And if you add other requirements like CD ripping and burning, music conversions, synchronization or sharing, you probably end up with less than a handful of tools that offer all of that to the user.

MediaMonkey 4 Gold is one of those programs. But music is just one of the things the program handles. The big new feature of the latest version of the product is video support. This basically means that can use many of the program’s management options for video files as well.

Installation, First Start

All users install the free version of MediaMonkey first. Gold users can enter the registration key in the program to enable the Gold features.

First thing that new users may want to do is to add their music collection to the program. This can be done with a click on the Insert key or the selection of File > Add/Rescan Files to the library. This opens a file browser where one or multiple folders can be selected. MediaMonkey can scan the selected folders once, or include them in the program’s folder monitoring feature to scan them continuously for new media. This adds new media automatically to the program’s database.

The options button loads the library preferences which define how files are added to the program library. Information are taken from file names and tags, with options to use file paths as well. MediaMonkey will furthermore scan the directories for artwork, ignore files shorter than 20 Kilobytes, remove unused attributes and generate thumbnails for videos. Additional options that need to be selected include analyzing files for duplicates, ignore files that are shorter than x seconds and removing unavailable items.

The file types button highlights the supported file types. Not all media files are automatically selected. Ogg video and RealMedia video files are for instance not included in the scan by default.

A click on ok starts the scan which may take a while depending on the performance of the PC, the amount of media files and the structure they are stored in.

It took less than five minutes to scan two large folders on a test system with thousands of video and music files. MediaMonkey offers to import data from programs like iTunes or Windows Media Player if they are detected on the system.

Working with the program

Once you have started to add media to the program you are ready to make use of the functionality offered. You can play media with a double-click on a file. Both music and video are played in the program interface.

MediaMonkey users with a less than perfectly organized media collection may want to use the program’s automatic tagging and organization features to bring order to their collection. All media files that cannot be identified properly are listed under unknown. It makes sense to start there to identify those tracks properly.

A click on Tools > Auto-Tag from Web scans the collection for music that is not properly tagged. MediaMonkey tries to match the music with albums, and displays the finding in its interface. Information are retrieved from Amazon.

Auto-organization of files can move and rename files to a new destination based on file tags. This can be useful to create a distinct structure that all media files follow.

Options are available to analyze the volume of selected music files and level it if necessary. Other options include converting media files into different formats, burning music to CD or creating virtual CDs. The virtual CD option can be used to create a mixed music CD easily or to have virtual copies of your music CDs on your computer.

Selected music can also be synced with mobile media players like Apple’s iPod, Iphone or Android phones. Plug-ins need to be downloaded and installed for some devices.

Advanced features

MediaMonkey 4 Gold supports the creation of multiple media collections which can be configured with their own distinct display modes and playback rules.

For example, a Classical Music collection can be configured to display a Conductor node and an Original Year column, and play with cross-fading disabled, whereas Contemporary Music wouldn’t.

Advanced playlist options leave little to desire. It takes a single click to create a playlist with the overall top 50 songs of a collection, to fill an audio CD with music, or a playlist with songs from a specific year, genre or composer. Custom playlists using any of the parameters shown below can be created in little time.

Another interesting option is the ability to right-click on files to find more of the same (by artist, genre, year, album or location).

Sometimes you may want to organize different types of media files differently. Classic music for instance by composer, videos by date or tv series by season. The auto organization rules, configurable in the options, allow you do configure specific organization rules for collections, genres and playlists.

MediaMonkey 4 Gold introduces additional new features, like a new portable mode to run the program from an USB device, secure ripping of CDs to improve the accuracy of the ripping, tabs to browse different parts of the music collection at the same time, automatic synchronization with mobile devices and a new sharing option to share via UPnP/DLNA with compatible devices such as Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s Playstation or compatible telvisions and media stations.

Verdict

MediaMonkey 4 has improved a lot in the last year. The addition of video support improves the capabilities of the software significantly. Not all video formats are supported right now, but the developers promised to add support for additional formats like mkv in future releases.

Even inexperienced users can setup the program in little time. Advanced users will love the new features that the devs have added. The initial configuration may take some time, but once setup correctly it saves the user a lot of time in the long run.

Interested users can download MediaMonkey 4 from the developer website.

Giveaway

We have 25 MediaMonkey 4 Gold licenses for this give away. You will be included in the draw if you leave a comment below. Please note that comments are only open for 24 hours before they are closed down. Winners are drawn afterwards and notified by email.

The music management software MediaMonkey offers an alternative. The program is available as a free and premium version, with the free version alone being more than a worthy contender for every other music management software out there. MediaMonkey Gold on top of that adds even more tools and options to the program that make it worth for users to upgrade to it. But first things first, lets start with the review of MediaMonkey Gold.

MediaMonkey Gold Review

MediaMonkey offers to import music from connected storage devices on first startup. Users simply select the folders on their hard drive that contain their music and the program will do all of the importing. It will furthermore detect the presence of iTunes or Windows Media Player and offer to import ratings and other information from those applications as well. It is later possible to add other folders with music to the music library.

