Today I want to share with you the best alternative to sync your music on your iPhone or iPod touch without using iTunes. There are a lot of applications out there but after testing, I recommend using Media Monkey.

Media Monkey is the most solid application for all you serious music collectors. It allows you to manage a music library from 100 to 50,000+ tunes. But more importantly, it allows syncing your music collection with any iPhone or iPod device, including the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3G. With a single click of a button, you will sync tracks, podcasts, and related properties such as Album Art, ratings, play history…

The free version will do the job but if you want, you can purchase Media Monkey Gold that gives you other options and add-ons. I personally have the free version that syncs perfectly with my iPhone 3G

What you need:

You have to download Media Monkey first (link at the end of this post). In order to use this applicaiton to manage and sync music from your iPhone or iPod Touch, the device drivers of your Apple device have to be installed on your machine. There are 2 methods to do this:

1- Install iTunes: This is the easiest way to install the device drivers since it comes packaged in the application when you launch the installation. This sounds ironic because the whole point is not to use iTunes in the first place however, keep in mind that third-party applications require the device drivers of your Apple device installed in order to work

2- Use the “hack”: Follow the simple steps below if you don’t want to install iTunes.

• Download the itunes.exe file
• Rename the .exe file extension to .zip
• Open the .zip (zipped) file and extract AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi and QuickTime.msi
• Install those 2 files

Done! How easy was that? You will now be able to sync your music without using iTunes.

Note: Media Monkey will work on any windows platform including windows 7

Download Media Monkey here
Instructions how to sync / troubleshooting / KB here