getmusicbee.com

Support => Tips and Tricks => Topic started by: Mreve on November 27, 2019, 09:47:58 PM

Title: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Mreve on November 27, 2019, 09:47:58 PM

Disclaimer : English is not my native language. Feel free to correct me if I'm not clear.

Hi,

I lost a LOT of time tinkering with native linux music managers, trying to make them suitable for me. I should have directly tried to use Musicbee through wine. Musicbee is clearly the best music manager out there ! 8)


I'm not the only one to try this out but some posts I read on the forum aren't really updated and they encourage people to install useless wine dependencies.  


I run Archlinux but I don't think it really matters. Here is what I've done :


1) Install wine-staging and winetricks. If you're on arch, I think you know how to do this...  ;)

Code

sudo pacman -S wine-staging winetricks

Note : wine-mono package is useless (it just downloads wine-mono.msi but doesn't install it for wine) and you don't need wine-mono for Musicbee anyway.

Archlinux is easy.  ;)

For Debian-based distro, it's a little bit more annoying : https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu (https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu)



2) MS .NET 4.8 doesn't work with a 64bits wineprefix yet so you'll need to create a new 32bits wineprefix for MusicBee ! It's better to use distinct wineprefix than just one wineprefix for all your windows softwares because if you mess up with wine components, you can simply delete the wineprefix and start again.

Code

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/ winecfg

Note: If you're new to Linux, you of course need to change path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefixwith a valid location. For example, I created this wineprefix in a hidden folder in my music library:  WINEPREFIX=/home/mreve/Musique/.wine32MBee/

Note 2 : If you have a 4K screen, I suggest you to change the screen resolution to 240ppp in the tab Display.


3) Install Musicbee dependencies

Code

WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/ winetricks -q dotnet48 xmllite gdiplus 

4) Download the latest Musicbee version (take the full download) : https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?board=6.0 (https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?board=6.0)

5) Unzip and install Musicbee

Code

WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/ wine MusicBeeSetup_3_3.exe

Et voilà ! :)


You can then create an alias to easily launch Musicbee. Here the command line to do this :

Code

echo "alias Musicbee='WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/ wine path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/ /drive_c/Program\ Files/MusicBee/MusicBee.exe'" >> ~/.bashrc

Close your terminal and open a new one to use the new alias. Don't be afraid of all the errors in the terminal. It's normal when using Wine. The main thing is that Musicbee is perfectly running !

(https://i.postimg.cc/grSMw6W4/Capture-d-cran-de-2020-01-09-11-47-01.png) (https://postimg.cc/grSMw6W4)

Current issues (WINE staging 4.20 - Musicbee 3.3) :

1) Error when dragging playlists into a folder from the left panel
WORKAROUND : Arrange the playlists from the file manager (in the Musicbee library folder)

2) Crash when trying to change settings in File converters section
WORKAROUND : None but It is still possible to use the format conversion feature (Menu-->Tools-->Convert Format)

3) You say to me

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: StfN on March 17, 2020, 07:45:25 PM

Hello!

First off, I have to say, very good guide. I was coming here to post my own after finally figuring out a way to get MusicBee up and running, but found yours to be more complete.

Maybe you, or someone else who is more experienced with wine or linux, can help me with one little problem though, that I had when I installed MusicBee with my method, as well as with your guide:
So, I'm using Linux Mint 19.3, and Wine 5.0. I had to install .NET Framework 4.6.1 with winetricks, because the highest available version is 4.6.2 (which is broken), 4.6.1 works, and is also what MusicBee uses.
Anyways, everything seems to work well except that during music playback I get audio skips every one to two minutes. Usually just a very small skip, maybe a tenth of a second, sometimes a longer one. I have already searched the internet for audio playback skips in wine, but found nothing that worked for me. I have tried using pulse audio as well as alsa, have tried every possible output in MusicBee preferences, 32 bit output on/off, increased buffer, but none of it makes any difference.
Does anyone have any ideas?

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Iaith on April 10, 2020, 09:28:16 PM

I followed the steps and everything works so far (except the mentioned bugs). I am running Manjaro 19.0.2. I have the problem that MB doesn't recognize my with cable connected device, while manjaro does.  MB-remote also doesn't seem to find a connection, not sure if they are related - something about them not beeing able to look outside the box? Anyone had a similar problem, if - how did you manage to solve it?

PS:Audio blips i also sometimes encounter, though much more rarely.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: jeroni on May 10, 2020, 05:18:55 PM

It works pretty well on Arch. But it takes about a 20% of CPU (with an i7-8700K). Is it normal or am I doing something wrong?

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Durhammer on May 21, 2020, 12:47:13 AM

Quote from: StfN on March 17, 2020, 07:45:25 PM

Hello!

