My PC music playing history goes like this: Winamp forever, Quintessential Player for a while and then iTunes. What I liked best about iTunes was the enhanced searchability and sortability. As my collection grew, I realized there was a high price to pay for this indexing.
I have my collection organized like so: Artist Name Directory > Album Name Directory > .mp3 files. The album cover is embedded in the meta data of the .mp3 file. I've organized it all to my liking so I don't need my music player to handle this task. When I close iTunes, it requires some time to save my settings. It's not backing up my files, it's saving my library settings so it can tell me how often I've heard what song and all that jazz. These back-up files are large and this adds a great deal of time to my shut down process.
Furthermore, when I add music to my collection, it's a serious pain in the ass to add the new stuff to my iTunes library. Why do I have to have an iTunes library? Why can't iTunes just play the files I have residing on my hard drive?
Long story short, I'm thinking about going back to Winamp which was so sweet and light on its feet. I'm pretty sure it has improved searchability and sortability, and I don't require iTunes to sync my iPod.
What do you use as your music player and why?
