Messages

1

Questions / Re: Not referencing some tracks from a specific album (worked before)

« on: July 17, 2025, 05:06:57 PM »

When you say corrupted database file? You think that albums that I added recently may cause the problem as they are corrupt?

No, not the music tracks themselves.
MusicBee stores most of the library information in a database file, MusicBeeLibrary.mbl, which can be found in your 'Library' folder. This will keep information on all the tracks in your library, which category each is in and their location on your drive(s). It stores data such as Date Added, Play Count, Last Played Date ++++.
It is this file I am suggesting may be corrupted. Please note this is just an idea brought on by the strange behaviour you are seeing and I am certainly uncertain.

MusicBee does keep a backup of this file - MusicBeeLibrary.bak which you could try: Rename MusicBeeLibrary.mbl to something like MusicBeeLibrary.mbl.OLD and then rename MusicBeeLibrary.bak to MusicBeeLibrary.mbl (you can always reverse this).Then restart MusicBee to see if that helps. However it is quite likely to have already backed up the corrupted file.

As I suggested, trying a new portable installation is another way to go, and is more comprehensive as a whole new library will be created from scratch.

2

Questions / Re: Not referencing some tracks from a specific album (worked before)

« on: July 15, 2025, 10:29:43 PM »

That is certainly very odd - I can't see how those nodes (Music Library, Podcasts, Audiobooks and Inbox) as well as the Folder functions (Move, Copy and Replace) can all be greyed out at the same time. I don't think this makes any sense.
Do the tracks play okay from the Computer node?

Maybe I'm missing something here but, along with the other strange behaviour, my only guess would be that you have a corrupted database file.

You might want to wait to see if anyone else has any other ideas first but, if it were me, I would install a portable version of MusicBee (or another portable version if you are already using one) and point it at the same files (or copies of a few) to see if they get added to the new library. (Install it in a folder outside of Windows control, something like C:\MusicBee\ or C:\Portable Apps\MusicBee\).

Sorry, that's all I've got for the moment.

3

Questions / Re: Not referencing some tracks from a specific album (worked before)

« on: July 15, 2025, 08:35:26 PM »

Certainly sounds confusing and I can't say that I know what's going on but:

Firstly, can you repeat the search as I described previously (just in case rescanning your folders has loaded the file into your library somewhere).

Next try adding the file manually: MusicBee Menu > File > Add Files To Library
Navigate to the missing file on your hard drive, select the file and Open.

If that doesn't work then, using the Navigator panel, select Computer and navigate to the missing file on your drive.
Right-click on the track and hover your mouse on the menu option 'Send To' - the four main areas of MusicBee (Music Library, Podcasts, Audiobooks and Inbox will be listed. If one of these is greyed out, then that is where the track is. If none are greyed out you could try clicking on 'Music Library' to see if that will add the track back.

(It feels like something else is going on here but these actions may provide a clue.)

4

Questions / Re: Not referencing some tracks from a specific album (worked before)

« on: July 14, 2025, 11:53:27 PM »

Firstly: The title of your post:

Not referencing some tracks from a specific album (worked before)

'worked before' what?

Secondly:
In the MusicBee image I can see that you are using either the Albums or the Album & Tracks view. By default Musicbee defines an 'album' as having the same <Album Artist> and <Album> tags. We can't see either of these tags in the VLC image so maybe these are different?
Additionally, if you have changed what fields define an 'album' (Preferences > Sorting/Grouping - Grouping) then there may be other tag values to consider.

Thirdly:
Do you know if these tracks are in your MusicBee library? To try to find them:

 • Ensure that your search options are set to 'Entire Library', 'Search All Fields' and '+ Filename'.



 • Then type a missing filename into the search box (or part of the filename such as 'The Girl Is Mine') and see if MusicBee can find it.

5

Questions / Re: Sorting and arranging smart playlists

« on: July 14, 2025, 11:22:45 PM »

I'm not certain that I understand exactly what you are looking for and your best bet is to play around with the settings in the auto-playlist configuration window and see what happens.

This one will select the 100 least recently played jazz tracks and randomly shuffle them to create the playlist:



 1. Sets the track limit to 100 and selects by the least recently played
 2. Shuffles the list randomly.

Another thing, even if you choose not to automatically refresh the playlist, even if the arrangement is random by artist, the playlist still changes every time it is played.

This is probably due to you having a rule 'Last Played is not in the last 2 weeks' (or similar) - once you play a track it will no longer conform to this rule and so will be removed, but the other tracks should not be refreshed. (Note that this will not happen for the playlist I have posted here as there is no such rule).

I'm already excitedly waiting for the next version

Me too.  

6

Questions / Re: Sorting and arranging smart playlists

« on: July 14, 2025, 05:29:06 PM »

A beautifully crafted response as usual karbock but:

(4) When closing, MusicBee retains the position in the Now Playing list only.
=> It does not remember the cursor location in any of the other playlists.

You can enable this setting to 'remember' playlist position:



Static playlists and auto-playlists that are not set to automatically refresh, will respect this setting.


And just to keep the excitement up:
Coming soon(ish) to a MusicBee website near you, version 3.7 will include the ability to save up to ten Now Playing lists, complete with the exact playback position in the list, which you will be able to reload at any time.

7

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Toolbar Filter Button: Indication of Active Filter

« on: July 13, 2025, 11:31:44 PM »

Hurrah! It looks like new features are mounting up and we've quite a lot to look forward to in v3.7.

8

Bug Reports / Re: MB not recognizing certain replaygain tags

« on: July 13, 2025, 11:25:35 PM »

In my opinion I can't see how this is a bug.