First off, I have to say, very good guide. I was coming here to post my own after finally figuring out a way to get MusicBee up and running, but found yours to be more complete.

Maybe you, or someone else who is more experienced with wine or linux, can help me with one little problem though, that I had when I installed MusicBee with my method, as well as with your guide:
So, I'm using Linux Mint 19.3, and Wine 5.0. I had to install .NET Framework 4.6.1 with winetricks, because the highest available version is 4.6.2 (which is broken), 4.6.1 works, and is also what MusicBee uses.
Anyways, everything seems to work well except that during music playback I get audio skips every one to two minutes. Usually just a very small skip, maybe a tenth of a second, sometimes a longer one. I have already searched the internet for audio playback skips in wine, but found nothing that worked for me. I have tried using pulse audio as well as alsa, have tried every possible output in MusicBee preferences, 32 bit output on/off, increased buffer, but none of it makes any difference.
Does anyone have any ideas?

Amen to that, regarding thanks to all that led the way on this! And thanks to the marvelous developers of Wine and Winetricks who make it possible!

I am running Linux Mint 19.3 with Cinnamon 4.4.8, Linux kernel 5.3.0-53-generic, Wine 4.0 and Winetricks 20180217. I'm sorry that Wine doesn't really support .NET and thus MusicBee in 64 bit mode, but so far it's working for me. Installed MB 3.3.7367 after installing .NET 4.6.1 (the most painful part of the whole setup) with WINEARCH=32 set.

I wasn't all THAT familiar with MusicBee except when I booted into my Windows 10 machine. I have been using Cantata 2.2.0 on Linux and at some point, found its port to Windows. It's great, but Mr. Drummond isn't developing it anymore, and there are newer things out there. Steven is still developing and maintaining MusicBee, so now I'm happy to be onboard with using it on Linux. I've got a lot to learn!

One thing I'd like to figure out is how to size the main window so I can move the player controls to the bottom. Right now, if I try that, I can't see it. Really can't see the bottom of the window, period! Might just be a Wine issue....

Anyway, thanks to all who have contributed to making this possible!

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Durhammer on May 21, 2020, 02:37:10 AM

Okay, now there's an issue. I manually set up all the radio stations I have in both Cantata on Linux and in MusicBee 3.3.7367 on Windows 10. They all work well in both environments. However, I have ONE station that won't run in MB under Wine on Linux Mint. Wonderful station, "That Station" (thatstation.net), stream URL is

https://live.wostreaming.net/direct/capitolbroad-wclyamaac-ibc1

I keep getting the dreaded "Unable to open stream (ERROR=BASS_ERROR_UNKNOWN)." Not a bit of problem on Windows 10, not a bit of problem in Cantata on Linux (or Cantata in Windows, for that matter). Originally, MB marked it as having an unknown bit rate. I tried setting it to 128k, 192k, and finally after checking MB on Windows, which showed it as 64K, to that. Same result.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Steven on May 21, 2020, 03:14:15 AM

i expect its an AAC stream and you need bass_aac.dll for that (aac decoding is included in windows)

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Durhammer on May 21, 2020, 02:16:55 PM

DUH! Oops, so sorry! I think I'd actually seen that elsewhere in the forums and stupidly thought it was something that was incorporated into the newer releases. I found the latest download link in the forums and put in in, and SHAZAM!

Thanks, Steven!

And thanks for the reminder that there's lots of solutions buried in the forums if you search 'em. I'm going to go back and review the newbie details about searching now.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Durhammer on May 21, 2020, 03:27:25 PM

Well, crud. I need to stay away from "Playing Now"! Probably too graphic intensive under Wine. Overheated my old Samsung RF711 laptop and Linux crashed. Started monitoring CPU usage with the "same" streams (not entirely the same at the same time, nature of the beast) running Cantata (MPD component mostly) and MusicBee. Linux "top" command shows MB and Wineserver still taking 24% and 11% even when paused, running Cantata (MPD logging ~3%). When MB runs, it's more like 43%. When I click the "Playing Now" tab, top shows MB using 98-103% CPU! Sheet!

My Psensor app shows the overall CPU usage (and temps) and when MB is running, the CPU% is ~13, and when Playing Now is active, it goes up to ~25%. Even when playing is paused, CPU% is around 20%. Take MB and Wine out of the picture, and Cantata+MPD running, it's stable at ~7%. Pause Cantata, it drops to 2-3%. Granted, Cantata doesn't have the same cool album art and visulalizer displays. It has an "I(nfo)" icon that shows Wikipedia (etc.) text about the track and lyrics, so just text. Might be a plugin for that, but I've never used it. Guess I can at least do without the album art -- off to find out how to turn that off...

Any other hints at how to minimize resources would be appreciated, folks!

