Remote Control for MediaMonkey 5 [READ FIRST POST]

[Dancer]

Yes it works. You can manage volume, pause, next/back, mute and stop.

[hazzasb]

I have also been searching for a remote. I have not found anything as good as MonkeyMote, as you cannot start an album playing on your desktop (for example) and move through on your phone via the remote app.
Most DLNA apps (I'm talking apple app store here) will access and play the songs on MediaMonkey on your phone (as long as the ports stuff is correctly set up); however, not many will allow you to control the songs on the desktop (which may be connected to speakers or, in my case, wired to the rest of the house) and some which do (such as iMediaShare) have such poor functionality (e.g. only plays single songs not an album) it's not worth bothering.
The best app for iphone I found was 8Player pro; can access your library (a lot quicker than MonkeyMote, it must be said) and can play full albums, artists, playlists etc, with shuffle and repeat functions. The only limitation seems to be that you can't start on the desktop and then control by the app. Let's hope an update to MonkeyMote (or a better option) is forthcoming. In the meantime, this is the best I've found.

[TikTok69]

For what its worth, remote control of Win MediaMonkey via polished in-house android app or polished Android aware web server running on the desktop app is something I would also be happy to pay Pro for.

MMRemote etc were good as a stop-gap for covering remote control and MMremote is a great achievement for a single developer but something more polished and developed in-house would likely lead to a much better experience and should surely be the way forward in the long term.

[raiche_g]

I recently installed the new version 5 of Media Monkey and now I cannot use MonkeyMote on my ios mobile devices. More precisely, the new version of Media Monkey do not have a general plug-ins option and so I did not find a way so that the gen_monkeymote.dll can be recognized by Media Monkey.

Is there different ways to deal with MonkeyMote? Or is it better to switch to another manner to get the content of my library?

Thank's in advance!

[drakinite]

So far we've had contact with the developer for MMremote, and hopefully we can assist them with getting support for MM5 in the near future. We haven't been in contact with the dev for MonkeyMote yet, but I'll do my best to find their contact info & get in touch.

[hintergrundrauschen]

MMremote

One of my most used mobile phone apps until mm5 was released. Have been in contact, too, and I am still hoping.
Go Erlend!

[ishmaelen]

I have been a MM-fan since ages and lifetime gold subscriber.

MM4 was the bomb for me personally, but that was honestly mostly due to the 3PP pieces, Discos taggers and MMRemote.

I had MM4 running on a small fanless mini-PC, performing well using MMRemote to play music on my stereo.

My question is now, why I should want to use MM4/5 over any of the gazillion other applications?

For tagging there are better options for using MusicBrainz, e.g. their own free programs (AudioRanger, Picard, Beets etc.) and other stuff like OneTagger, Kid3, Metadatic etc. Free and performs as well or better (even Roon).

For playing music (with remote control applications) e.g. Roon, Mopidy, JRiver, MusicBee, Audacious etc.

I assume most people are looking towards Roon based on the plain fact it's supported by most hi-fi streaming equipment right out of the box. I am testing their free 14-day trial now and so far quite happy with it. The metadata lookup is done using numerous sources, but also with internal testing to validate and cross-ref etc. Seems to work very well when I scanned a 100k+ library with obscure stuff..

With a continuous lag delivering the most important features for users who initially "went MM" due to it's tagging features/control and the ability to use it as part of your hi-fi setup I fear MM will be left further and further behind.

It seems the whole move from MM4 to MM5 has killed off most of the interest in this once "best-in-class" piece of software, probably due to the extremely long development process and lack of features in a timely matter to replace what was present in a previous version.

If you are still waiting for MM5 remote control, I'd advise that you checkout Roon and/or a free Mopidy w/ snapcast while waiting for something that will most likely not happen

[drakinite]

My question is now, why I should want to use MM4/5 over any of the gazillion other applications?

With a continuous lag delivering the most important features for users who initially "went MM" due to it's tagging features/control and the ability to use it as part of your hi-fi setup I fear MM will be left further and further behind.

It seems the whole move from MM4 to MM5 has killed off most of the interest in this once "best-in-class" piece of software, probably due to the extremely long development process and lack of features in a timely matter to replace what was present in a previous version.

I'm obviously biased, but the reason I believe MM5 is still very much viable over the other alternatives is the far greater potential.

You're right that the development process has been extremely long, and the work has not stopped. The vast majority of work was put into rebuilding the whole framework into something that is objectively better. While it's caused an enormous amount of frustration that backwards compatibility was broken, I do believe the decision was the right one and the fruits are already beginning to ripen. MMW 5.0.0 was released less than one year ago, and there are already 27 addons on the site for MM5. That's a sizeable fraction compared to the 151 MM3/4 addons on the site, after a tiny fraction of the time.
My point is that it's well understood that the strength of MediaMonkey is in its addons, and the new framework is more flexible, more capable, and easier for developers to get into. Every facet of the interface can be modified or extended, and it's only a matter of when, not if, developers will take advantage of that fact. Heck, if there are specific features that you're missing and you know how to code, you could give it a shot yourself.
Many of the advanced tagging tools were made between 2010 and 2014, and their developers have moved on to other things, so I will be personally porting the most highly requested ones to MM5. I'm in college, though, so I'm only doing it in my spare time (so it may take a while, but they will come eventually).

