MediaMonkey is more than just a music player, it is a Media manager, Audio/video file converter, Audio CD ripper, Syncing software and much more.

MediaMonkey supports all popular audio formats and some video formats. However you need to buy a codec pack for playing popular video formats. It can also rip Audio CD’s and convert them to any audio format you like. Right-clicking on an audio file in the library can give you a ton of options, adding file to a playlist, tagging, search for more (from the same artist/album),etc.

Let’s take a look at the important features:

Music Library:
You can manage your music library by selecting the folders you wish to monitor. If MediaMonkey detects a new file in the selected folder, it will automatically be added to the music library.

As you can see from the screenshot, you can access your library by clicking on the Artist’s name, Album, Genre, etc. Its really a great way to organize your files and provides quick access to the songs. Of course, you can just create a playlist if you don’t have too many songs in your library.

Tagging:

The Auto-tag feature uses the databases from freedb, allmymusic for tagging your songs. Tagging is an important feature for me as it helps me to play my music files according to Genre or Artist. This helps in choosing a playlist quickly.

Mediamonkey can also download album art (aka cover art) for your songs from Amazon, although you can do this yourself. Just right-click on an audio file and select properties, and click on Artwork. You can add any artwork from your computer.

Conversion:
MediaMonkey allows you to convert your audio files into various formats like Mp3, Wav, Wma, etc. It also preserves the tag information, so you can transfer it on your portable device and listen to them with ease.

Note: The higher the bit-rate, the larger the output size. So choose the bitrate according to your usage. If you want to listen to music on your portable devices with a headphone, a bit-rate like 192 kbps would do fine.

Syncing with Portable Devices:
MediaMonkey can sync your music library with several devices like iPhones, iPods, Android Devices. Just connect your device and MediaMonkey will automatically detect it, and you can sync your music library.

Tip: If you want to see the album art on your device, make sure the album/cover image is copied to the same folder as the song

There are some useful extensions (scripts) available too, for finding lyrics, album covers, etc but I didn’t install any as I am satisfied with the default options.

MediaMonkey Gold has many cool features like Auto conversion, Sleep Timer, Auto volume leveling,etc.

You can read more about MediaMonkey’s Gold features here: http://www.mediamonkey.com/information/gold/

Try the free version, it is almost as good as the Gold version.

Pros:
Easy conversion of audio files to various formats.
Auto-tag is good, you can edit the tags manually too.
Supports almost all audio formats.
Skins (available at MM forum and wiki page)

Cons:
No offline help file.
Video formats requires additional codec.

Thanks to Russell Samuels from MediaMonkey, we have 10 licenses of MediaMonkey Gold (version 4) for our readers.

Note: Winners will be asked to send us their full name and email address, which will be forwarded to the developer. They will send you a personal license to the email address you provided.

Version reviewed: MediaMonkey Gold (version 4)
Computer specs:
Dual CPU E2220 – 2.40 GHz
2GB DDR2 RAM
Windows 7 Home Premium (32 bit)

Giveaway

Thanks to Russell, we are giving away 10 license keys of MediaMonkey Gold  to readers of Avinashtech. Just follow the simple rules below to enter in this draw.

  1. Subscribe to Avinashtech by entering your email address in the subscribe box on right sidebar of the blog or by clicking this link. Do remember to verify your email address when you get the verification email from Feedburner.
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  3. Tell us using comments, why you would like to have a license for this application.
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