Question about library management features

[jlsturgeon]

I'm considering trying out MusicBee, but I've had problems in the past with music/media managers retagging, renaming, or even moving around my files without being explicit that they were doing so. I tag and organize my music files primarily using MusicBrainz Picard and store them on a shared network drive on my NAS. The shared drive is part of a multi-OS home network, including a Plex server. Plex Home Theater is not the greatest choice for playing music on my Win10 desktop while using other apps because it is really designed to run full-screen as an HT client. But I use the Android version of Plex a lot while not on my home network. So, I'd like a music player app that I can set up playlists on, won't hog my memory and processor, will have smooth playback off my NAS (all things being equal), won't try to take over every form of media on my entire NAS (I'm looking at you, WMP) and, most importantly, will not change my file structure, file names, or tags without my knowledge. I don't really need it to "manage" my music, just organize it visually in an interface. I'd prefer that it not download a bunch of junk files into my music drive either.

TLDR: Will MusicBee change my file structure, filenames, or metadata tags by default or without explicitly telling me that it is going to do so?

[psychoadept]

Hi, welcome to the forum!

TLDR: Will MusicBee change my file structure, filenames, or metadata tags by default or without explicitly telling me that it is going to do so?

Out of the box, it shouldn't do any of those things.  Settings you can look at to make sure it doesn't change anything (all should be unticked):
Library Preferences auto-organize and "sweep and organize new files" settings
Tags Preferences "store ratings in the music file" and the "and save without prompt" settings

I also tag with Picard, and the only thing that I've seen MB do without permission is that it rewrites the "encoded by" tag on some files.

Other users have successfully run MB with a NAS, so hopefully they can comment on that.

[jlsturgeon]

Thanks for your help. I installed it and so far am very happy. I was careful to look over the preferences BEFORE I added my library, though I noticed that by default a lot of things that might affect tags and file structure are set to require user confirmation. Excellent design choice. :-) Also having no problems whatsoever using the mounted network drive as the library source (even over wi-fi only). It was also much faster at adding all the tracks to its library than WMP. I see no evidence that it's messing with my files or adding any junk files (album art etc.) to the music folders. Still playing with it, but it looks like MusicBee is what I was looking for!