MediaMonkey supports a wide variety of media file types, from mp3 and aac to flac, mp4, ogg and wav, which means that the program should be able to recognize all music on a computer system with the exception of some very old or rare formats.

Music is automatically sorted into various categories to give the user options to locate it quickly. It is for instance to check out all songs in the library with options to sort them by parameters such as title, artist or album. But there are other groups available like composer, genre or year that offer additional access options to the collection. Even better, it adds classifications of its own that help the user in maintaining the music collection. Especially the Files of Edit listing is helpful, as it lists music tracks that have not been tagged properly yet. MediaMonkey lists for instance music with an unknown genre, album art, that is unleveled or has unsynchronized tags. Even better: The software offers tools to directly handle those inconsistencies or missing information. How is that done?

You simply right-click on a track to display a context menu with options to edit the information manually, or use information from the web or file name to tag the song properly.

The manual tag editing window offers everything that is needed to edit, add and delete tags from music, from standard tags like the track title, artist or genre, to additional details (like lyricist, involved people or the original artist), classifications or lyrics. Music lovers will love MediaMonkey for these options alone.

The auto tagging from web option tries to find the selected track on the Internet. If it does it displays relevant tags and album art which can all be imported into the tags of the song.

Music can not only be added from a local hard drive. MediaMonkey comes with options to rip audio CDs which are then automatically added to the music library. In addition, MediaMonkey users have options to burn selected music to CD again.

Other importing and exporting options are available. MediaMonkey can import music from mp3 players and compatible devices such as iPods or iPhones. Even better, it is also able to sync music with those devices, effectively eliminating the need to install iTunes on a system to sync music.

MediaMonkey comes with options to convert music into different formats. It uses encoders to do that and will preserve tag information in the process if supported by the new format.

The built-in file monitor monitors the hard drive for new music to add it to the library automatically. The music monitoring can be configured to be realtime, or only on startup of the application. The realtime monitoring ensures that music gets added to the library as soon as it is discovered by MediaMonkey’s monitoring module.

Playlists can be created with MediaMonkey easily. Available are manually created playlists and auto-playlists. Auto-playlists create a playlist based on criteria selected by the user. Several auto-playlists are already available, including creating a playlist that fits on an Audio or mp3 CD, tracks that have not been listened to recently or top 50 tracks. Available criteria for auto-playlists are all music tags and other data like a number of tracks, playtime or megabytes.

Another interesting MediaMonkey module is the podcast catcher which can be used to subscribe to podcasts. MediaMonkey includes access to two podcast directories from within its interface making it easy to subscribe to podcasts. Subscribed podcasts are automatically downloaded whenever they become available.

MediaMonkey is not only a music organizer but also a player. It offers all the features one would expect from a player including visualizations and more.

Reports can be generated that display information about the music collection, detailing number of artists, albums, tracks in the library as well as the total playtime and file size. In addition, the report displays averages, top 10 artists, albums or genres. Reports can be exported, as can track lists.

Here is a list of features that MediaMonkey offers in addition to the ones already mentioned:

• Multiple Music Collections – Create additional music collections, for instance to sort music using other criteria (e.g. kids music)
• Automatic music organization – organize music on hard drives into logical structures.
• Auto conversion and leveling – Converts music on the fly whenever it is needed, which is handy for instance to store music in a format on the computer (e.g. Flac) which is not supported by many hardware mp3 players.
• Virtual CDs to catalog a physical disk collection
• Sleep Timer
• Extensive customization
• Party mode

MediaMonkey Gold Verdict

MediaMonkey Gold offers everything that music lovers need from a software to manage their music collection. The free version alone is offering more options than most – if not all – music management applications. The Gold version tops that with unique features such as the automatic playlist generation module or the auto conversion and leveling option. MediaMonkey Gold is the tool for large music collections.

MediaMonkey Gold Giveaway

MediaMonkey gave use 25 licenses for MediaMonkey. The licenses are valid for version 3 and the upcoming version 4 of the software. Leave a comment letting us know about your favorite song of all time for a chance to win one of the licenses. Users who do not want to wait can download the free version of MediaMonkey directly from the developer website.

Upon first launch the program will display a directory browser that can be used to select the folders that contain music on all connected hard drives. All discovered files are automatically added to the library based on their ID3 tags. The library itself comes with several subfolders that sort the music collection by genre, rating, composer or artist automatically which makes it very easy to access specific music faster than usual. Specific information from iTunes and Windows Media Player (like ratings) can be imported into MediaMonkey.

The tagging features of MediaMonkey come in handy at this point. Most music collections contain at least a few files that are not tagged properly and MediaMonkey offers the tools to correct these issues automatically. The music manager makes this easy as it will list all files with improper tagging in a Files to Edit folder in the library. These audio files might appear in other folders as well depending on the ID3 tags that are missing (it will be listed in the genre if the genre is set but not in the album folder if the album is not set).

