How do you play media without adding it to your Library?

I understand how playlists work. As far as I can tell, they're the same as iTunes playlists. But the deal-breaker with iTunes for me is that it doesn't let me play media without cataloging it.

I want some way to play media without cataloging it. Songbird seems to let you stream media from the web without cataloging it, but you seem to be saying that it's impossible to play media from your local system without cataloging it.

I think so, yes...
For now, you would have to build up playlists, or keep on deleting all those files, you don't want in your media player.

maybe it could be possible that if we open a media file with songbird through right click it wouldn't be added to the library

I also feel this as a breaker. If I buy or download music I don't know, I should have the possibility to listen to it prior to adding it to the library. I don't want files I don't like to end up in my library. I don't keep files with one star, that's my temporary sollution.

I just wanted to add another vote for some way to play files without adding them. Just recently I was playing Ogg files to find out which bitrate was most appealing. It ended up being easier to delete all the music out of songbird and then re-adding it afterword so that I didn't have to deal with having the same song 14 times and not knowing which one I wanted to keep.

i agree, there should be a feature that lets you listen to music that is not in your library. if you want it in your library, you could select it and it would move/copy it to your library, and follow a custom folder/naming scheme.

This is an issue for me as well. My collection is divided between media stored on my notebook and media stored on a removable drive. So either I need to be able to play the removable media w/o adding it to the library, or I need software that is smart enough to realize when I am and am not connected to said media and, of course, adjust the library accordingly. I suspect that plenty of other folks are in the same boat with me on this issue.

nixon, it is exactly the situation you describe that makes this such a deal breaker for me.

Even if there were a solution that would add and remove media from your library based on the availability of your removable media, I'd still not want my media player remembering every damn thing I listen to. And I found out it does catalog everything I stream, it just puts it into my web media library instead of my normal library.

There seem to be no way to keep it from cataloging everything I do short of wiping its memory periodically. I understand most people want their media player to remember everything they do with it, but give those of us who don't an option. Until then, I guess I'll use VLC.

I've actually found VLC to be a perfect solution myself. I have to say, the amount of structural changes it would take to implement this feature are fairly astronomical, I'm guessing. Especially considering that songbird still cannot do pivotal and needed things like sort artists based on definite articles or rip/burn music, as the myriad of posts on getsatisfaction will attest. Frankly, I think VLC does a pretty good job of playing your music and then forgetting about it--hell, even WMP can be used in this fashion.

Foobar has pretty much solved my problems. Only problem is that it's SUCH a time-sink for procrastinators who can't stop tweaking software.

But seriously, how problematic could it be to allow users to play files without adding them to the library?

I miss Amarok.