a good iTunes alternative

[eloisedallas]

So I recently got a mac air with very little memory, and I keep all my music on an external drive. I don't have much of a problem with iTunes - a little bulky, but I'm a simple gal with simple needs, I don't know much about computers at all.
Although I've set the location of my music library to my hard drive, iTunes forgets every time I unplug it, and takes about 15-30 minutes to process all my music again every time I want to play something. Is there a way to fix this problem?
If not, what other music application can I use? Something similar to iTunes - but fewer attempts to sell me things.
Songbird is too much and Clementine only plays songs from playlists, which I would rather not have to do. Those are the only two I've tried. Any suggestions?

 

[ChrisA]

So you've gone into iTune preferences->Advanced to told iTune where the library lives, on the external drive. And you unmount the drive when you disconnect it, you don't simply unplug it. If you've done this iTunes should find the library just fine.

As for another music player. Just about any media player will play a file that is on your Mac. VLC (Google will find it) or just Apple's Quick Time. But they will not manage your IOS devices