Overview

Media Monkey is a digital jukebox and music organizer that supports AAC, OGG, WMA, FLAC, MP3, APE, and several other music file formats.  There are a lot of user created scripts and plug-ins to enhance its functionality.  Media Monkey also works as a Netcast player and will sync with an iPod and other portable devices.

Walk Through Review

Installation – 8

Installation is relatively straight forward but there are a few things to point out.  During the install wizard you are prompted to add additional tasks or not.  If you want to skin the player you will definitely want to enable full skinning.

Another thing to watch during initialization is where Media Monkey automatically scans for music.  You may want to go with the default drives and directories or customize them yourself.

When you first use Media Monkey you will get a tips screen.  You can turn this off by unchecking the box next to Show Tips as startup.

Features – 8

The amount of features available in Media Monkey are pretty astounding for the standard version.  Basically everything you can think of to manage your music is available.  When starting out with Media Monkey basic features are easy enough to navigate.  Upon digging into the application more you realize there is a lot of power packed into it.

Media Monkey supports ripping CD’s to several different formats including MP3, WMA, OGG, and FLAC.

You can sync your iPod and other portable music players with Media Monkey.  The standard version will sync the music format that’s currently in the library.  To convert tracks on the fly to different formats or different bitrates an upgrade to Gold is required.

SHOUTcast and IceCast are two Internet Radio services are included by default.

Another cool feature is being able to manage your podcast library.  Here is an example of managing an individual feed, alternatively you can use global settings.

Being able to control play options from the taskbar is another hand feature.

Ease of Use – 7

Here is an example of the player with its default skin.  Player controls are easily accessed at the bottom and you can customize the toolbar to organize the function buttons to your liking.

Performance – 8

For the amount of features and functionality Media Monkey is surprisingly light on system resources while playing music or burning a CD.

Upgrading to Media Monkey Gold will allow faster CD burning and ripping.

Product Support – 7

There is a lot of customer support available including Forums, Wiki, knowledgebase, and directly from the support team by submitting a ticket.  Anything I needed help with was usually answered in the forum or knowledgebase of FAQ’s.

Conclusion

Media Monkey is on killer application for the serious music collector.  For those who have large collections of music will find the organization features are some of the best out there.  Unfortunately to get the most advanced speed and features a Gold license is required.  A license for Media Monkey Gold is 19.95 which may not be too expensive for a digital jukebox that already includes so many features for free.

Download Media Monkey for Windows

Rating

• Installation: 8
• Ease of Use: 7
• Features: 8
• Performance: 8
• Product Support: 7