As a designer/developer, I constantly have many applications opened at the same time, like Photoshop, Safari or/and Firefox, Coda, iTunes, Mail etc, and when nearly all memory are consumed, my machine performs slower. At this point of time I will have to close iTunes and other applications. iTunes is one of those apps that I will close first as it is very memory consuming, by closing it it means I don’t have music playing in the background (which I absolutely hate!).

Wouldn’t it be great if you can still have your iTunes music playing without having iTunes opened?

Here’s when Everplay comes in!

Everplay

Everplay is a new lightweight standalone music player that plays your iTunes library without having to open iTunes to keep the music playing. From the makers of Coverstream, Snarb – Everplay shares almost the same UI with some slight color differences. The difference between Coverstream and Eveplay is that Coverstream is iTunes controller, it does need iTunes to be opened for it to be useful.

User Interface

Everplay spots a gorgeous Coverflow style UI, lets you browse albums, launch in fullscreen, use keyboard shortcuts for various music controls, integrates with last.fm and Apple Remote!

Browse Albums & Playlists Too

Not only can you browse albums using the default Coverflow UI, quickly select a playlist to play by clicking the button at the top right.

Queue Songs

Don’t like the default order in which your music is playing? Queue songs instead! Just navigate to any albums, right click on any song and select “Queue Song”. Your songs will be added to a list accessible via the menu bar where you can even drag to arrange the list!

Keyboard Shortcuts

For keyboard shortcuts lovers, there is a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts for you to customize, eg. play/pause, stop, next/previous, find music, increase/decrease volume etc. Very handy.

Last.fm

Not sure how many of you are last.fm users, but if you are you’ll love the ease of scrobbling on last.fm.

Conclusion

Overall, the unique selling point of Everplay is that it plays iTunes music independent of iTunes. This is a huge plus for people who need the system memory for other more useful things.

Pricing

Everplay cost $19.95, you’ll get free updates for life. If you previously purchased Coverstream, you’re entitled to a 50% discount of $9.95 ($10 savings).

I’m still evaluating the app and comparing this with Ecoute, another awesome standalone iTunes music player too. You can read about Ecoute on Macstories.

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iTunes is a great software to manage and listen to our music, but the experience can be further improved by using additional plugins or apps. These plugins / apps basically extends the functionality of iTunes, enhances iTunes, or both, to satisfy some of the needs that iTunes cannot provide.

Here are 12 plugins / apps that you will find useful when used with iTunes.

Cover Stream

[$20 | Website]

Cover Stream puts coverflow into a HUD window that you can summon with a pre-defined hot key. You can browse your music library and control music easily in that window without having to use iTunes to do that. Cover Stream also integrates with Last.fm flawlessly, scrobbing your music while you listen to them.

CoverSutra

[$20 | Website]

CoverSutra is one of the most mature and popular app to control your iTunes music without switching to iTunes. The app features one of the best user inteface design, using the app is a real pleasure. With CoverSutra, you can search music, see the currently played song’s  album art on your desktop. Integration with Last.fm is also one of the feature.

GimmeSomeTune

[Free | Website]

Truly one of the most essential app to compliment your iTunes. GimmeSomeTune fetches missing coverarts and lyrics in the background while you listen to your music. I have tried many coverart and lyrics fetching apps and I must say this is one that really gets both the job done well. The best part is, it’s free.

Bowtie

[Free | Website]

Designed by Laurent Baumann, also responsible for Fontcase, Bowtie is a beautifully designed free iTunes controller that allows you control your iTunes music unobstrusively. You can also put the now playing song’s coverart on your desktop. Bowtie also features downloadable themes for the CD Cover that houses the coverart which you can start by downloading the themes here.

Tangerine

[$24.95 | Website]

Designed by Potion Factory, also behind The Hit List, Tangerine analyses the tempo of your music and lets you easily create playlists of music grouped by it’s tempo among many other options. Great app if you hate the idea of manually choosing songs for your next workout etc.

Awaken

[$15 | Website]

Awaken lets you play music when you’re sleeping, sleeps your Mac utilizing a sleep timer, and wakes you and your Mac up with your favourite music. You can also use Awaken to alert you about anything else other than waking you up by using the egg timer. Control the alarm and sleep timer with your Apple Remote from across the room while running Awaken in fullscreen mode.

