While I was writing about the MediaMonkey Android app earlier this month, I received a few recommendations to check out MusicBee as a desktop alternative for a music library manager. MediaMonkey is free but has some features locked behind a paid “gold” license. MusicBee is free and since it’s always nice to have options, I checked it out.
MusicBee is available as an installed application or in a portable format. The portable format works well for taking your music library with you. Both versions offer the same features currently in version 2.0.
Once the portable version is extracted or the traditional package is installed, you have MusicBee ready for use. To start off, it prompts you to scan for your music files. You can choose multiple file locations and let it go at it. The scan is pretty quick and brings in all the metadata related to your songs while sorting them into music, podcasts, and audiobooks.
MusicBee can play and convert all typical music formats. The Auto DJ rules can keep your music going automatically, including streaming similar songs from Last.FM. Visualizations can also play along with your music and if you’re in a party setting, you can lock the settings so guests can browse your library without being able to change your settings.
With MusicBee, you can also Auto-Tag your songs to get all the right title, artist, album and other metadata in your files. You can download plugins from the MusicBee forums to get more functionality or different skins. You can read about the rest of the functionality on the Features page.
You can download MusicBee for free from http://getmusicbee.com/