Very fine music utility.I like it better than iTunes. I had Amerok when I was on Linux(Mandriva) and I loved it.It is similar to Amerok.

It's a shame that the devs dismissively dropped support for 10.6. A lot of the people who are looking for an iTunes alternative are also the people who dislike the iOS-ification of more current versions of OS X and the comglomeration that is iTunes these days, so in effect they are dropping support for many of the very people who have an interest in this succeeding.

That said, it's not an easy way to play music. One has to add songs to a playlist first, and if the playlist already has stuff in it, new songs get added to the bottom of it. Later this becomes a mess, but would be great for a party.

I can clear the playlist with a button, but if I do that playlist loses the songs I originally put there. So to play one needs to make a new playlist first.

I made playlists of the folders of songs I like, but then the header gets crowded and the titles get unreadable.

Simply put, the UI is not competely sorted. It has some nice features and plays with good sound quality, but really all I want to do is select a folder and play the contents, not jockey files around.

Also, playing from the folder side it supports fewer formats than playing from the DB side for some reason, perhaps because it can't use Apple's built-in stuff?

I use Rockbox on my little Sansa Clip, when I want to play a folder I select a it, select a song in it and hit play, it plays the rest of the folder without any intervention, regardless of format. It starts up almost instantly with 72 GB of files on it, without having to catalog. Why can't any desktop player do this?

The reason for this preference is so I can decide what an album is for myself, without all the "helpful" labeling and categorising that most players want to do, or without delving into metadata when all I want to do is move a file somewhere else or delete it. It's easier for me to put stuff where I want it using the Finder and not have to "find" a file for a DB that's out of date..

If I move track 7 out of the folder it no longer is part of the album, and if I like a remix to finish off with it becomes part of the album even though its metadata would show it to be part of another album.

It's a lot of fun to use this player. I'm partial toward any attempt to port FOSS/GNU stuff to Mac. It is stable and easy to install. It looks and feels just like Amarok on KDE, and that gives me nice warm fuzzies inside.

But the problem is that it looks and feels just like Amarok on KDE. Oh, did I mention that it looks and feels just like Amarok on KDE?

Oh well.

I was going to point out that Amarok 2.7 is available through Macports, but with numerous dependency errors that may take hours to sort out.

Clementine will serve excellently in the meantime!

I only just started using Clementine, so I am not going to rate it, but I have to say that I am shocked -- SHOCKED, I tell you -- that there appears to be no documentation for it. Granted, to get up and running is quite easy, but there are a fair number of buttons and other thingies in the UI, e.g. "Mood" (WTH is that about???).

I went to the clementine forum and found a thread on documentation -- or lack there of -- and was pointed to one wiki page:

http://code.google.com/p/clementine-player/w/list

Why couldn't the developer(s) provide a link to at least this on the application's homepage???

Bottom line is: I'm really put off by software whose designer's can't be bothered to point new users to any sort of user's manual or guide.

That said, I like the way artists and their albums are organized; however, one of my albums -- from my iTunes library -- is mis-marked as "Unknown". It shows up in the right place with all the correct information in iTunes, and I have checked the metadata/tags and they appear to be in order, so I'm wondering what the deal is with that. Also, some album artwork shows up in Clementine, but not all of it; in iTunes all my music has cover art.

I also like the Growl support Clementine has -- as I do Vox's.

So yes, Clementine is a purdee light-weight audio player with many of the same features and functions as iTunes, without the lobster-trap consumer crap, i.e. the iTunes Store and such, of iTunes, but it also seems to have some glitches to it. Perhaps fooling around with it some, I will figure out these aforementioned issues, but as is, it leaves a bit to be desired, and I most definitely don't see its superiority over iTunes.

5 stars for price and features.
1 star for UI. UI is terrible.