At KallAngo… it’s really handy! I’m using it myself now… I actually downloaded it way back but it didnt work becuase at the time it wasn’t compatible with Vista. Now Ive tried it out its the best tagger Ive used, although its real slow at scanning libraries.

http://www.aimp.ru/

itunes is similar, adding 2-3 processes that are very hard to prevent from starting. these are one of the big reasons itunes is such a resource hog. also, the majority of an itunes installation is actually language files, but if you decide to delete the 30 megs of languages that you don’t use, then itunes will not work!

you missed some major players – AIMP2, Album Player, Songbird, Helium, MusikCube, Amarok (only linux right now, but the new 2.0 will be for windows too)… and many more – there are lots of these all-in-one music apps. but the number-one top-dog app for managing and playing music is definitely foobar2000. i’m amazed you did not even mention it!

http://www.foobar2000.org/

foobar tags, burns, manages playlists, displays album art, syncs your ipod, and whatever else you ask it to do, and it’s more customizable than most apps on the planet – along the lines of samurize or directory opus. it can be skinned to look absolutely stunning, or simply organized to be useful and slim. do a search on deviantart for ‘foobar’ to see what it can be made to look like…

in the end, however, i usually only use foobar when i’m not doing anything else with my computer. i run it along side CD Art Display for some excellent freeware eye candy (http://www.cdartdisplay.com/index.php?categoryid=13). while i’m working on my computer while listening, i like to use something that barely registers on my RAM/CPU meters: Billy.

http://www.sheepfriends.com/?page=billy

Billy is tiny and fast (and free). it works off of file names and directory structure for organization, ignoring ID3 tags entirely, so it can open with a library of 10000 songs in about a second. its ‘live search’ means you just start typing while Billy is focused, and you get a search box showing all partial matches. add a hotkey to bring it up, and with just a few keystrokes you can instantly play any song in your library, no matter how many thousands of songs you have.

other features include the ability to play a whole directory full of songs by opening one song in that directory – very useful for playing full albums. it even sends your listening habits to your last.fm account. but don’t expect too many bells and whistles (no album art, no skins, no fancy library view) Billy is a simple, no-frills player that really gets the job done!

as for tagging – MP3Tag beats all others. yes, it’s also freeware :)

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

follow the link below for a (legal) portable version (it’s already quite portable but it writes to the registry – thanks to lococobra and his AutoIt wrapper, this version does not)

http://portable.lococobra.com/

I think MediaMonkey is realy good but, i like to show you another good software to music file tagger.

It´s TagScanner ( http://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm ). I hope you like it…