Using MusicBee on 2 computers with OneDrive

[spinner2729]

I've been trying to use MusicBee as a replacement for GPM after it shut down and iTunes Match since I've gotten tired of iTunes on Windows, and as a music player/library manager it's so much better than those; I wish I had found it years ago.  I feel like I'm almost to where I want it, but there's one small thing that's been really annoying to deal with, and I haven't found a suitable solution so far.

So, I've got all of my music on OneDrive, so it's accessible to both computers no matter where I am.  I also have the playlists (.mbp) themselves stored in OneDrive, and the idea is that any changes I make to those playlists are synced between the 2 computers automatically, because they are using the same playlist files.  This worked fine, until I needed to change my OneDrive path to a different drive on one of my computers due to storage space issues.  Now, the drive letter is different between the two computers, and although I can export m3u playlists with relative paths, the MBP playlists store everything in absolute paths.

What's the best way to make the playlists work between both computers in this scenario?  I just want to be able to use my OneDrive library through 2 different instances of MusicBee, and have any changes I make on either end sync up on both sides automatically.  I don't want to have to reimport playlists every time I make a change (i.e. keeping local copies of the playlists instead of on OneDrive).  I also don't want to host my music library on a network share, because the point of putting it on OneDrive is I don't necessarily have to be home and on my network to use it (one of my computers is a laptop), and also that way I can access it on my phone through third party apps as well.  I also tried making a directory junction with mklink to make the paths match up, but that seems to disappear constantly and isn't reliable, probably due to the way OneDrive works with Windows.  Any ideas, or is what I want just not possible right now?

[frankz]

Can't you just switch the drive letters around on one of the computers to make them match again?

[spinner2729]

Can't you just switch the drive letters around on one of the computers to make them match again?

On one of the computers, it only has a C: main drive, and for unrelated reasons (unintended legacy software compatibility issues) I'd rather not make the entire system drive a completely different drive letter just for a single program.

[frankz]

Just spitballing because I don't use Onedrive or have any idea how the URL for these files appears in your library, but can you share the Onedrive directory on one of the local computers to the network and then reference that share in your library rather than C:\Onedrive or whatever it would be?

I've got experience running MB on multiple computers referencing the same library on a network share because I do it every day all day (now that I've switched to MB portable, even the MB program is on the share), but I don't know squat about Onedrive or how you are accessing the library outside the house.  Are you saying outside the house it would understand C:\Onedrive but not \\COMPUTER\Onedrive?

I know Onedrive and cloud libraries in general have been discussed multiple times here, have none of those posts helped?

[spinner2729]

Just spitballing because I don't use Onedrive or have any idea how the URL for these files appears in your library, but can you share the Onedrive directory on one of the local computers to the network and then reference that share in your library rather than C:\Onedrive or whatever it would be?

I've got experience running MB on multiple computers referencing the same library on a network share because I do it every day all day (now that I've switched to MB portable, even the MB program is on the share), but I don't know squat about Onedrive or how you are accessing the library outside the house.  Are you saying outside the house it would understand C:\Onedrive but not \\COMPUTER\Onedrive?

I know Onedrive and cloud libraries in general have been discussed multiple times here, have none of those posts helped?

I appreciate the spitballing!  That's...an interesting idea I hadn't considered.  I'm not sure how well that would work, but I could try it.

Basically, OneDrive just syncs the same way as Dropbox or other cloud services, there is a OneDrive folder, but to Windows (and Musicbee by extension), it's just another local folder on your computer, so yeah, MusicBee sees it as like C:\Users\<user>\OneDrive by default (although Windows also maps the %ONEDRIVE% shortcut path to wherever it really is, so if MusicBee could recognize that, that would also be great.  It doesn't, though).  So when I'm outside the house, it just works because I do have all the files downloaded and stored locally, and if I have internet it will sync any changes I make to that folder.  I'm aware that there isn't support for streaming from OneDrive, as it appears there wasn't enough interest in it, so instead I have to just download the entire library completely.  But I'm totally fine with that.  The library seems to work regardless of the path differences, but the playlists don't, because the playlists store the full absolute path separately from the library.  Honestly, if I could somehow have the mbp playlists use relative paths as well, this would all just "work", but I don't think that's possible afaik.

[greusch]

I haven't used OneDrive specifically, but I have gone through the process of trying to use the same music library on two computers via an external hard drive. Additionally, I sync my playlists to an Android. I've gotten all of it to work, but there were some quirks I'll share (some of which you've run into already):

1. You can change the paths in each instance of MusicBee for different drive letters, but as you stated there are no options to make the built-in playlists relative path. Being an external drive, I just remapped the letter on the second machine.
     - I'm not certain if this would work, but could MB load exported M3Us as built-in ones? I see you can change the built-in playlist type to M3U, so maybe you could export on the first instance to a folder, then point the second instance to that folder for its built-in playlists? It would still require manual exports every time you change something, but without relative paths in built-in playlists or changing drive letters I'm not sure there's a fully-automated solution for the playlists specifically.

2. Both instances should automatically respond to changes in a song's meta tags, but when adding/deleting a song you'll need to rescan in the other instance. You can setup automatic scans on whatever folders you like and dictate whether new files go into the inbox or the library.
     - You can do this in Edit->Preferences->Library if you haven't already, but note that while you can monitor multiple folders all of them are added to a single location (ie, library or inbox). So what I would do is designate one instance as the "add new music" instance and set that one up to continuously monitor a folder and add to inbox (for entirely new music). Then on the second machine, set up the continuous monitoring to add directly to the Library (the assumption being that any new music will be added on the first instance). If you add or delete anything on the second instance, you would have to manually rescan on the first instance since it is looking at the inbox folder normally.
 
3. File naming can also cause some hiccups if the two instances aren't configured the same. If you decide to apply a naming scheme to the files or auto-organize them a certain way, make sure you're duplicating those settings on the second machine so they aren't constantly moving and hiding files from each other and creating dead links.

In my particular case, I was using a different PC for several months, then returned to the original, rather than using both simultaneously. But if you set up one computer as the designated computer to add/delete songs and edit playlists on, it wouldn't be too difficult to have any number of others auto-scan for changes and update.

Hope some of that helps.