Is there an alternative to iTUNES for PC that will allow all the basic functions of iTUNES?

I made the mistake a couple of months ago of allowing iTUNES to upgrade on my Win10 PC laptop. It fried everything. I had to get our computer guy to pull the hard drive to make a copy of all my files, then reinstall the OS. A real pain in the azz.

I want to get back to moving music & photos back and forth between my iPHONE and my PC. I am leery at this stage of downloading iTUNES.

Any suggestions?

I sent an email to the one listed in your profile BigBore.

Pandora is pretty good

BlueSound and Tidal are also good (Tidal being the provider and BlueSound being the platform)

I use the mobile app with Amazon to back up my pics to the cloud and I can log into my Amazon account and view them and store them on my PC. I have an iphone but despise itunes.

May I make the suggestion of getting away from the whole MP3 file/Player paradigm like iTunes and switch to a streaming service? It's really the future anyway and even Apple has acknowledged that iTunes is a dead man walking.

I used to use iTunes a whole lot, but have been using Spotify and it's absolutely great, it's like having the world's largest iTunes library across all your devices. You can get the $10/month Premium service which gives you CD quality streaming and the ability to listen to music offline or the free service with ads.

I despise iTunes.

If one assumes Apple has some programming talent (a theory which is held by some, I understand) then this misbegotten program is a purposeful spite to those of us who do not drink the Kool-aid.

But, since Apple does not support the simple file transfer methods used by nearly every other maker of nearly every other device....it is really hard to do without the damn thing.

What I do is have a sacrificial old laptop that I put my files on to mess with iTunes. Four steps:

1) Put any files I want added to my iStuff on the sacrificial laptop

2) download and install the most recent version of iTunes to the sacrifical laptop

3) enter the hell that is iTunes, pay the devil his due and get the file transfers/syncs done

4) uninstall iTunes from the sacrificial laptop.

You may ask, why step 4? First, I don't do this often so I'd be downloading and installing (step 2) anyway. And secondly, I like to allow even a sacrificial laptop some self-respect.

I always wonder exactly what features people are looking for when they are looking for an "alternative to itunes". I really don't know. There are lots of media players in windows, and you can organize mp3 files in your folders any way you want.
Videolan will play music files., and even amazon music will catalog and play all your music files, even ones you didn't get from amazon.
From the outside it seems like itunes has imposed a set of restrictions on the music/storage/catalog process that simply don't exist in the pc world, so it doesn't really need a replacement, you just need to get rid of it and stop thinking about it. It will take a few minutes to set up a new default music player, and then you will never think about it again.

 
I think Apple created iTunes for Windows to encourage people to switch to a Mac. It is horrible on Windows, wonderful on a Mac, just another part of their ecosystem.
 

Been looking for an alternative ever since Winamp went tits up and nothing works. I’ve probably tried 20 different apps and nothing. All I want is to drag and drop files from my PC to my ipod but that’s apparently akin to asking for a herd of unicorns.

Not a fan of the later versions of iTunes, but I have used it since like 2004. I use iTunes 10.6.1.7 on all my Windows 10 Machines and shut off update notices. Works fine for me. I only use it for my mp3 collection. I have intended to move to something else but never have. It does everything I need it to. I found a site where you can download older versions, sorry I don't have the link.

It used to be WinAmp.

Windows Media Center is fairly similar and free, but I don't use it myself.

VLC can do it but the interface sucks for music.

For a paid app, I use JRiver. It's significantly more powerful than iTunes in a dozen different ways, but it does basic things also and isn't expensive.

for interacting with your iPhone, iTunes is the only choice.

Mediamonkey.

Been using it for years.

quote:

Originally posted by FenderBender:
for interacting with your iPhone, iTunes is the only choice.

I use Pandora, Spotify and Amazon Music on my iPhone. Got frustrated with iTunes years ago when they made it a colossal PITA to transfer songs I purchased to a new device.

quote:

Originally posted by qxsoup:
Mediamonkey.

Been using it for years.

Me too. I don't know whether it takes care of the file-transfer-to-iStuff angle (though it might) but I can attest it does do a nice job playing music files. Free version is great - never found the need to upgrade to the paid, fancier version.