iTunes alternative?

So I just did a Windows 7 clean install, was about to transfer my music when I thought, "Hmm, iTunes is fucking terrible. There's got to be a better way!" But some things I've tried in the past have all fallen short.

Basically I just want a simple music player that has a good amount of organizing options but isn't weird dumb to navigate. And also one that can still load stuff onto my iPod if that's even possible.

I know you duders have the answer. Let me know!

WMP is pretty easy to use, and way less shitty than iTunes.

At least, it's what I've always used and never done me wrong.

Won't load stuff onto your ipod but the Zune player is pretty great. Organizers pretty well and has a great minimalist look in my opinion. Handles podcast management decently too.

iTunes just never, ever update it.

What I'm curious if there's another player that has the same music folder organization options that iTunes has. iTunes is terrible at a lot of things, but the solutions it has to automatically organize music and separate a bunch of mp3s into well-alphabetized folders is really handy. Any other programs that can do stuff like that?

Mediamonkey can transfer stuff to an iPod and I've been using it for quite some time now. Pretty easy to use, too.

I actually really like iTunes. Never known why it's so hated. But, I have tried other programs just for fun. I liked Songbird, but that's been shut down. Nightingale is built on the same code I think, so maybe try that.

Here's a long list of supposed alternatives: http://alternativeto.net/software/itunes/

@rorie: For quite a while, I used MusicBrainz Picard to scan and tag my music. Then I would use Mp3tag to categorize them into folders and rename them based on the tags.

http://forums.mp3tag.de/index.php?showtopic=8816

Even now that I use iTunes (Half a Gig of RAM and 60% of the CPU?! Really?!) I always run my music through Picard before adding it to the library.

Foobar2000. It's like vlc but for music. I mean you can use vlc for music but it's a terrible experience.

I would 2nd Mediamonkey. Solid library features, built on winamp player so that's fast, and you can define/organize the directory structure of your library which sounds like @rorie is interested in.

I used Mediamonkey back during the XP years and it was a great alternative to iTunes back then. Can't say whether or not it still is now because I haven't used it since then. I wonder how good it is now, might have to check it out. I've been using Spotify lately though so I've had no need for a media organizer. Plus I don't pirate anymore.

Yeah, I'd actually be fine with iTunes from like 3 years ago. It's now become some sort of weird half-Spotify, half-bloatware.

I've been pretty fine with WMP and just regular directories for the past 9-ish years now.

I've been using Musicbee for a while now and I like it a lot, looks good, easy to use, no loading your Ipod though.

My favorite thing is the theme options so you can make it a dark color instead of eye searing white like Itunes