Juvenall Wilson

Hi. My name is Juvenall Wilson and I’m addicted to music. Since I was 11, not a single day of my life has gone by without listening to music. I find I focus better, deal with life with less stress and generally have an improved outlook when there is a constant stream of good tunes playing. So for a junkie like me, it’s important to have the right tools to listen to and organize your music.

Music Player: Winamp

Yes, as obvious as it sounds, this is something that needs to be included. If I had a buck for every time I’ve had to explain to someone what it is, where to get it and that it’s easily the best music player around, I’d be sailing around the globe with Rachael Ray right now (chicks that can cook = teh hawtness). I switched to this shortly after Winamp2 hit and I was even among the brave who stuck with it through the disaster that was Winamp3 (which was the only time I seriously looked for an alternative).

To me, what really sets it apart from say, iTunes or foobar2000, is it’s amazing “Media Library”. This wonderful little tool lets me manage my huge archive of music (currently over 15,000 tracks) in a thousand different ways. While not exactly the most powerful tool, it is the most efficient. I can create playlists, add music, sort/play by type, year or rating right from the player. At the same time, if I don’t want to really add files to my library, I can just drag them into the playlist editor. I also perfer it’s smaller visual footprint by default. I’m not exactly a “skins” sorta guy, so the fact Winamp takes up just enough space to get the job done is a great bonus for me. iTunes lies to hog up all of my screen real estate and foobar2000, well, lets just say I’ve yet to find a skin that wasn’t ugly as sin (besides, I shouldn’t have to hunt around to make it attractive).

Tagging: MusicBrainz

So what good is Winamp’s great Media Library if none of your songs have the correct ID3 information? Any of us who lived through the good ol’ Napster days knows how often you would end up with that “Ultra_Rare_Metallica_Demo_Track.mp3″, only to find out later it was a Conway Twitty song. Even worse, if you weren’t exactly the Ken Jennings of the music world, you really were shit out of luck. That was, until MusicBrainz came around.

Think of MusicBrainz as a Wikipedia for your music folder. The client program, using acoustic fingerprinting, scans and analyzes your music and attempts to match it up with a known copy in it’s user contributed database. Most of the time, it can find a perfect match with even limited information, otherwise, you can browse around to try and find the correct data on your own. Once named, you can save the data to the file and use that information to automatically organize your music directory in any way you see fit (For me, it’s Music > Artist > ArtistName - AlbumName - TrackNumber - Track) In the 3 or 4 years I’ve been using the program, my archive went from a completely disorganized directory with files named as whatever they were when ripped or downloaded, to an easily navigated library of tunes.

There are a few issues, however. I like to have as much data attached to my files as possible, however, MusicBrainz doesn’t include album/track years, genre information or album art. For that information, I have to load up something like MediaMonkey or do a Google/Wikipedia search. In spite of this drawback, it’s still a fast, effective and easy way to get your ID3s in order.

Playlist: MusicIP Mixer

Back in 2004, I picked up a new Sony Vaio. This was, and still is, a kick ass box. When I first loaded it up, it came with a little program that supposedly would help you automatically generate playlists based on matching criteria of the track itself. This was an awesome idea, if only it had worked and didn’t cost something like $40 for a limit of 10,000 tracks. This sent me on a search for an alternative. Well, after a good hour of looking around, I stumbled upon something called “Predixis MusicMagic Mixer“. So I gave it a spin and was instantly hooked. The next day, I went into work and shared it with everyone there (notably, our VP of marketing). They were hooked on the thing and there was even considerable talk of trying to partner with it (though, if I remember right, it was back burnered for the more pressing, “Shouldn’t we try to be profitable first” stuff). In spite of this, I managed to get myself a license and I’ve been hooked on it ever since.

Now, I’ve talked about this before,and since then, it’s only gotten better (and changed it’s name to easier to pronounce MusicIP Mixer). The mixes have become more accuricate, the interface is dramatically cleaned up and it even seems as if the program is completely free. Without question, MusicIP Mixer is the easiest, most effective way to create great playlists. My music library, iPod and even mix CDs simply wouldn’t be as good had I not become a user.

Internet Radio: Pandora’s Box

I’ll admit, I’ve only recently become a user of Pandora. Blame it on my huge music archive, blame it on the cave I live in, whatever. Needless to say, it’s become my crack. I have to have my daily Pandora fix or I’ll start beating up old ladies with wiffle bats. This led to a problem for me: I don’t like being attached to my browser. Turns out, I’m not the only one. Daniel Mackey (gotta give it up for another boy from Cork) has created a great little wrapper program that takes the Pandora interface and throws it into a desktop client (perfectly) named “Pandora’s Box“. As a direct result of Dan’s program, I’ve discovered a whole pile of new music. Go me!

Now I’m more then sure there are other great apps or plugins floating around. Perhaps there are even better options to those listed above. Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, feel free to show off you’re knowledge and make a fool of me in the comments.