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Durhammer on May 21, 2020, 04:31:56 PM

Okay, things are MUCH better when disabling the (sigh, unfortunately, REALLY cool) Visualizer on the Now Playing tab. Temperature and CPU% much more stable and reasonable!

Guess I can live without that cool cuteness....

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: grymas on June 10, 2020, 03:30:04 PM

Thank you for this guide.

I'm getting a weird issue, MusicBee will randomly freeze or hang, for a second or two, before resuming. The whole app is frozen for that time and I can't interact with anything. Something to note is that the music playing doesn't skip once the freezing stops, it just resumes exactly where it was.

Everything else works fine, and this freeze happens every few minutes (1,2 or 3 minutes in general).

I've tried on a 32 and 64bit prefix, i've reinstalled it on wine a few times. I was originally on the stable branch then switched to dev, same problem.

I've tried running in console to get logs or with the debug prefix, doesn't seem to be throwing errors. With the debug prefix the debug itself freezes when MusicBee freezes.

Has anyone else gotten this issue? It's frustrating because everything is working completely fine and I have no idea where this could be coming from.

On latest Kubuntu, latest wine-devel, latest MB version.

EDIT: I tried some more things, to no avail. Here's some more detail.

I have 16GB or ram, Intel i7 8700 CPU and a GTX1070 nvidia GPU, with proprietary drivers (440).

I uninstalled and reinstalled wine from scratch, switched to the staging branch. Tried both with 32 or 64 prefix.
I tried with a fresh MusicBee install with no settings touched.
I tried switching Nvidia drivers (to the open source version) just in case, no dice.
I tried disabling all player settings or switching audio output.
I tried increasing the buffer or the "entire file" option.
I tried disabling/removing any kind of visualizer.
I tried a few wine performance options related to CPU (such as threaded optimization).
I tried with different filetypes, mp3, flac, ogg.. it doesn't seem to affect it.
I went and got a different bassmix.dll file version (don't ask me why there was a mention of it on a thread somewhere) and used it, no effect.
I tried turning on event mode for WASAPI, no effect.

Here's a more precise description of the bug :
I start MusicBee, the first track plays fine (Tested this a bunch of times, can't be 100% sure though).
After playing at least 1-2 minutes of the first track, if I switch to another track (manually or not), and let if play a bit, then the bug happens.
The bug seems to be CPU related, I don't notice any rising memory or any memory change before, during or after the freeze, but I do see a CPU spike when it freezes, then the CPU usage resets on the process viewer.
The bug always seems to happen around the 1:00 to 1:30 minute mark of the track (It seems to always be around 1:10 or 1:15), and there's almost always a kind of warning sign : first there's a micro-pause that's barely noticable, then a few seconds after that the big freeze happens (musicbee stops responding for a few seconds before resuming).

Scratching my head here, would love any opinions on this.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Wander on June 12, 2020, 09:24:24 PM

Running it on Arch Linux and it's running well! A shame you can't just drag'n'drop but I'd settle for whatever workarounds I can do inside MusicBee, as the reason I use it over anything offered in the Linux ecosystem is how great it is as a playlist organiser.

Speaking of, another workaround for the drag error is to right-click and use the Add to Playlist option in the context menu. That still works until that particular drag'n'drop bug gets fixed in WINE. Only issues I have now are slight crackling in the audio and no AAC (missing bass_aac dll it seems).

Edit: AAC problems sorted. 👍

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: grymas on June 25, 2020, 03:24:00 PM

Well i'm happy to report that it all works perfectly now.

I can confirm this was NOT a musicbee issue, and probably not even a wine issue.

If anyone experiences anything similar, all that's changed since last time I tried is that a few updates went by. So it's probably a pulseaudio or ALSA problem (or some related sound library), and either a specific bug was fixed or the config of pulseaudio was changed (very likely).

I did notice before that I had rare sound issues on other music players, even native linux music players such as clementine. So yea, probably pulseaudio bad/weird config on KDE's end, or Ubuntu's end, because I didn't really touch it.

All's well that ends well :)

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: tralph3 on June 26, 2020, 07:16:43 PM

This is working amazingly well on Mint 20! Honestly it's insane. It's also really lightweight and not laggy at all. I have an i5 3210m.. so nothing out of this world. Music Bee uses about 2% CPU on Windows and it's sitting at 6-7% with this method, and the visualizer is working fine too! Thanks a lot man, this was one big issue of moving to Linux that is now fixed.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: gregsanz182 on June 26, 2020, 10:50:56 PM

I've been using MusicBee in Manjaro KDE via wine for almost 2 years, and these are some tricks to solve some bugs that I encountered every once in a while:

- To enable internet access, install lib32-gnutls library with your distribution package manager. In Arch Linux can be found as lib32-gnutls in official repos
- Some times MusicBee crashes on startup, and throws a "Font ? not found". To avoid this, I disabled MusicBee's splash screen on start up. You can find the setting in General preferences
- I dont like the way fonts are rendered when using wine, so I changed MusicBee fonts to Noto Sans (the one used by KDE as default)

By coincidence, I happened to install MusicBee using almost the same steps from this thread, the only thing a wasn't aware of was xmllite.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: mattjones on July 16, 2020, 05:39:20 AM

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/.WineBee winecfg


When inputting that command, do I keep it as "WhereYouWantYourWinePrefix" or should I change it? If so, what do I change it to? I just installed Manjaro today and I'm trying to get a decent music player working.

