Have a huge music library and want a free music player and manager which can run on any operating system? Then you should give a try to aTunes. aTunes can organize your music files, let you edit tags and you can rip your cds on it. The latest version is 1.13.6 released on 12-December-2009. You can download it here.
I recently changed my OS to Windows 7. I have a ever-increasing library of 3000+ songs. iTunes doesn’t suit me. So, I had hard time finding a good jukebox to play and manage my audio files. I tried many options starting from iTunes to many not-so-popular audio players. After several weeks of success and failures, joys and disappointments, I am finally using aTunes.
There are many applications which can play audio files on windows. To narrow-down my options I restricted my search to applications providing following features:
Must Features
The application should provide following features in-built. No plugin installation should be required.- Play mp3 and FLAC files.
- Automatically read new files in the library location and should be able to clean “dead” files.
- Read and Edit tags of mp3 and FLAC Audio Files
- Manage and Create Playlists.Allow users to rate songs.
- Create Smart and Random Playlists
- Search the complete library
Optional Features
It is OK if the application does not provide following features, but it would be nice if these are available or can be enabled through plugins.- Inline Display of Lyrics. Application should be able to download the lyrics if not present in tags.
- Automatically write lyrics to tag.
- Download tag information from web. Album Art, Year, etc
- Show Artist Information. Introduction, Discography, Similar Artist etc.
- Rip CD.
What is aTunes?
aTunes is a audio-player and management application developed in Java Programming Language. aTunes can work on Windows, Linux and Mac or any other Unix-like-system. aTunes allows you to organize the music and edit both mp3 and vorbis tags. aTunes can manage 1000s of audio files. [GOOD]aTunes supports many audio codec, both open-source and proprietary. It currently supports playback of mp3, ogg, flac, wma, wav, mp4, ape, mpc, cue, m4a, rm and ra. It uses mplayer as playback engine for all environments and xine for Linux systems.
Interface
There are very few players which provide an interface which is clean, simple and beautiful. aTunes is one of those players. aTunes Interface can be divided into three columns. The left one is the explorer, which displays your library in tree view. You can browse to specific song by artist and Album. The explorer is divided into five tabs: Repository, Favorites, Podcasts, Devices, and Radio.
The middle panel displays playlists. These playlists are distributed in different tabs (one tab for each playlist).
The right panel displays Now Playing song Information. aTunes displays lyrics below the song information. If lyrics is not present in tags then it downloads the lyrics from web. The downloaded lyrics are accurate. GOOD
Along with the Now Playing info, the right panel also shows artist info, related artists, YouTube video links for the artist and the discography for the artist. GOOD
The columns can be hidden for simplicity if required. If you want, aTunes can be minimized to tray. Overall Interface is clean and user-friendly. But if you have not used Amarok like players it will take time to learn the interface and use it effectively. GOOD
One annoying thing about aTunes is that it does not respond to right-mouse-clicks in text boxes. To paste text from clipboard to search box, I have a habit of right clicking the box and paste it. But, it simply doesn’t work in aTunes. However you can use CTRL+V. BAD
Playlists & Music Organization
aTunes music organization is similar to Amarok. It divides the library into playlists. Creating playlists and adding songs to it is easy. You can save and load playlists from hard-drive. Playlists are stored in m3u files. When you restart aTunes it resumes all the previously open playlists, so you do not have to save every playlist you create. You can shuffle a playlist, clear it, add songs or remove songs from it. You can select multiple songs in a playlist by SHIFT or CTRL keys and edit them in a batch. GOOD
Random as well as Smart Playlists can be created in aTunes from the Playlist-Menu. However, Random-playlists were not so random for me. GOOD?