As for MMRemote: We're in contact with the developers of both MMRemote and MonkeyMote. The latter is waiting on us for a few fixes, and I will try and touch base with the former to see how it is going. I can't speak for them, but hopefully we can have both working in the near future.

Now, both of these points are essentially promises for improvements in the future. But the whole team is still hard at work and it's continuing to get better - take a look at the changelog. It might not be very visible at the moment, but there's a lot of momentum and I can only see MM5 succeeding.

And lastly: Price. I couldn't say one way or the other how good Roon is, but the one thing that is immediately noticeable is the price. We don't charge a monthly fee for a piece of software that runs on your own computer, but Roon does. Whether it's worth the much higher price is for you to decide. The truth of the matter is that MediaMonkey and Roon are not even competitors -- With the cost for lifetime licenses varying by a factor of ten, the target audiences couldn't be more different. The best we can do is make MediaMonkey the best it can be, and support our dedicated community of users and addon makers; and I think we're still on that track.

[Andre_H]

The best we can do is make MediaMonkey the best it can be, and support our dedicated community of users and addon makers; and I think we're still on that track.

There will always be people who are dissatisfied with certain things (and maybe they subjectively right just because of personal preferences) while giving less weight to things that work well objectively / for many other users.

Let them go. There are enough programs on the market so that everyone can find the perfect tool for them and be happy with it. There will never be a solution that satisfies absolutely everyone equally.

This is also absolutly not meant as an insult to those people: If you don't like (the way) MMW (goes), you can look for other solutions. Enjoy those alternatives, and let the MMW people enjoy their stuff.

[railfan-eric]

Just wanted to say I also want a remote app for Media Monkey. I like how MusicBee has a app that i can control the desktop program from laying on the couch. I had to switch to Media Monkey because MusicBee and it's apps haven't been updated to work with Android 12.

[HelenaMaria]

I'm looking for a way to control MM5 from a web interface or from my Macbook over the network. I am having some difficulties.

[allwi]

... As for MMRemote: We're in contact with the developers of both MMRemote and MonkeyMote. The latter is waiting on us for a few fixes, and I will try and touch base with the former to see how it is going. I can't speak for them, but hopefully we can have both working in the near future.

Great! Many thanks. MMRemote, or better the lack of it, was preventing me for a while to make the switch to MM5.

[quinn70]

Just have to chime in here.

For my "Sit Back" listening on my main system I use KODI and Kodi Music remote on an IPAD.

In MM4 I really enjoyed MMRemote for android, and monkeymote for iOS.
There were a few issues - especially if I had Last.FM scrobbler DJ auto filling the playlist.
Then MediaMonkey for Android came along - and the UPnP is actually pretty good.
Still use this for my Android phone.

Then I found Kodi Music Remote for iOS - use it on the IPAD.
While Kodi is NOT a great media manager, combined with Kodi Music Remote and an IPAD?
It's the closest thing to having an intuitive interface to my music collection that is super fast due to local cache.

How good is it?
I picked up a 2022 ipad air primarily to use it for Kodi.
Yes there are limitations due to Kodi - such as playlist generation, and saving.
Also the way KODI handles metadata is not as complete as MM.

Don't know anything about ROON - nor am I interested in considering a subscription.

I have a lifetime MediaMonkey license - it has been great and is presented in a way that is intuitive for my collection.

Are there issues? Sure - I have a bunch of ideas. Would be great to be able to run convolvers internally.
I currently use mediamonkey WASAPI output at a fixed 176KHz using an external DAC routed through rephase and equaliser APO.

But if you want a remote - I would HIGHLY recommend looking into Kodi Music Remote as one that just gets an interface right. Too bad it's only for the iOS crowd.

Any time I've gone to audiofool shows - I always ask to see their media manager interface if they aren't spinning some stoopid flattened hockey puck with grooves.
I've yet to find any that passes the view album artist tag (for compilations), location, add to playlist now, next, end, and so much more. Displaying metadata such as number of channels, bitrate, codec, album artist, original year, file location - are all important to me.

[turkamtor]

... As for MMRemote: We're in contact with the developers of both MMRemote and MonkeyMote. The latter is waiting on us for a few fixes, and I will try and touch base with the former to see how it is going. I can't speak for them, but hopefully we can have both working in the near future.

Great! Many thanks. MMRemote, or better the lack of it, was preventing me for a while to make the switch to MM5.

For a while? Have you found a way to remote control MM5 yet?

AFAIK MMRemote has not been updated since 2016 and we're all waiting for sand to become water. The first discussions on this topic was several years ago when MM5 was still far away and streaming was away.

I've seen several statements about contact with 3PP developers to update their apps etc. but so far I have not seen anything from any of them. Last update to MediaMote was August 2021.

PS! I recently tested another nice variant to compete with the Kodi Remote that I saw mentioned here, Volumio. Quite nice, awesome and stable app but mostly usable to play stuff and not to sort tags. Recommended! Also it's open source and has a ton of useful plugins to attach to various services like YT etc. etc. as well.

[ishmaelen]

Spend time on bug tracking the workaround (RDP) since MM does not offer remote control through the Android app
See the Ventis Media brug tracker (mantis) ID=18613.