Secondly, are commands in the first post all that I need, or is there something missing?

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: pivAd on August 28, 2020, 04:48:42 PM

Quote from: mattjones on July 16, 2020, 05:39:20 AM

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/.WineBee winecfg


When inputting that command, do I keep it as "WhereYouWantYourWinePrefix" or should I change it? If so, what do I change it to? I just installed Manjaro today and I'm trying to get a decent music player working.

Secondly, are commands in the first post all that I need, or is there something missing?

1. No need to. I'm using Manjaro KDE, and I placed my prefix to: ~/.local/share/wineprefixes/.WineBee

I kinda changed the '.WineBee' to win32-mb though, seems cleaner to me. if you plan to change the name, don't forget to change in the other commands as well.

2. Yeah, everything works after religiously following the instructions (other than personal name changes to files)

---

On the other hand, I have a personal question of mine. Has anyone tried making .mp4 or other video files play on MusicBee through other applications, such as .vlc?

I have tried pretty much everything to try and get it working, the problem seems to be mainly on MusicBee, which always ends on 'Unable to play this file - it has an unsupported format or is corrupted'. It kinda worked on .m4v, but VLC failed to play it.

Pretty much tried regedit as suggested in WineHQ, and every other wacky stuff suggested in other forums

Apparently, somehow, it started working for me all of a sudden. Phew! More than happy with Musicbee works in Manjaro KDE, don't have any problems with it so far other than Theater Mode / Visualizer, which aren't really a concern for me, and that Right Click > Search > Locate in Windows Explorer doesn't work.

---

I really do hope MusicBee either gets open-sourced, or gets a Linux support in the future. It's a media player I can never ever replace--it's really amazing, and packed-full of features I can't seem to find anywhere else. (foobar2000's too much of a mess to personally customize the way I want it to be like in MusicBee)

vvv Apologies to the mod below. I've already read what the creator thinks in the FAQs. Just wishing for an official port. But hey, Musicbee works really great without any dealbreaking problems in Manjaro KDE, so there's that. :D

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: phred on August 28, 2020, 05:52:49 PM

Quote from: pivAd on August 28, 2020, 04:48:42 PM

I really do hope MusicBee either gets open-sourced, or gets a Linux support in the future.

Please see the FAQ for open source and Linux
https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/FAQ

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: tralph3 on September 22, 2020, 04:28:41 AM

Anyone else can't run this command:

Code

WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/.WineBee winetricks -q dotnet48 xmllite gdiplus

on Manjaro XFCE? I could get this running on Mint, but on Manjaro it gets stuck repeteadly on a lot of "fix me" lines, always repeating the same, never advances, after a while my whole system hangs (yes I created the prefix beforehand and changed the command to point to it). I also tried with dotnet46 and nothing, this shit ain't working.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: gregsanz182 on October 25, 2020, 01:08:53 AM

Quote from: tralph3 on September 22, 2020, 04:28:41 AM

Anyone else can't run this command:

Code

WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/.WineBee winetricks -q dotnet48 xmllite gdiplus

on Manjaro XFCE? I could get this running on Mint, but on Manjaro it gets stuck repeteadly on a lot of "fix me" lines, always repeating the same, never advances, after a while my whole system hangs (yes I created the prefix beforehand and changed the command to point to it). I also tried with dotnet46 and nothing, this shit ain't working.

I don't know why, but it seems the installation of dotnet48 via winetricks is broken. You can install only xmllite and gdiplus, and then download the official dotnet 4.8 from microsoft page, and proceed to install it in the prefix just like you install musicbee.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Durhammer on December 03, 2020, 04:04:20 AM

Hey folks,

I'm back (see earlier in this thread, back in May), now on Linux MX 19.3. I got MusicBee working mostly on Linux Mint but it nearly fried my machine in doing so. Maybe Mint 20 has better performance, but I'm not going to bother with that, nor am I going to try again to get MB working under Wine on MX.

Let me suggest to you to look at Cantata and not bother Steve any more about porting to Linux (though, if he did, I'd jump for it in a heartbeat!).

