I, upon dealing with the myriad frustrations of iTunes, pondered the difficulty of a simple, drop-anywhere jukebox. I just wanted something to scan a directory, organize the files in a meaningful way, and let me choose which one to play (given that I have the ability to decode them). So, I set about throwing together some code.

SWDD: SMJ is my 'simple media jukebox'. To use it, simply execute it on your favorite platform (Linux and Mac OS X supported, though Windows is too, if you give it the right media player binary). It then asks for a media player to use (defaults to mplayer), and a directory in which to search for media files.

Here's where it gets brilliant: If you're using a modern Linux distribution, or OS X, you can alternatively enter 'locate' for the location, and it will query the system indexing service for a list of media files. Then, simply give it a song you wish to play, and voi-la!

Of course, it only bases its limited information on file name, file extension, and location; if you were to give it a mount point of an iPod, for example, it wouldn't be quite so useful. It also does not parse metadata, and the way it handles the printing of matching songs is unordered (because of the way we retrieve them from the disk), but all-in-all, it's a Simple Media Jukebox. Give it a whirl!