Musikcube

I just found Musikcube for Windows, which is a nice alternative to Apple iTunes.

I used to like iTunes back in the day, I used it although I know it was kind of bloated to start with. Since then, I was hooked on the fact I could manage all my music library from one app. This is something that, at least by default, is impossible with foobar2000 (which you should definately check out if you’re still stuck with some old Pentium 133), and unthinkable on Winamp (I never really migrated to Winamp 3/5, since it was a more heavy than Winamp 2, which I still (sometimes) rely on today)

I now run on KUbuntu for day-to-day tasks, and I really like amarok because of the similar “music library management” point of view.

Musikcube is one app that makes me want to switch back to Windows (why would I do that to start with?!). The download size is 2-ish Megabytes, and for that size you have an music player that goes straight to the point: music management. See the screenshot of the main window for example. All you need to do is to add some folder(s) or files, and you’re ready to go.

The only thing I don’t really like is how the Dynamic Playlists are made (see screenshot). To create dynamic playlists, you have to write in your own custom SQL statement that directly queries the Musikcube’s database. Personally, since I use alot of SQL stuff (language and databases) at work this is almost natural to me, but for the new user’s point of view who dont have to program, getting to know how to make Dynamic Playlist can be a pain. In the other hand, this translates into alot of flexibility.For example (see same screenshot), I can choose to display files that contains either “single” or “top40″ in it’s file path (in other words, I chose to pick files that are stored in either of those two directories) but not those that contains “electro” somewhere in the file path. Then I order the results by its track’s title.

For the rest, since this is a iTunes look-alike, you should be able to get your way around this app. Also, this app supports Vorbis (.OGG) files natively. This is a plus that kept me away from iTunes. Overall, this is a nice start, but the app isnt quite polished, and I wish there was a console somewhere so it could give me some reason why, for example, shoutcast streams fails to play (at the time I wrote this blog entry, when I tried to play a shoutcast stream that couldn’t connect Musikcube silently fails and does nothing afterwards to warn it’s user.). Otherwise, Musikcube can be extended using plugins, so there’s alot of possibilites for expansion.

Final rating: 8/10. Give it a spin!

Extras for dynamic playlist creation: SQLite “select” clause reference, fields that Musikcube use in it’s database