If you want a Linux music player that's beautiful, low resource, and does most anything you want it to, download and install the latest release (2.4.2) of Cantata. Even though the developer isn't updating/upgrading it with new features, he keeps fixing bugs (and sometimes the effect is like getting new features). It does it all for me, managing my music files, playing most any radio station I want (I have some that won't play on Guayadeque, Clementine, and others), search for, find, and manage podcasts, scrobbling, fetch artist Wiki info, images, album covers, and lyrics. Etc., etc., etc. In other words, pretty much anything MusicBee can do (and do soooo well on Windows, when I use Winders).

I've tried VLC (works great as a player only, hard to use, no user interface frills and thrills like MB and Cantata), Clementine (also not really being supported, but can't play some stations and IIRC the podcast support was limited), Guayadeque (again, can't play my favorite internet radio station, so why bother with the rest of it?), DeaDBeeF -- low resource, seemingly 'cause it doesn't have the functionality of MB and Cantata, and sooo many others that I'm tired of listing them. :-)

So stop bugging Steve to port MB to Linux (too much dependency on Microsoft proprietary stuff like .NET Framework) and get Cantata.

But yeah, if MB DID get ported, I'd be there in a heartbeat!

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: baconneggs15 on December 24, 2020, 09:36:43 PM

Quote from: Iaith on April 10, 2020, 09:28:16 PM

I followed the steps and everything works so far (except the mentioned bugs). I am running Manjaro 19.0.2. I have the problem that MB doesn't recognize my with cable connected device, while manjaro does.  MB-remote also doesn't seem to find a connection, not sure if they are related - something about them not beeing able to look outside the box? Anyone had a similar problem, if - how did you manage to solve it?

PS:Audio blips i also sometimes encounter, though much more rarely.

You ever find a solution? Same issue running Linux Mint & WINE for me.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Iaith on May 12, 2021, 04:48:17 PM

Quote from: baconneggs15 on December 24, 2020, 09:36:43 PM

Quote from: Iaith on April 10, 2020, 09:28:16 PM

I followed the steps and everything works so far (except the mentioned bugs). I am running Manjaro 19.0.2. I have the problem that MB doesn't recognize my with cable connected device, while manjaro does.  MB-remote also doesn't seem to find a connection, not sure if they are related - something about them not beeing able to look outside the box? Anyone had a similar problem, if - how did you manage to solve it?

PS:Audio blips i also sometimes encounter, though much more rarely.

You ever find a solution? Same issue running Linux Mint & WINE for me.

From what i could gather, linux with mtp devices is complicated in general and does not always work, so it's not really a music bee issue. What i did was dual boot windows and manjaro copy the linux settings to windows, boot into windows sync with my device so it is registered, then boot back into linux copy ALL the music bee setting files from music bee back to linux(careful if you are not copying  some it won't work) and then use music bee Wifi sync.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Rotom on May 16, 2021, 04:15:37 PM

Quote from: Durhammer on December 03, 2020, 04:04:20 AM

stop bugging Steve to port MB to Linux (too much dependency on Microsoft proprietary stuff like .NET Framework) and get Cantata.

But yeah, if MB DID get ported, I'd be there in a heartbeat!

Don't think people here are nagging Steve about porting MusicBee to Linux. It's probably a better idea to nag the WINE devs and provide debug info if you're going to nag anyone.

For native Linux music players, though, I'm going to suggest gmusicbrowser - especially those that are handling large music libraries as most MusicBee users are likely doing. It's old, but it does most of what MusicBee does in my experience (outside of maybe things like MTP device and radio support but I don't use either) and it does it pretty fast. It even does weighted shuffle too, and you can customise the algorithm based on your own criteria. If more people used it and it got the attention it needed, there would be more incentive to keep it updated. For the record, I looked for a music player that supported ID3v2.4 (with multi-value tags) and a rating system similar to MusicBee's (a 1-10 or 0.5 - 5 rating system, supporting half stars), and gmusicbrowser handles both scenarios really well. Other players... not so much. Some have issues with Opus gain, some have an incompatible/more awkward rating system, some have issues with ID3v2.4 tags, you get the idea.

Anyhow... I still need MusicBee for tagging (the tag hierarchy feature is so god damn useful, especially as a guy invested in genres, and it's something I want other players to have tbh), but sometimes I wanna just play something in there. For last.fm and other Internet-related things, install lib32-gnutls.

For users who use PipeWire as a PulseAudio replacement:
If you use PipeWire as a PulseAudio replacement, be sure to install the 32-bit libraries for it otherwise WINE will try to use the sound card exclusively through ALSA. On Arch Linux, lib32-pipewire is the package you want. Once that is installed and it thinks it's running under PulseAudio, you're good to go!

