Mediamonkey

Auto-add song titles, subscribe to podcasts and sync playlists

Quickly add track titles and album artwork

Mediamonkey is one of our favourite media players and is a great alternative to itunes. Once you add your music collection to Mediamonkey you can set the program to automatically add track titles and album artwork. To do this, select the track list of an album by clicking and dragging around it with your mouse and then right-clicking your selection. Choose ‘Auto-tag from Web’ and Mediamonkey will search Amazon’s database for matches to the selected tracks. From the list of matching albums, select the correct one from the dropdown menu at the top of the screen, then tick the box underneath the album artwork to enable Mediamonkey to update the details of each track in one go (see screenshot below left). Click the Auto-tag button, then click OK in the pop-up box to apply the correct details.

Rip CDS beyond the 30-day limited period

Mediamonkey lets you rip CDS to your PC, but only for the first 30 days you use it (due to licensing restrictions). It advises you to upgrade to Mediamonkey Gold to extend this period, but this isn’t necessary. Instead, download the latest LAME MP3 encoder from www.snipca. com/21042 (LAME 3.99.5 worked for us). Open the downloaded ZIP file using extraction software (such as Peazip) and copy the ‘lame_enc.dll’ file to the Mediamonkey installation folder (usually in your Program Files folder). Choose to replace the file if prompted, then close Mediamonkey and re-open it. You should find you can now rip CDS without limits.

Subscribe to audio podcasts

Mediamonkey can also replace itunes as your podcast player of choice. To subscribe to a podcast you first need to find the RSS feed of the show you’re interested in. To locate it, enter the show’s name alongside the term RSS into a Google search and look through the results for a link that matches it (something like http://podcastname/rss). Next, click Podcast in Mediamonkey’s main menu, then New Podcast. Copy and paste the RSS link into the Podcast URL field (see screenshot above) and the other fields should automatically populate. Next, tick the ‘Customize subscription rules for this Podcast’ box and change the default settings for ‘On update, download’. We recommend ‘recent episodes first’ and ‘the 2 most recent’ (see screenshot above) to ensure you don’t fill up your hard drive with potentially hundreds of podcasts. You can create a playlist of your favourite tracks and then sync it with your phone or tablet to listen to on the go. Click Edit, New Playlist, name the playlist and click OK. You will see your new playlist listed under Playlists in Mediamonkey’s main menu. From your library drag the tracks you want to include to your new playlist. Alternatively, select the songs, right-click the selection, then click ‘Send to’, Playlist, then your new playlist.

To synchronise the playlist with your tablet or phone, make sure your device is connected to your PC and right-click the playlist’s name. Click ‘Send to’ and choose your device in the menu that appears to begin the transfer.