Below the playlist panel aTunes provides buttons for some options that come in handy , for example, You can create a new playlist from the album of selected song; add selected song, artist or album to your favorites. These buttons work on the selected song in the playlist. It also provides an option to scroll to the Now Playing song. But, this button does not take you to the song if the currently playing playlist is not active. GOOD
Repository, Radio, Podcasts and Favorites
But wait! You can add all files to a playlist very easily by:
“Create New Playlist > Click on one of the artists in your repository > Hit Ctrl+A or Cmd+A (Depending on your OS) > Right Click on the Selected Songs > Click Add to Playlist”
Below the repository explorer you can see the list of all songs under selected artist or album. You can add files to playlist by dragging them on the playlist panel or by right-clicking the song and clicking Add to Playlist. The song is added to currently selected playlist. You cannot add song to a playlist by dragging the song to playlist name (tabs on the top). BAD
You can edit tags of files added to a playlist by selecting the song and hitting INSERT key. You can paste lyrics of the song in the tag editor. You can view info of the selected file by hitting F1 key. GOOD
You can add podcast subscriptions in aTunes and it works perfectly. Double clicking a radio or podcast does not play it, instead it adds it to currently active playlist (BAD). Again to play any radio or podcast you have to first add it to a playlist and then play it. GOOD
You can rate a song on five-star scale. Other than rating a song, you can set that song as your favorite, and that song will be displayed in the favorites tab of the explorer. You can also set Album Artist or Album as your favorite. This helps in searching for music in a large library. You can remove the favorite tag by right clicking the song in the favorite tab and clicking Remove from Favorites. GOOD
Playback Control
Apart from standard playback controls (play-pause-stop), you can set playlist to repeat, shuffle or combination. Volume can be controlled by middle-mouse button over the volume control. Scrolling changes volume by 1 and clicking middle-button changes volume by 10. GOOD
aTunes does not have option for repeat single. Seeking didn’t work seamlessly with me. BAD
You have option to normalize audio output. aTunes features inbuilt equalizer if you want one. Equalizer can be accessed from Edit Menu. GOOD
Karaoke didn’t work for me either. BAD
aTunes does not offer option for cross fading or smooth seeking. This is one of the missing features which is very much required in aTunes.
Automatic Tag Editing
Automatic tag editing is limited to generation of tags from filename and vice-versa. This feature is good for ripped audio files. However, you can search for covers using aTunes Cover Navigator. aTunes can fetch lyrics for the now-playing-song. But, it does not save it to the file automatically. You will have to copy the fetched lyrics and manually add it to the file using aTunes tag editor.
Preferences
Again the user-interface of aTunes rocks when it comes to preferences windows. Generally, there are dozens of information you can change when it comes to an audio player. It is tiresome as well as troublesome to edit the preferences when interface is cluttered where every tab is fighting to mix with the other and font-size is just readable. aTunes preference window is well organized and you will have happy-time handling it. 
Themes
You can change player’s theme from an option of more than 10 available themes. GOODGlobal Hotkeys
aTunes supports Global-Hotkeys for basic playback control. You can change these hotkeys in preferences windows. aTunes also allows you to add your own hotkeys. I never use hotkeys so this is not a very big feature for me but it may be helpful if you are hotkey-addict.Last.FM
You can enable last.fm on aTunes. This option is available in Preferences.Music Management
You can let aTunes manage your music files in a specific folder. You can use patterns like %T for song-title to tell aTunes the destination of the file. GOOD
Repair Tags
aTunes can repair tags of the songs in your repository. Repair feature is available for track-numbers (set according to file name), genres (set according to last.fm artist genre) and Album (set according to folder in which the file resides). Only the files in which corresponding fields are empty are processed. You will be asked to confirm before applying the changes. GOODSearch Options
aTunes provides extended search option, through which you can search with multiple tag inputs, for example this artist and that phrase in title etc. Extended search works on Repository or Favorites. Extended Search can be Accessed by hitting CTRD+D. To search for song in current playlist you can use the filter option or by hitting CTRL+F. Filter Option is available on the bottom of the middle panel below playlists. GOOD
Statistics
This is one of the features that only aTunes has. aTunes shows statistics with visual aids, based on your music library, for example, mostly played songs, mostly played artist etc. aTunes displays pie-charts and bar-graphs wherever applicable.
Conclusion
Thumbs-up For
- Good Interface and beautiful themes
- Lyrics Fetching and inline display
- Display Song related information, eg. related artists, related YouTube video etc
- Ability to add albums and artists as favorite.
- Support for variety of codec and tag editing
- Excellent Statistics representation
- create playlist from selected song’s album or artist
- can play internet-radio and podcasts
- sync with devices
Thumbs-Down For
- Repeat-Single option is missing
- song cross-fade is not available
- right-mouse-click doesn’t work in text-boxes
- cannot read libraries shared on LAN
- Drag-Drop song to inactive playlist not available
