Author Topic: Looking to get some MusicBee opinions  (Read 6946 times)

awh11

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 23
Hi all,

So to give a bit of background, I've previously used iTunes for maybe 10+ years when I had a Mac/iPod, and recently I've switched to PC/Android devices now. I have a relatively small music library compared to most (only 47 GB) but it is enough where I obviously want to keep it all organized. I've been very good about keeping the metadata/album art accurate and organized.

Well, I made the transition which wasn't TOO bad because my music library is on a NAS drive, so having Windows Media Player reference those files wasn't that big of a deal, and I just turned off WMP's file management because I didn't want to screw up the folder organization iTunes started. It works, but uh...I'm just not a big fan of WMP.

I wanted to use it, it's basic and honestly I mirror my library on Google Play for my phone, but I do occasionally want to listen to music on my PC without needing to stream... and I just can't really dig WMP's presentation and navigation. Plus, I'm pretty sure it hasn't been updated in forever right (will it ever be again?). It even nuked the resolution of my album art  :(

So my questions for the regular MB users:

- How has your experience been with using MB?
- Are ads in the program? If so, can you pay to remove them?
- Does MB work well with NAS drives? (Not using DLNA, just having media live on networked drives in general)
- Does MB support playback and organization of video files too?
- Can you customize how MB handles the organization of your file/folder structure?
- Does it seem like MB will continue to receive updates and be supported?

I know that I can research most if not all of these answers, and honestly I have many of these answers already - I just personally value more the first-hand experience of users and want to get those opinions. I'm generally not one to shop outside of a stock/included media player (ie. iTunes, WMP, Play Music on my Pixel), but I think it's time to move on from WMP.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
Last Edit: September 10, 2017, 10:46:40 PM by awh11

psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
- How has your experience been with using MB?
- Are ads in the program? If so, can you pay to remove them?
- Does MB work well with NAS drives? (Not using DLNA, just having media live on networked drives in general)
- Does MB support playback and organization of video files too?
- Can you customize how MB handles the organization of your file/folder structure?
- Does it seem like MB will continue to receive updates and be supported?

- I love MusicBee, been using it since 2012!  I switched from iTunes (and a brief stint with Media Monkey), and found that MusicBee had everything I wanted in terms of customization with fewer plugins and scripts required than MM.  Plus Steven has added in many of the features I missed from those programs, over time.  Also, the features available in MusicBee have radically transformed my system and expectations of what I can do with my music software.

- No ads, no paid features, it's completely free.  You're welcome to donate through the link on the website, but not required.

- I don't have a NAS, but I know many users do.  If you search the forum (you'll get better results if you use google to a site search, rather than the forum search), there are lots of discussions of what issues people have run into and how they've resolved them.

- MusicBee will organize your video files and play them through your video player of choice.  It doesn't play videos itself.  (I think there's a plugin for a video playlist, but I can't swear to it.)

- File organization is 100% customizable, based on tags and file info.  Check these pages:
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/File_Organization
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Templates
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Functions

- Steven is the sole developer of MusicBee.  He is super responsive on the forum and implements bug fixes and requests (which requests are at his discretion, of course) often in a matter of days, sometimes hours.  He hasn't shown any signs of quitting, although I don't want to put words in his mouth.  He may speak for himself on that.
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)

phred

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 9305
First off, I suggest you look at the Wiki - http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/MusicBee_Wiki and search through the Forum for keywords relating to your questions.

- Suffice it to say - I started using MB with version 0.3 in 2009 and I wouldn't use anything else even if you paid me.

- No ads. Totally free and developed by one person who does this in his spare time.

- NAS works fine as long as you map the drive or a partition therein.

- Very customizable. Both in look and feel and file organization. Again - look at the Wiki.

- No one can guarantee that a particular software program will be supported forever. Currently Steven issues patch updates at least once a week. And while the 'official' release is currently at 3.0, 3.1 (its last release candidate was released today) will be 'official' in a matter of weeks and improvements have already been made for 3.2 which isn't available in any form currently.
Last Edit: September 11, 2017, 01:05:10 AM by phred
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

----------
The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

awh11

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 23
psychoadept and phred,

Thank you for the wonderful testimonials (so to speak). Nothing like hearing positive feedback. Granted, I am on a MB forum...but forums can go both way. If MB was bad I'd certainly hear about it on forums too haha.

@psychoadept - Media Monkey was another one I was considering as well, but I liked MB's aesthetic a bit more, looked a bit more modern. Awesome links on the file organization. I guess I have to mentally prepare myself for another media player transition, but luckily since now all of the metadata is on the file itself (thanks to switching from iTunes to WMP) it should make the job a bit easier. I will certainly start researching. Good info on the video files, that's good enough for me.

@phred - Awesome. My Media share on my NAS is mapped so shouldn't be an issue then! Thanks for the Wiki link, I'm gonna dive into that now before downloading and installing when I get home.

Thanks again both for your responses. I'm excited to be excited about a good media player again if that makes sense (I won't lie I DID like iTunes, flaws aside). I definitely don't mind spending some money to donate for a good program if I try it and like it. It seems like Steven who you mention is very passionate and talented about this project if he's the sole dev on this. Let's hope he'll keep going! haha.