When MusicBee carries out its Volume Analysis it will create the following tags:
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK

If you enable Replay Gain (Track, Album or Smart gain) during playback, the data stored in these tags are used to alter the gain of the tracks, and thus the perceived volume of the music. Other 'Replay Gain or 'R128' tags that may be present in the track metadata are ignored and so have no effect.

When you run the 'Restore Original Volume' function, the four above tags are removed (TBH you could simply turn Replay Gain off to have the same effect).

I don't think that you can really expect MusicBee to recognise and remove all other players implementations of Replay Gain and all its variants. In fact I can imagine people justifiably complaining that 'MusicBee removed all my JRiver Music Center R128 tags'.

(I think this is correct but I'm sure someone will put me right if I am wrong on how this works).

9

General Discussions / Re: Send to - Folder (Replace) - Use the selected files to replace other files.

« on: July 13, 2025, 01:56:29 PM »

Yes, your understanding of this is correct (and it is a fantastically useful feature).

You can come at this from one of two directions:
  • Select the files in you library you want to be replaced > Send To > Folder (Replace) > Replace the Selected Files.
or
  • Select the files in your library you want to use to replace others in your library > Send To > Folder (Replace) > Use the Selected Files to Replace Other Files.
Personally I find the first method the easiest.

I have not identified any of the original file's settings or tags that are lost in this process but obviously you should make a back-up first as I can't claim to have checked every possible setting and tag.
Just one thing to remember: You must ensure that the original and the new tracks are in the same order when selected (otherwise you can have the wrongs file's tags saved to the new files).

The original files are deleted (to the recycle bin if applicable).

10

Questions / Re: Renaming Folders Easily / Regularly w/o Messing Up Play Count

« on: July 13, 2025, 09:15:39 AM »

You might like to browse this post:
Missing Files: Relink Music File Paths, Locate Missing Files (and Prevention)
(which includes karbock's above suggestion).

I would have suggested using the Computer Node within MusicBee to rename the folder but I see you have already tried that. I can't think why you might not have permission to do this, but this is probably worth looking into as it may cause issues with other MusicBee functions in the future. (Are you currently able to edit tags in MusicBee?)

11

Questions / Re: [FIXED in reply #14] Files with MP3Gain tags isn't recognized by MusicBee

« on: July 13, 2025, 09:05:42 AM »

I'm one of those surprising types

Indeed, it would appear so.
I used to use MP3Gain and agree that it is a pretty nifty solution but I guess I stopped when more players started to support replay gain tags. That all seems a long time ago now.

Just out of curiosity, how do you handle the same situation with other file formats? (I believe MP3Gain only supports the MP3 file format - and support for AAC was added at some point I think.)

12

Questions / Re: Applying sub-grouping when displayed in 'Tracks' view

« on: July 11, 2025, 11:51:55 PM »

I think the OP is asking if there is sub-grouping available in Tracks view (i.e. a second level of grouping below their current 'group by' setting of 'Album [Year]').

I'm pretty sure the answer to this is 'no'.

13

Questions / Re: [FIXED in reply #14] Files with MP3Gain tags isn't recognized by MusicBee

« on: July 11, 2025, 11:39:35 PM »

Weird how removing MP3Gain tags (and actually normalise the volume fully from these) isn't a thing in MusicBee right?

Not really no.
MusicBee uses 'standard' Replay Gain tags to normalise apparent volume across tracks. It will recognise these tags no matter which program writes them (including MP3Gain) and will delete these tags when you use the 'Restore Original Volume' function.

However MP3Gain has an additional function whereby these adjustments can be written into the frames of the mp3 files themselves - this is, for all intents and purposes, a 'permanent' adjustment and all players will then play the files at the new volume even if they do not support replay gain.
The clever part of this feature is that MP3Gain writes undo information in the MP3Gain_UNDO tag which then enables it to reverse this change without re-encoding the audio (ok, so it's not actually permanent).

While this was a neat idea before replay gain was widely supported, most players these days will support replay gain tags so I would think that this method is rarely necessary. I'm not sure that MP3Gain is maintained any longer nor do I believe that it uses the latest volume analysis algorithms. I'm actually surprised that anyone is still using this.

I wouldn't expect MusicBee (nor any other music player or editor) to be able to do undo this change nor would I suggest that Steven waste his time on any attempt to implement this.

14

Questions / Re: Not Populating?

« on: July 11, 2025, 06:23:44 PM »

I wonder if it would doable for Steven to make MusicBee throw a simple message when this happens, like "Process stopped; file "artist - title.mp3" could not be scanned--skip and continue?"  And/or, continue on its own and produce a report like "1200 files successfully scanned; the following were skipped due to file errors: <list files>"

That would be incredibly useful, wouldn't it?

Yes, this would be extremely useful.

Yes, agreed

15

Questions / Re: How to send tracks to a different managed library or folder?

« on: July 11, 2025, 06:19:48 PM »

"Folder (Move)" is greyed out.

This is probably because you have the Auto-Organise feature of MusicBee enabled - you can't move files manually if they are already automatically being moved by MusicBee.

"Folder (Copy)" is present but requires me to delete the track from my main library afterwards. It also doesn't preserve any folder structure after moving it.

Using Folder (Copy) > Copy Files to Organised Folder will allow you to set the folder structure but yes, as boroda pointed out above, you will have to manually delete the files from your library when using this method.


If you would like to consider a possible alternative method, I would suggest a single library while using a Custom Tag to identify a track as 'archived' and then a Library Filter to restrict what is being displayed.