CoverScout

[$40 | Website]

CoverScout scours the internet for coverarts and adds it to your albums. The neat part is that you can edit your coverarts by rotating, cropping, scaling, straightening and even adjusting the color levels of the image.

SongGenie

[$33 | Website]

SongGenie aids you in filling in missing meta datas of your tracks like descriptions, artist names, track names, album names etc, making your iTunes library much more useful and tidy. Written by the same developers from CoverScout, SongGenie integrates with CoverScout by assigning the tasks of adding album arts to your tracks to CoverScout with just one click.

TuneUp

[$29.95 or $19.95 yearly | Website]

UPDATE (Discount for SUBERAPPS readers)

TuneUp is offering a 15% discount promo code for SUBERAPPS readers, just enter SUBERAPPS during checkout, valid till 15 April 09.

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TuneUp cleans your tracks by fixing your mislabeled music and missing coverarts. The app adds a new sidebar to iTunes with all the tools you need to use to clean up your music. The now playing tab displays information about the track and even lets you play the music video of the track right in the sidebar (video fetched from YouTube). TuneUp was really buggy when it first launches late last year due to the overwhelming response but I guess they should have cleared out the kinks by now. Read more about TuneUp in a review written in December last year.

YouControl

[Free | Website]

You Control basically lets you control your iTunes music library via your menubar without switching to iTunes.

DockArt

[Free | Website]

DockArt does a simple but extremely useful job by replacing the default iTunes icon in your dock with the currently playing music’s coverart. When you stop your music, your iTunes icon reverts back to the original one.

AutoRate

[Free | Website]

AutoRate automatically rates your tracks based on how often the track is played and how often each track is skipped. Might not be the most accurate, but a good start if you are not really active in rating your music.

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Once again, if you have any other suggestions for a good iTunes app / plugin, please feel free to comment!

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Here’s the truth, we all love bundles! Especially when most great apps are wrapped into one.

Mac Bundle Box is currently bundling 13 apps for $49, originally cost $333.82. They’re also donating 5% of the revenue to Charity: Water.

I might not have used most apps before, but I can vouch for Coverstream (iTunes controller) and Stuf (Clipboard Manager). Smokingapples vouched for Espionage. Well, you decide. Here are the apps:

Relationship

[Link]

Very easy to use customer relationship management application for your home-based or small business.

Code Collector Pro

[Link]

Code snippets organization and sharing application.

Drawit

[Link]

Vector editing application with support for bitmap-like image filters. Vector editing as well as the filters are completely non-destructive which means that a vector layer can still be edited even after a stack of filters has been applied.

Espionage

[Link]

Secure folder protection for Mac. Unobtrusive, intuitive, and simple to use. Espionage is designed to integrate with Apple’s Finder seamlessly, so that you can protect only the data that you want protected, and without having to resort to any special “vaults”.

Coverstream

[Link]

Coverflow based iTunes controller. Summon the HUD Coverflow with a hotkey and you’ll be able to browse or search your music collection.

DEVONnote

[Link]

DEVONnote keeps all of your notes safe in one place and helps you organize them in a way that’s meaningful to you, using built-in artificial intelligence (AI).

QuickScale

[Link]

Quickscale is designed to let you scale a large amount of pictures to a desired size and format.

Project Calculator

[Link]

Project Calculator is a tool that helps you tracking the time you work on your projects. You can manage several projects at the same time. Whenever you worked on a project, you create an entry which contains information on when you worked, how long you worked and what you did.

Transcriva 2

[Link]

Transcriva can help you transcribe your meeting minutes, interviews, lectures, home movies, dictation, speeches, or your favorite TV show.

Magnet

[Link]

Magnet is the easiest way to customize your movies and share them with your friends. With advanced motion tracking, video compositions and special effects can be defined over the sequence, that evolves depending on the content of the movie. Using Magnet, you are able attach a picture or animation to a movie (think of tatoo), to define a blur zone that will follow the eyes of a person, or even to emit particles from moving objects.

Involver

[Link]

Simple invoicing application.

Stuf

[Link]

Excellent clipboard manager. Sleek and easy to use, small footprint. I’m using this currently. :)

BlogAssist

[Link]

BlogAssist is a handy tool to help weblog and website editing by making HTML markup easier.

Enjoy! :)

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