Since being introduced in 2001, iTunes’ features have expanded well beyond its name. Once a simple music player, it has evolved beyond the realm of tunes and into a hub for just about all the media on our Macs. It also features an enormous digital content store, and is the program responsible for syncing all of that stuff to our iDevices. Many users, like myself, have complained for years that the expanding features of iTunes have let it become a bloated piece of software.
Tomahawk is an open-source media player that cuts out some unnecessary iTunes bloat, while trying to create some more relevant functionality in the important area of actually playing music. Do its features make it a viable iTunes replacement on your computer, or is it just another mundane addition to an already oversaturated market of iTunes alternatives?
The Basics
Our frustrations with iTunes have led to a number of alternatives over the years as developers have released some fantastic options. I’ve tried Enqueue, Ecoute, and Sonora among many others, all of which have tried to bring the focus back to playing our music while ignoring all the other clutter that iTunes forces upon us. However, all of these apps have one big problem: they are limited to the music you have on your computer.
You'll have to wait for Tomahawk to scan your hard drive before you can listen to any local files
I still buy albums on iTunes when I’ve had a chance to hear every song and am sure that it’s worth paying for. However, I find that more and more of the artists that I listen to release albums with just a couple songs that I love. Consequently, I’ve become a big supporter of streaming services like Spotify that let me listen to music I like without having to pay for it, all within the confines of legality.
The developers behind Tomahawk recognize that there are an increasing number of sources for music beyond our hard drives. When we want to hear a song, there are dozens of different places we can go to hear it. Streaming services like Spotify, Rdio, Grooveshark, Pandora, Last.fm and many more let you hear your favorite artists without paying for each song.
Tomahawk helps those of us who use one or more of these services and maintain our own local music library. It’s a unified app that can not only find the track you’re looking for locally or from one of these services, but actually play it too.
Getting Started
After downloading the open-source software, you’ll install it right to your applications folder. Upon opening it the first time, Tomahawk will scan your computer for local tracks. I have about 6,000 songs and it completed the scan in about two minutes, so libraries much larger than mine should still be completed in a reasonable amount of time. You can specify a path for the app to focus on or just let it look around the whole drive.
There is a long list of resolvers, and since it is open source, more can be added by anyone
Where the setup gets fun is in the preference pane. “Resolvers” are ways to expand the search function. Rather than just search your library, you can install new resolvers to help search other services. There is a pretty extensive list of supported services, including a few that I hadn’t even heard of before. All you have to do is click “install” (which takes about three seconds) and you’re ready to go.
The YouTube resolver gives you some control over the search results
What I found to be a nice surprise was the availability of a YouTube resolver. Though they often get removed by Google, many users post individual songs to YouTube. Tomahawk can automatically search for these and play just the audio directly within the app. There is even a fair amount of customization that can be applied to your YouTube results. For example, if you want to filter out live performances of the song you’re looking for, you can do that easily.
Features
There are a few features whose inclusion in the app should come as no surprise. Last.fm integration is almost a given with these sorts of music apps. Scrobbling to the service worked flawlessly. You obviously can create playlists as well, and as you would hope, you can include songs from a variety of sources, (your local library, YouTube, etc.).
The Stations feature lets you automatically make mixes using music from your library, as well as from other sources
One of the features that I do actually like about iTunes is the Genius feature. Sure, it sometimes makes strange decisions when I ask it to create a playlist, but overall it is a nice, quick way to find similar songs and artists. iTunes’ Smart Playlists are also a great way to find songs and artists that match certain criteria, (I use them to find songs with a given BPM for running mixes). Tomahawk has a similar feature called “stations,” which essentially works like a combination of Genius and Smart Playlists. The parameters you choose are a bit more limited, but also more interesting; you can search based on parameters like “Artist Hotness” or “Adventurousness.”
You can make mixes based on some interesting song attributes
The search feature is quite robust, but Tomahawk also does a good job of letting you browse artists. If you search for an artist, you will get a photo as well as a short bio at the top of the window. Popular songs are displayed in one column, with related artists in another. Tomahawk uses Last.fm for all the photos and bio information, so everything was very accurate in my experience.
You get lots of information about whatever artist you search for
At the bottom you can see all of the albums of your selected artist. You can play songs that you have locally, or you can let Tomahawk find the songs on the album from other sources if you don’t have it. There is the option at the bottom of the window to show albums in your collection only or to expand the search. All the information you would expect to find about the music is also listed, such as the bitrate, the length, etc.
When I want to see what new music is out there, I never use the iTunes store. I’ve always found the navigation to be too clunky, so I just use different websites like Pitchfork, Billboard, etc. Tomahawk lets you see what’s popular according to a number of sources, such as The Hype Machine, as well as the major streaming services. You can filter the results by country and music genre as well. I loved the simplicity of the results, and playing this new music was as easy as double clicking on the album.
Seeing the top charts lets you see what's popular and easily listen to it
iTunes and other alternatives tend to be passive experiences, in that you hit play and move to another window. iTunes has a mini-player, and apps like Enqueue are built around the queueing feature. I found that Tomahawk drew my attention to it for longer periods because of all the information it presents to you. It supports full screen mode in Lion, so it can fit a lot of information in the window if you choose.
Social Music
For better or worse, just about every app on your phone and computer has some sort of social aspect. It’s rare these days to see anything that doesn’t integrate with Twitter or Facebook, and Tomahawk is no different. You can share your music selection with your friends on a number of social networks, as well as instant messaging programs like Adium.
Tomahawk takes all of this a step further by allowing sharing of music over your local network. You can connect to friends’ collections to see what they are listening to and listen along. Tomahawk is available for Windows as well, so you aren’t limited to your Mac-only friends. If you decide to connect the app to Twitter or through the Jabber IM protocol, you can view your friends collections and playlists even when you aren’t on the same network.
Conclusion
I was pleasantly surprised by Tomahawk at just about every turn. The ability to get music from a ton of sources meant it was hard to actually stump it and come up with a song it couldn’t find.
Whether you like this or not will probably be dependent on how you listen to music. If you are a passive listener who turns on Pandora in the background and lets the station just bring you wherever it pleases, Tomahawk will definitely be overwhelming to you. If you are someone who always buys music, (or torrents it), the idea of finding music the way Tomahawk does will seem inefficient and unnecessary.
However, if you’re like me and have a local music collection, but are always looking for new music that you can listen to without having to commit to buying the whole album, Tomahawk might be a perfect fit.
There are a couple minor complaints I had about the app that keep it from being perfect. I hate when developers force a menulet on you without the option to hide it. It does give you some ability to control playback, but is generally not needed. The app is also a bit rough around the edges, with a few design choices resulting in an eyesore or two. I didn’t experience any crashes, but it did behave strangely a couple of times by refusing to open certain windows.
Overall, this is a great app. Since it’s open-source, I encourage you to go download it and take it for a spin. It will not be to everyone’s liking, but its vast feature set make it worth trying out.