# Itunes Replacement



## Peaky Blinder (Nov 16, 2019)

Shame to see it die but what are you replacing itunes with on Mac for your primary music player ?


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## Wunderhorn (Nov 16, 2019)

Swinsian.
I tried out everything I could find on the market. Swinsian is what stuck. Ease of use, speedy, flexible, stable, feels and functions like the old iTunes, doesn't spy on you, calling home unnecessarily, plays 5.1 flac too.


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## Sarah Mancuso (Nov 16, 2019)

The music-playing part of iTunes is still around, it's just called Music now, with its other functions split off into other programs.


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## jbuhler (Nov 16, 2019)

Sarah Mancuso said:


> The music-playing part of iTunes is still around, it's just called Music now, with its other functions split off into other programs.


Can you find your music in the new Music app? Search stopped being useful in iTunes years ago (and it's pretty useless in iOS as well), and Apple recently altered iTunes search to be even less useable. Several years ago I had to resort to creating playlists to keep track of things when they first started deprecating search. And iTunes isn't really optimized to keeping hundreds of playlists organized, especially when they also live on iOS devices... Then there's the whole issue that iTunes organizes music in a way that is quite alien to me.


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## Sarah Mancuso (Nov 16, 2019)

I'm not on 10.15 so I can't comment on the new Music app, but the up-to-date version of iTunes on 10.14 works fine for me for organizing and playing music.


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## vitocorleone123 (Nov 16, 2019)

Plex plus Plexamp works for me, but I never used iTunes for anything. That’s not as easy a solution - but a whole lot better, though!


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## jbuhler (Nov 16, 2019)

Sarah Mancuso said:


> I'm not on 10.15 so I can't comment on the new Music app, but the up-to-date version of iTunes on 10.14 works fine for me for organizing and playing music.


I can't reliably find things in iTunes, and my library is not even exceptionally large. Search on items does not return items I know I have, I used to be able to locate with search, and can track down manually. As a music player, the program is a god awful mess and has been for a long time. The iOS music player is even worse, which I have to say was quite an impressive accomplishment to pull off given how bad MacOS iTunes is.

ETA: I should add that this isn't directed at anyone who finds iTunes works for them. I'm glad it does. I'm just feeling exceptionally ranty about it at the moment because I've had numerous bad encounters with the program recently.


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## Wunderhorn (Nov 16, 2019)

jbuhler said:


> I can't reliably find things in iTunes...



Just to clarify - I am not affiliated with the program in any way - but why I keep recommending Swinsian is because I use it every day now for several years with a gargantuan music library and it simply works. And the search feature in Swinsian works in ways iTunes can only dream of.


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## jbuhler (Nov 16, 2019)

Wunderhorn said:


> Just to clarify - I am not affiliated with the program in any way - but why I keep recommending Swinsian is because I use it every day now for several years with a gargantuan music library and it simply works. And the search feature in Swinsian works in ways iTunes can only dream of.


Does it also work with iOS? I remember looking at it once upon a time, and seem to recall that it does not so it only solves part of the problem.


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## kgdrum (Nov 16, 2019)

Wunderhorn said:


> Just to clarify - I am not affiliated with the program in any way - but why I keep recommending Swinsian is because I use it every day now for several years with a gargantuan music library and it simply works. And the search feature in Swinsian works in ways iTunes can only dream of.




I just looked at Swinsian it looks interesting but there are a few big negatives for me, you can’t rip and import cds into the library.
As of now I have 2,600+ albums in my iTunes library that all were assembled into my library from cd importing.
I don’t dl files for music and I’m not sure I ever will. Swinsian also does not support various iOS devices so unfortunately these various issues rule this out for me as an iTunes replacement. ☹️


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## Wunderhorn (Nov 16, 2019)

jbuhler said:


> Does it also work with iOS? I remember looking at it once upon a time, and seem to recall that it does not so it only solves part of the problem.



My music collection is way too big that I would be able to keep it synced with any iOS device. When I decide to put some things on my iPhone I would recommend Waltr or iMazing (the latter allows manually moving playlists). On iOS I use Cesium (now called CS) to play music. That is sufficient for me regarding iOS.
Most listening, organizing and cataloging happens on my desktop computer which is my main music station, also connected to my main HiFi system. For that Swinsian turned out to be the near perfect tool. There are of course a few things I wish it could do, but considering all that's out there it gives me the most control and flexibility I would want from an app like that.


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## Ashermusic (Nov 16, 2019)

Wunderhorn said:


> My music collection is way too big that I would be able to keep it synced with any iOS device. When I decide to put some things on my iPhone I would recommend Waltr or iMazing (the latter allows manually moving playlists). On iOS I use Cesium (now called CS) to play music. That is sufficient for me regarding iOS.
> Most listening, organizing and cataloging happens on my desktop computer which is my main music station, also connected to my main HiFi system. For that Swinsian turned out to be the near perfect tool. There are of course a few things I wish it could do, but considering all that's out there it gives me the most control and flexibility I would want from an app like that.



Not capable of ripping CDs is a dealbreaker for me.


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## JamieLang (Nov 18, 2019)

I switched to Windows so I could keep using iTunes.


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## Monkey Man (Nov 18, 2019)

Gys, you _can_ run iTunes in Catalina:


Scripts:
iTunes 12.6.5.3 on MacOS Catalina 10.15 | MacRumors Forums


Here's an app that simplifies the process:

GitHub - cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive: Run Aperture, iPhoto, or iTunes on macOS Catalina.

Click to download the Retroactive app


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