tasks. For instance, you can browse through your music by artist or album, check the playlists you’ve created or view extended information about each song. You can even listen to music with the built-in player. However, we should note that we had some problems testing this as the player didn’t seem to work properly.

Perhaps the most interesting function is the possibility to copy both MP3 and AAC files to and from the iPod, which makes it very easy to update your music library. If you want to copy music to your PC from the iPod, select the songs and click on the “Copy song to...” option in the context menu. To copy them back to the iPod, just drag and drop the files from the Windows Explorer onto the program’s interface.

Finally, another very interesting tool is the “Remove duplicates” utility. No matter how careful you are, you’ll end up having duplicate songs in your iPod, especially if it’s a large one. Yamipod will find them by comparing ID tag data and file sizes, showing a list of possible candidates before actually deleting them.

Yamipod is certainly no serious competition for iTunes but still, it’s a very interesting option for those of us who own an iPod and need a simple, neat and easy-to-use file manager.

Download YamiPod 1.7 in Softonic

The digital music revolution is all well and good, but listening to music on your computer isn't without its problems. One of the most annoying things about storing large amounts of music on your PC is that it's very easy to pick up duplicate files, making a real mess of your iTunes library. Duplicate Music Files Finder solves this problem at the mere push of a button, carrying out a search of all your audio files and pinpointing doubles.

Not only can it worm out duplicate music files but the program also looks for redundant files of other types, helping you to cut the crap from your machine. You can also search for bad file names or misspelt tags, correcting them in just seconds. Overall, Duplicate Music Files Finder is a great way of quickly getting shot of doubled-up music.

Download Duplicate Music Files Finder 1.6 in Softonic

Have you built a nice library of songs in iTunes but can’t get rid of the pesky duplicates or dead link files? Well then Dupe Eliminator is for you. With Dupe Eliminator you can use various criteria to determine what a duplicate is then quickly clean up your library.

You can also find and cleanup dead links and duplicate podcasts . Also there are other neat features like song search, sorting, syncing your iPod, viewing the iTunes Music store, and playing songs within Dupe Eliminator.

Download Dupe Eliminator 3.6 in Softonic