For users who want Discord Rich Presence:
If you want to use DiscordBee, be sure to download and run wine-discord-ipc-bridge (https://github.com/0e4ef622/wine-discord-ipc-bridge) on the prefix MusicBee is installed in first, then run MusicBee. It basically links the two pipes so Windows apps running under WINE will show Rich Presence on Linux versions of Discord, and I can confirm that DiscordBee just works with it (running 3.4.7805). Maybe someone could make a similar thing for MPRIS?

For KDE users:
Also, if you use KDE Plasma with MusicBee on a standalone window, you may run into the issue with the MusicBee window flickering when seeking. This is likely due to the tooltip taking the focus away from the main window (X.Org or KDE treats the tooltip as its own window). Giving MusicBee its own virtual desktop is a workaround but can be awkward to use. What appears to have fixed it for me is setting focus protection to high on MusicBee in KDE's Window Rules setting. The tooltip may go a bit weird but that's nothing to do with the fix I did - I think that's WINE being WINE.

Here are the settings I used:
Window class: musicbee.exe (match whole class not required)
Window types: Normal Window only should work - I don't think WINE discriminates "normal windows" in Windows and tooltips
Focus protection: Force/High

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: LiamsNotABot on December 19, 2021, 05:09:14 PM

This works perfecty on arch, other than one small issue i have, the skin background fails to load at all, so does a custom background, instead musicbee defaults to a solid grey/white. Anyone here by any chance have a solution?

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Rotom on March 06, 2022, 10:25:06 PM

Anyone managed to get CJK fonts working with this? I can't seem to get it working at all, even when I install all fonts with Winetricks.

Title: Linux noob failing at installing with Wine (error saying .NET 4.6.1 needed)
Post by: Deerhound on March 15, 2022, 08:02:43 PM

Hello all and thanks for having me here, and thanks to the developer for the fantastic program that is MusicBee and for making it freely available.

I have been using Windows 8 on my now rather old laptop for several years. I have recently wanted to try Linux and I chose Linux Mint (20.3), which I have set up to dual boot with Windows. Maybe I'm being foolish and getting too out of my depth but I wanted to give it a good try and push through the steep learning curve as best as possible.

Unfortunately, I have found nothing that comes even close to MusicBee available for Linux. The closest I might have found was Rhythmbox with Coverart Browser, but I have had problems trying to install Coverart Browser (and have found that others have had the same issue) and I really want to browse by covers (it just makes it much easier for me). Anyway, Rhythmbox is of course outside the remit of this forum so I won't go into that here. What I'm hoping for is some help installing MusicBee using Wine.

What I have done (with many mistakes and starting again) so far is:
1. Installed Wine (5.0.3).
2. Set up a 32 bit Wine prefix.
3. Installed Winetricks.
4. Installed .NET 4.6.1 (I have tried other, higher versions too) in the 32 bit Wine prefix.
5. Run the MusicBee exe file (current version, have tried both types) in the same Wine prefix.

I am still getting the error that .NET 4.6.1 or higher needs to be installed.

I've also tried installing through Play On Linux.

Have I done something wrong? I've looked repeatedly through more than one past thread on here about installing MusicBee in Linux (but may have missed something) and have tried doing things in different ways (for example following the different instructions for installing .NET, as detailed in the WineHQ wiki). .NET appears to be installed, it's like MusicBee just isn't finding it?

Although I'm asking for help/advice, I'm also nervous of trying things because I'm kind of feeling around in the dark with Linux, but it would be good to know whether there are any other possibilities. Or should I just accept that this isn't going to work for me?

Thanks for any help/advice.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Rotom on April 03, 2022, 01:10:22 PM

Quote from: Deerhound on March 15, 2022, 08:02:43 PM

Hello all and thanks for having me here, and thanks to the developer for the fantastic program that is MusicBee and for making it freely available.

[...]

What I have done (with many mistakes and starting again) so far is:
1. Installed Wine (5.0.3).
2. Set up a 32 bit Wine prefix.
3. Installed Winetricks.
4. Installed .NET 4.6.1 (I have tried other, higher versions too) in the 32 bit Wine prefix.
5. Run the MusicBee exe file (current version, have tried both types) in the same Wine prefix.

I am still getting the error that .NET 4.6.1 or higher needs to be installed.

Have you tried installing a staging version of WINE? For Ubuntu (which Linux Mint is based on), you should look at WineHQ (https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu).

The staging version includes patches that may fix your problems. It should be noted though that WINE 7.3 was notorious for giving MusicBee problems, someone here suggested Arch users use Valve's version of WINE until 7.4 fixed it. EDIT: Try installing .NET without Winetricks. It sometimes just... doesn't work. The .NET installers work fine on 7.5, but Winetricks has issues with it. I have .NET 4.8 in my prefix.

