One problem is what are your criteria for "better"?

As a for instance, I want a music player that handles flac and ogg files and that I can access in a terminal. Low memory usage is important to me also. I use cmus on a Mac, and I like it quite a lot.

If you're interested, I'm working on a command-line music organizer:

http://code.google.com/p/beets/

It has an MPD clone player built-in, so you can use ncmpc with it if you want. Or just keep using cmus.

There's support, albiet indirectly, for flac in iTunes via Fluke. http://blowintopieces.com/fluke/

Apple's refusal to support FLAC, in favour of their own crappy rip-off (which they refuse to licence to 3rd parties) was, for me personally, the moment they jumped the shark. I feel later developments have borne this out.

I mean you can buy music from Metallica and The Beatles in FLAC format. If Metallica and The Beatles are out ahead of you on some aspect of digital music, it's time for a rethink.

made my day. Thanks

If you only need something to play music/video files, I would suggest VLC Player; I haven't found anything better. However, if you're big into organizing your music (different playlists for different moods, etc.), you might find VLC to be lacking a bit.

One of the reasons I enjoy iTunes is that I'm not big into organizing my music and playlists-- iTunes does it for me. Will VLC move my music into an organized directory and let me play an album, or shuffle through all songs from an artist or genre without me having to create playlists?

No, it won't. That's what jazzyb was getting at I believe. VLC will play anything, but it's not a music library.

Check out Ecoute. A gorgeous UI "designed to be minimal, small and pretty so it doesn't take a lot of space on your screen. Just what you need to play your library."

http://ecouteapp.com/

Perhaps may I suggest using QuickSilver or google quick search box with iTunes? QuickSilver lets you add global keyboard shortcuts and oodles of quick access to iTunes without ever going to iTunes.

This is probably the thing I use Quicksilver for most - controlling iTunes without having to look at iTunes, ever. It's so convenient that I've held off replacing Quicksilver for one of its actively developed successors.

I feel as if Songbird has reached that stage. I guess it's personal preference thing, but I am really impressed with the recent Songbird releases (even though they have been infrequent).