MusicBee is a free music player and manager developed by Steven Mayall, who develops this great application in his spare time. He is very active on MusicBee’s forum, by responding to bug reports and user questions. Let’s find out how good is MusicBee compared to top-rated media players like MediaMonkey, Winamp, and Foobar.
Getting Started
Once you install the application, simply add your music files to the library from Windows Media Library, iTunes, or specific folders to start listening to music. However, do note that MusicBee can’t play ACC/MPEG files as no AAC decoder can be distributed with MusicBee due to licensing restrictions. You have to download the add-on here.
Interface
MusicBee’s interface looks a bit text-heavy to me at first, but it is highly configurable. There are plenty of extra skins to change its look and feel. You can also move panels and switch to compact view, theater mode, or mini player as you wish.
Theater Mode
Features
MusicBee supports all popular audio file formats like MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, and OGG. It too has a file converter, CD ripper, and music synchronizer. To satisfy the audiophiles, features such as the 5-band Spectrum Visualizer, 10-band Equalizer, Smart Crossfade, and Gapless Playback are also included.
Auto DJ is not just a song shuffler in this media player. It selects songs in a way you prefer by choosing similar tracks, top-rated tracks, etc. Besides, MusicBee can download and play podcasts, audiobooks, and Internet radio stations, which are kept separately from your music library.
There’s a reason why MusicBee is recognized as an excellent music organizing and tagging tool. You can view and edit all tags using the extensive tag editor, which also allows you to define custom tags.
Extensive Tag Editor
New tracks are stored in the Inbox until it is properly tagged. Manage duplicate tracks in your library with ease. Auto-tagging retrieves metadata from the web and update songs with incomplete album information.
Advanced Organizing Features
Below the library and playlists at the left sidebar is the Internet integration that allows you to view upcoming album releases, concerts nearby your place, and MP3 blogs.
Find upcoming concerts near you
Lastle, there’s a portable version of MusicBee which allows you to put MusicBee on your USB flash drive and bring your music collection wherever you go.
Final Thoughts
Compare to MediaMonkey, I find MusicBee to be more user-friendly and lightweight. Also, it does pretty much everything iTunes is able to do, and it is skinnable!
What else can I say? Steven Mayall does an outstanding job in satisfying the users’ needs, by developing a simple, powerful, and fast music player. If you are looking for a music player that is easy to use, feature-rich, and easy to manage extensive music collections, MusicBee is the perfect music player for you.
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