If you are willing to look for a Linux-native music player, gmusicbrowser (https://gmusicbrowser.org) could use some support. IMO it's the closest to MusicBee as an organiser/player.

Also, I know of a solution to the CJK font problem but I don't know how to go about it. Basically, the custom font needs to have the relevant language script for the language you need. I've tried to do this with Fontforge but it crashes whenever I try to import CJK symbols into a font. Really, though, it's an issue with WINE's implementation as well as Windows' way of dealing with fonts, nothing to do with MusicBee itself.

EDIT 2022-04-09: Want to use this space to answer something someone on the MusicBee forums asked in another thread: why, when Linux is considered the programmer's distro, is there no proper MusicBee equivalent on Linux? The answer to that is, Linux has been shedding that reputation for some time. If there was a time when that reputation had shifted, it'd probably be when Valve unveiled Steam Play and Proton, which was allowing Windows games on Linux to run just as good as, if not better than on Windows natively. And with Windows updates constantly getting worse and more people seeking alternatives, more people with little to no programming background will inevitably choose Linux... or Mac, which will still result in users wishing for MB on non-Windows platforms. Things like the Steam Deck and Windows 11's questionable to downright stupid will only bring more people to the alternatives.

Really, Steven doesn't need to do much, but if you (the user) want MusicBee to do well on Linux, I'd suggest sending some bug reports to WINE (https://bugs.winehq.org).

EDIT 2022-05-19: If Steven or anyone is reading this, would adding a keyboard shortcut for moving playlist items up/down (in list view, at least?) and tabs left/right be viable? It would help work around the dragging problems and maybe it'd be something the keyboard nerd types on the Windows side would appreciate, too.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: danejur on June 04, 2022, 02:13:35 AM

I finally found how to get the File Converters section to work in settings! Using winetricks, select:

Quote

Install a Windows DLL or component

and then

Quote

wmp11 - Windows Media Player 11

. I'm not sure if it matters, but I also have my wine prefix set to spoof Windows 7.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Rotom on June 04, 2022, 12:32:21 PM

Quote from: danejur on June 04, 2022, 02:13:35 AM

I finally found how to get the File Converters section to work in settings! Using winetricks, select:

Quote

Install a Windows DLL or component

and then

Quote

wmp11 - Windows Media Player 11

. I'm not sure if it matters, but I also have my wine prefix set to spoof Windows 7.

Nice!

Windows 7 seems to be the best OS to spoof for MusicBee on WINE. I've noticed a lot of lag when the prefix is set to Windows 10.

As for CJK fonts, I've raised the issue on WineHQ, however a workaround is to use WenQuanYi Micro Hei. It supports a lot of non-Latin symbols, including East Asian languages. IF you use other languages, it might not work though, hence me raising the issue on WineHQ.

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: jojo2357 on July 09, 2022, 05:35:38 AM

I am having trouble installing dotnet, and even after I force wine to do so,  I get this sort of error:

Code

00d4:err:explorer:make_explorer_window Failed to create PIDL for L"Z:\\path\\to\\whereYouWantYourWineprefix\\". 

(redacted, of course)

I am using pop-os 21.10 and wine 7.12, which I have already used to run Fusion360.

Heres what I have tried:
1. Create 32 bit wineprefix
   1.1 Leave all settings the same in the GUI that I get, this means a windows 7 spoof
2. Run the winetricks install command as shown above
   2.1 This fails, saying that dotnet48 has been broken since wine 5.18.
   2.2 Force the install anyway.
      2.2.1 It mentioned mono not being installed, but no effect was noticed after uninstalling mono
   2.3 Install works
3. Run the run command as provided and see the error.

I am not a WINE expert, but here are some links that I found that may be of use:
https://wiki.winehq.org/Mono
https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49897
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=2586

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: jojo2357 on July 23, 2022, 02:38:37 AM

Eureka! I found it! The problem for me was actually in launching musicbee, i instead ran

Code

WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/ wine MusicBee.exe

and that seems to have worked

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: HaploVoss on September 12, 2022, 05:45:42 AM

I don't know if this will help anyone, but I just tried using Steam "Add a Non Steam Game" option.
Browsed to executable and selected it.
Then chose properties of that item in the list, chose Compatibility and chose Proton (Specifically, I have Proton GE 7.20 that I've installed for other games I chose).
I launched it, ran through setup without issue.
The first launch, it is in an annoying, bordered window so you can't see much of the title-area.
- So, I clicked on the nib of the menu I could see, and changed skins to my favorite dark skin. It automatically restarts. Bang, borderless window as it should be.
- I notice there are some skins and the default skins that the border still appears around, but... I'm sure there are some config switches that could be used.
I've only been playing around with it for a few hours, but my radio stations work, all my files are fine (on "Z" drive) - I LOVE this.
NOTE: Once you've used it and closed it - you need to redo your shortcut so it doesn't keep trying to re-run the setup file:
Open your file manager
- Search your steam folder for 'musicbee'
- Locate the MusicBee.exe in the steam pfx directory similar to this:
--> "/home/username/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/compatdata/2464933901/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Desktop/MusicBee/MusicBee.exe"
- copy that location, then paste it into the 'TARGET' field of the steam properties, and then the same location (minus the filename itself) in the 'START IN' field.

