no apple anything for me.
 

I have zero music on my iPad.  Zero music on my iPhone.  I only have one picture on my iPad...which I accidentally took using some sort of fisheye distortion thingy of myself sitting in my recliner.  It scared my wife so much I had to keep it on the dern thing just in case I need to show it to her again.  I think I have 3 or 4 pix on my iPhone of my dogs.  Maybe.  Sometimes I hear something interesting by haphazardly linking around on YouTube.  Or not.  Dull AND Dim.

Two better words (echoed from above):  MediaMonkey.
 
http://www.mediamonkey.com/
 
 

When the heck do folks find the time to listen to even a tiny fraction of these libraries of, quite often, thousands of songs? Actually curious.

yorolpal
When the heck do folks find the time to listen to even a tiny fraction of these libraries of, quite often, thousands of songs? Actually curious.

As for me, I work from home and music is almost always playing in the background.  Even when I went into a corporate office, I tended to wear headphones and listen to music to tone others out (I was a programmer with ADHD so the fewer distractions the better - SQUIRREL!!!).
 
I also like a LOT of different genres of music so I would go into music stores and ask for a bulk discount.  They would think I'm talking about 10-15 albums, but I told them I was thinking of more and would normally get at least $5 off each album.  Then I'd buy 100 (or even far more).  Instead of buying onesy-twosy's I'd save up and then get the huge discount (plus I was making a very nice IT Consultant wage so I could afford to do this).  I used to have a bunch of Sony CD Jukeboxes (three 400's, two 300's and a 200) which could be used three jukeboxes  at a time from a single remote.  Now everything has been sucked into the PC (which took months) and I now only buy downloadable .mp3's (I did a test on a $5,000 stereo system and I can't tell ANY difference between 192kbps and anything above that - so my whole library is converted to 192kbps to save space).
 
I currently have over 98,000 songs loaded into MediaMonkey with about 200,000 more still to go.  This is over three years of music (if started and not stopped), but I've been listening to music for over 50 years now and intend to continue for another 50 so I don't feel like I'll miss any of it. 

Tell itunes you want to manage the library yourself. Otherwise it will find every media file on the computer and start moving them to the location iTunes thinks is best but DAWs might not.

Then connect the iWhatever-it-is and tick the "manually manage/sync music and videos" box. After which you get to select what is transferred by iTunes,

No problem copying what I want on and off iPads or Mrs TLW's iPhone either, using iTunes in Windows or OS X. iTunes is like most software written with the lowest common denominator computer user in mind, it just needs firmly taking in hand from the start then checking it hasn't tried to get out of control again when updated. And at least you can control it, you just need to dig into the preferences.

Many of the people who attack iTunes do so I think because every time it gets updated the user interface changes. Messing around with GUIs for iTunes and iOS is Apple's (and a few other app publisher's) most annoying habit. Just because the app writer has fixed a few bugs or added/removed a minor feature doesn't mean I want to re-learn their software from scratch every three months.

Ripped CDs (use Apple lossless as the encoding system) work fine in iTunes by the way, and they can be transferred to iOS devices like any other audio. Me, I prefer it to any media player Microsoft has come up with, and unlike the Windows Media Player you don't have to pay extra for the Wondows Media Centre to get all the functions that should be there from the start.

Now, if only someone could come up with a DVD playing application that could actually handle the stupidly over the top security requirements to play protected Blu-Ray disks.....

jbow
Why the heck wouldn't Apple want to make iTunes simple??? I don't get it.

Because Apple is one of the worst and most invasive of all companies out there, but because things are so well hidden, no one talks about it. Plus Apple won't discuss it, but all it takes is a packet sniffer, and you will NEVER EVER again, touch Apple for anything!
 
iTunes, besides that, is crap, and the worst music place I have ever seen. I like Beethoven's 9th marked up as tunes and not in order! ... very smart! totally off base and just shows how stupid and maniacal they are!
 

I hear that on Microsoft's website Beethoven's 9th is called Beethoven's 10th...

I tunes?
Like I Me Me Mine?
Or I'd Love To Change The World?
Or I Started A Joke?

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I have always found iTunes pretty easy to maneuver. I never really cared for Media Player.

I have always found all of my iDevises easy to operate.

Julien, upgrading to a 6 Plus with 64 gig helped me with some of those issues of space. When I didn't have space, I simple rotated music by checking, or unchecking music to sync with the phone.