I’ve been debating this question for a few days now. While using Windows I used winamp for a while, then ditched it. Eventually, I ended up just playing my music in Windows Media Player. I never set up play lists, I just opened up a handful of songs at a time and went from there. As you may have read before, I’m a little paranoid about handing my data over to a program without knowing what the program is going to do with this data.
I don’t remember any of the specifics of things I’ve heard in the past, but for some reason I have this suspicion that iTunes doesn’t play well with non iTunes store music. And since I’ve never used iTunes, all my music is DRM free, mostly ripped CD’s. My biggest fear is that iTunes would bring down an Iron fist and start trying to control where I can play my music. Although these feelings seem foolish, its hard for me to adopt iTunes with this fear. Tonight I decided to give iTunes a whirl and see if I could debunk my suspicions.
It wasn’t long before realized that I was wrong, which is great, because I really want to use iTunes :) When I import my music into iTunes they retain their original file format and don’t get converted to the DRM laden ACC format. This means that iTunes won’t be able to control what I do with my music!
As I import more of my music and get some time to explore more of iTunes I’ll give my full blown opinion of iTunes.