Then, if you want to get creative / cure your OCD like I do... grab an icon and an image from somewhere, and dress up your launcher icon and backdrop :) lol

So - just an option throwing it out there just in case.

Thank you again to MusicBee for my favorite player ever! :)

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: rioUSteC on April 04, 2023, 07:08:39 AM

Everything is working fine, If I follow this guide, except for syncing to a virtual device. I have created a virtual device on Z:/ on the same mountpoint as the Library is. Setup itself was no issue. But when I try to sync, i get the message, that the device is not available. Any idea?

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: MetalGeek on June 27, 2023, 09:54:07 PM

Latest Musicbee is up and running.  I took a slightly different route. I haevn't touched wine in years so I cannot confirm if any of these steps are not needed or deterimental. Any feedback is appreciated.  I'm running the latest Pop_OS.

Verify i386 support
 Verify 64-bit architecture. The following command should respond with "amd64".

Code

$ dpkg --print-architecture

See if 32-bit architecture is installed. The following command should respond with "i386".

Code

$ dpkg --print-foreign-architectures

If "i386" is not displayed, execute the following.

Code

$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Recheck with.

Code

$ dpkg --print-foreign-architectures

Install wine staging
Install WINE on Ubunto (https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu)

Install .NET

Create prefix for MusicBee and .NET

Code

WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/ wineboot –init 

Install .NET 4.0 and corefonts

Code

WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/ winetricks --force dotnet40 corefonts

Install xmllite and gdiplus

Code

WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/ winetricks –q xmllite gdiplus

 
set wine to win7 compatability

Code

WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/ winetricks win7 

Install .NET 4.8

Code

WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/  wine $HOME/Downloads/ndp48-x86-x64-allos-enu.exe /q 

Install Music Bee

Code

WINEPREFIX=path/to/whereYouWantYourWineprefix/  wine $HOME/Downloads/MusicBeeSetup_3_5.exe 

I did not remove the Win7 compatability setting after installing .NET 4.8.  Not sure if this matters or not.  I let the Installer drop a shortcut on my desktop which works without issue.  Running on an ultrawide 3440x1440 display without making any wine config changes and cpu isage is <1% listening to flac files.

Sources:
Install Wine on Pop_OS (https://wine.htmlvalidator.com/install-wine-on-pop_os-20.04.html)
Install wine on Ubunto (https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu)
Install .NET Framework (https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=38203)

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: jojo2357 on June 29, 2023, 08:49:55 PM

I got Discord Rich Presence for musicbee running on Linux!

MB Version: 3.5.8447
System info: Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS, 64 bit.

I used a plugin (https://github.com/jojo2357/MDRP-MusicBee-Bridge) I wrote a while ago which simply reports over localhost the media being played, and so all I had to do was write a simple script to read, respond, and report to discord that info.

If i get some requests Ill post a how-to (get DRP, not install MB cuz I dont remember much anymore)

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Bifidusse on October 30, 2023, 11:36:33 AM

Quote from: MetalGeek on June 27, 2023, 09:54:07 PM

Latest Musicbee is up and running.  I took a slightly different route. I haevn't touched wine in years so I cannot confirm if any of these steps are not needed or deterimental. Any feedback is appreciated.  I'm running the latest Pop_OS.

(...)

Awesome ! Thank you !

I tried several solutions posted here to run MB on Linux, this one is the first I managed to get working. I tested it running a VM (Mint 21.1 on Windows).

Seems to work flawlessy. Plays APE, FLAC, MPC, categories are still defined, special characters are displayed correctly (û, ç etc), cover art are there...

The only issue so far is rating. Flac ratings are displayed as they should, but MPC and APE (APE v2 tag) are wrong if they contain a half-star. So 4,5 becomes 2,5 and 3,5 becomes 2...
No issue with half-star ratings with flac files.

It's quite strange, I mean it's the same program, even if run with an emulator like Wine. Maybe I need to check MB configuration.

Last issue before I install Mint on my laptop instead of Windows :)

Title: Re: [GUIDE] How to use Musicbee on Linux (Archlinux/Debian based distro)
Post by: Chrishd on January 19, 2024, 02:56:15 PM

Thank you MetalGeek

It works for me, the only problem is that my audio is totally distorted.
Any suggestions?
TY

Christian