Cheers!

awh11

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 23
ALSO - I just realized I am happy I would be able to identify multi-dsc albums again. Can you believe WMP never got around to this?  :o

psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
ALSO - I just realized I am happy I would be able to identify multi-dsc albums again. Can you believe WMP never got around to this?  :o

You can do that and so much more.  :)  If you haven't looked through the Tips and Tricks forum yet, be sure to check out Bee-liever's post on using the subheader: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=11990.0
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)

sveakul

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 2438
Hello, first thing to say is that I have been using MusicBee for only 2 weeks but it's enough that I would not be without it.

The biggest "plus" for me is its fantastic interface for radio stations.  It's ability to display customized playing track info, ability to display a selectable image for each station, effortless handling of MP3/AAC/OPUS encoding and metadata, and ability to edit the playlist are second to none.

Other advantages are the huge selection of built-in skins, use of the standard BASS plugin modules from Un4seen Developments that makes updating them a breeze, a really nice 15-band equalizer, DST plugin support either via a winamp host or Steven's native MB plugin host, event WASAPI, resampling only if specified, PORTABLE mode available, etc etc!

The only "caveat" I can give is that MusicBee does take some patience and time to set up correctly to your taste (aided greatly by the FAQs and support you see here).  I found myself being grateful for the backup I made at intervals of my portable mode folder so when getting hopelessly cross-wired I could easily revert to my pre-experimental version  ;)

Also, MusicBee is primarily aimed at music library management, editing, and presentation.  That said, it's a great single-file player also, and as I mentioned before it's the best I've found for Internet radio.

awh11

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 23
Hi sveakul,

Thanks for the follow-up. I figured I'd update now that I've had MB for 2 weeks or now myself. I'm blown away that I constantly keep finding awesome features that sometimes I didn't even know I wanted! I was thrilled that I could customize the naming templates, and with a little bit of research (and pretending like I know how to code) I found a way to mimic iTunes' naming convention which allowed me to auto-organize my files without the need to rename and move tons of files.

I finished sweeping my library metadata and am now starting to "use" MB regularly. I did run into one hiccup which isn't really MB's fault, where my Google Pixel would timeout with windows when trying to sync ~200 songs to get started. I research and nearly tried everything, disabling suspend on USB drives, using USB 2.0 drives....I eventually "got it to work" with a combination of updating my USB drivers, and also syncing less tracks to start so it wouldn't time out. not sure which wound up fixing it, but I got it to finish the sync.

I then thought I had trouble with successive syncs, as it was trying to remove tracks that should be there from my device, but I think I learned that this was due to my Top 25 playlist constantly refreshing and trying to remove tracks that randomly got left out of the list each refresh. I turned off auto-refresh of the playlist and I suspect this will fix the problem.

I've had little small duh moments here and there but I've always been able to fix them. Honestly this Windows USB timeout is the biggest problem and I've managed to workaround it, since I likely won't need to sync hundreds of tracks to my phone at once anymore. Now I plan to do some library backups like you mention sveakul, and then maybe do some cosmetic stuff like skins and icons.

All in all I am very happy, and will probably be donating a bit as this is really good software. I can't believe it's free haha.

Oh, I do have one random problem maybe if anyone knows. I tried to add Videos to my library (which I won't be auto-organizing), and it should open with the Windows Default player (which I think is Windows 10's native video app or something). When it tried to play iTunes video purchases, it didn't work. Fair enough, it was probably an iTunes proprietary format. Then I tried to play a .mp4 file which SHOULD work...the video player never loads. It just plays the audio only in MusicBee. Any way to fix this, or should I download a different player like VLC and set that as my video player in MB?

psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
Oh, I do have one random problem maybe if anyone knows. I tried to add Videos to my library (which I won't be auto-organizing), and it should open with the Windows Default player (which I think is Windows 10's native video app or something). When it tried to play iTunes video purchases, it didn't work. Fair enough, it was probably an iTunes proprietary format. Then I tried to play a .mp4 file which SHOULD work...the video player never loads. It just plays the audio only in MusicBee. Any way to fix this, or should I download a different player like VLC and set that as my video player in MB?

I think there is an explanation for this, but I'm not sure of the solution.  It's probably worth posting in Questions, so people can easily see what you need help with. Or Steven could beat you to it. :)
Last Edit: September 23, 2017, 10:57:08 PM by psychoadept
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)

Steven

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 34313
MP4 files can be video or can be audio only, so what MB does/ should be doing is when an MP4 file is placed in the music library its played by MB as audio only, and when played from the Video node, it should be played with the configured media player

BRAINS

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 119
I too was an iTunes user for many years, but it's a bloated, unstable, pos software. I switched to foobar2000 which is fantastic but very bare bones out of the box. I found myself tweaking a lot of settings and download components to get it just how I wanted. Then I stumbled on MusicBee which had everything I wanted built-in and a great UI. IMO the only comparable music player to MusicBee is foobar2000 because it's so customizable and lightweight.



awh11

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 23
MP4 files can be video or can be audio only, so what MB does/ should be doing is when an MP4 file is placed in the music library its played by MB as audio only, and when played from the Video node, it should be played with the configured media player

Doh! Steven thank you that must have been it. I opened MB up with this in mind, keeping sure I was in the Video node and everything played correctly. Thank you!