Asking permission to "copy" some MusicBee features into a hobby FOSS project

[geeseofbeverlyroad]

Hi everyone! I have recently switched to macOS, and despite some things needing adjustments, several days later I am not missing anything from Windows to the point of needing to switch back... except MusicBee.

As a long time user, the flexibility and power of this player (which exists in part thanks to the dedicated community here) doesn't exist in any other player, not even close. Over the last several days I have tried almost every alternative that has a native macOS version: Foobar, Vox, Swinisian, Musique, Audirvana, Clementine, Cog, Colibri, Museeks, the built-in Music app, probably more that I am forgetting. While each has its strong points, none allow me to have the experience that MusicBee did, which at the end of the day is quite simple: an album art view that stays quick and responsive and supports a large library of FLACs (and also doesn't look like it's from 2004).

Since I listen to music quite a lot, it's quite hard not to have a player with a fitting user experience. So, just like any other reasonable person in this situation, I decided to try make a music player. I have a humble development background in some C++ and web technologies, and my hope is to make a simple app with some needed features, hopefully cross-platform with an open source.

Most features I want to add are also present in other players: AFAIK the album art view came from iTunes, and functions like playlists and per-track view are standard everywhere. However,  I have not seen the "Inbox" feature of MB anywhere else. I use it a lot, and would love to be able to add it to this hobby project. However, I wouldn't want to copy something over without asking if that's OK first.

If anyone knows the history of this feature, or on the off-chance that Steven would see this post, would appreciate any feedback.

Also, if anyone on macOS or Linux is missing a similar player, I invite you to contribute to this little project. Currently the plan is to use Tauri (Rust + WebView) for it.

[Steven]

I thought there were ways to run MB on macs - i am certain there have been some forum members who do this.
In any case, thanks for asking and fine with me

[geeseofbeverlyroad]

I thought there were ways to run MB on macs - i am certain there have been some forum members who do this.

From what I understand, it needs quite a complex setup with a paid virtualisation software to run any Windows app reliably on the newer ARM RISC processors, and battery life will be drained way quicker.

But thank you for the answer, will hopefully report back when there’s something to show. I probably wouldn’t even consider something like this without knowing MB is largely a one person operation.

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

A user put MusicBee in a Docker container.
If you have a Linux environment and experience or want to learn, it could be a viable option.

It might be easier to install Docker on macOS and run MB through a container.