Files to Edit will sort the music with missing ID3 tags into different folders that specify what is missing (e.g. missing genre, unknown album art). A right-click on any folder or one on selected files will provide the option to automatically tag the music based on file information or by searching for the information on the Internet. The Internet option makes use of various Amazon stores to find the information needed to properly tag the audio files.

It is also possible to manually edit the tags for a specific audio file or multiple files to fine tune the tags or edit specific tags that could not be identified by automatic tagging. This in combination with the auto renaming features can turn an unsorted improperly tagged music collection in a properly tagged and named collection in no time.

New music can be added to the software program by adding new locations that should be searched for music, by ripping audio CDs, using the build in file monitor or syncing devices like Apple’s iPod or other mp3 players with the music manager.

Adding new locations will simply repeat the steps outlined above and add any new music that is found in those locations to the MediaMonkey library. MediaMonkey comes with the option to rip audio CDs and use the information offered by FreeDB to tag them automatically. The build in file monitor is only available in the Gold version of MediaMonkey. This handy feature will monitor specific locations on the local computer system and spring into action if it discovers new music which then gets added to the program.

Another option offered is the ability to convert music into different music formats using build in

• the MP3 converter
• AAC/M4A converter
• OGG converter
• WMA converter
• WAV converter
• FLAC converters.

MediaMonkey Gold is not only a tool to properly maintain a music collection. It comes also with all the media playback capabilities – and then some – that one would expect from a all-in-one audio manager.

• Play: Play CDs and digital audio files (popular formats like MP3, AAC/M4A, OGG, WMA*, MPC, APE, FLAC, WAV, etc supported) or use MediaMonkey in combination with Winamp to use Winamp as the player. Music volume can be adjusted automatically and the equalizer and dsp audio effect plugins allow to fine tune the playback.
• Multiple Music Collections: Ability to filter large music collections into smaller collections like Rock, Classic Music and Podcasts which can be customized with their own playback settings.
• Playlists: Playlists can be created by dragging and dropping music, using the auto-playlist option or auto-dj to automatically create mixes.
• Burn: Option to burn music to CD.
• Visualization: Display visualization on the computer screen while playing music.
• Reports and Statistics: Ability to create statistics and reports that can be viewed in the program and exported into xml files.
• Customization and Plugins: MediaMonkey can be customized and extended with plugins and new skins that are offered on the developer’s website.
• Virtual CD: Ability to catalog the CD audio collection to keep tracks of CDs

Users interested in MediaMonkey can download the free version right away from the developer’s website:

Ghacks Giveaway:

We are giving away ten 25 licenses of MediaMonkey Gold to users who reply to this article. Please tell us which feature excites you the most (if any).

Windows7news.com is giving away including the file recovery software Recovery My Files, a Mozy online backup account and other software. Check it out.

Raju from TechPP is also offering MediaMonkey Gold today. Go over there for another chance to win this excellent music manager.

Today’s giveaway is another popular software program. MediaMonkey Gold is an all in one music management solution. The MediaMonkey team provide a free version of their software with limited (but still extensive) features.

At its core is the ability to list all audio files of a computer system. The first step after the installation is the scan of parts – or all – of the computer’s storage devices. Music that is discovered that way will be automatically archived in various categories according to their tags. All files without tags will be moved into unknown folders.

Music is sorted by various parameters in the library including location, title, artist, genre or rating. Parameters can be removed or added to the library with a right-click on the item and the selection of Options > Choose Tree Nodes. The very same menu contains options to add or remove sortable columns which are used to display the music in the main panel.

The program layout makes it pretty easy to find specific music of the collection. The libraries and the main panel can be used to sort the music quickly. The search on the other hand is pretty fast as well which makes it the best option to find that one track that you are looking for.

Probably one of the first things that a new user will be doing is to make sure that his music collection is tagged properly. MediaMonkey comes with extensive means of tagging and cleaning a music collection. Options include automatically tagging from the web, tagging from information that the filename provides, synchronizing tags and cleaning them.

Music can also be tagged manually in the extensive tag editor. MediaMonkey comes with an auto-organizer that can rename the music collection with the help of selected tags.

Other features include:

• Easy Playlist creation with the ability to create automatic mixes
• Record, convert and burn music
• Build in Podcast Catcher
• Party mode
• Sync with iPhones, iPods, and most any MP3 phone or Audio Device
• Visualizations
• Statistics

MediaMonkey Gold adds several interesting new features to those of the free version. It provides the possibility to create multiple music collections which comes in handy if multiple users share a computer or if you want to keep music separated from each other.

Other features include a file monitor which will automatically monitor locations on the hard drive for new music. advanced auto playlists (create 256 Megabytes of music that match the following criteria), auto-conversion and leveling, cataloging physical music CDs, a sleep timer and more.

MediaMonkey can be extended with addons in various categories like visualization, DSP or devices much like Winamp or other music players.

Five free copies of MediaMonkey Gold have been donated and are up for grabs. If you want to win them write a comment. It would be nice if you would tell us what tool – or set of tools – you are currently using to manage your music collection.