I replaced Spotify's desktop app with this lightweight music player, and I forgot how fast software used to feel

Published Sep 15, 2026, 4:00 PM EDT Patrick is a seasoned writer with more than a decade of experience, specializing in any and all things tech. His work has been featured on platforms like CNET, Yahoo, Xfinity, and many other outlets. When not typing away, he can be found with his nose in a book. I've been a heavy Spotify user for years now, and while I appreciate the desktop app (and the level of customization available to me through tools like Spicetify), there's a part of me that misses the days of Windows Media Player. Not just the visualizer, although that was a huge draw for me as a teenager, but the speed, too. Spotify isn't exactly slow, but on occasion, it does take its time. Windows Media Player was snappy, with near-instant load times and no lag before it started playing whatever early-2000s emo rock I had queued up. I started digging for an alternative and stumbled across MusicBee. I'd never heard of the app before, but it didn't take long for me to fall in love with it. Not only is it as snappy as I remember WMP being, but it has a slew of extra features that are fun to play around with. At its heart, though, it's a powerful music player that's compatible with a variety of different codecs and demands practically no system resources. Spotify's lag is due to how it's built It's essentially a web app with a wrapper A quick web search reveals dozens of posts across a variety of forums, all complaining that Spotify's web app takes way too long to do anything. The larger your library, the longer it can take. Search was one of the main issues. Users would try to find a song, and Spotify would sometimes take several minutes to yield results. Without getting too technical, Spotify is kind of a hybrid app. While it is built to optimize performance, there are still various problems, and it can suffer from high RAM usage. There's not exactly any single cause, but rather a series of smaller issues that all add up to a less-than-ideal performance. Does that mean you should ditch it? Not at all, especially if you want a way to access Spotify without going through your browser. But there are local-first alternatives (like MusicBee) that are way faster. MusicBee reminds me of software from long ago It's like the spiritual successor to Windows Media Player I don't want to admit how old Windows Media Player is, especially since I remember the first iteration of it. Its speed stood out, especially in the early aughts when a lot of software tended towards clunky and slow. MusicBee is a throwback to that era. While running and playing songs, it used only 32MB of memory and ranked "Very Low" in power usage. When compared to Spotify's average of 600MB+ (and the fact it had seven processes running to play a song, versus MusicBee's single one), it's clear which of the two apps is easier on a system with limited resources. Clicking "Play" on a song starts it practically instantly, and MusicBee boasts compatibility with an impressive range of codecs. In fairness, part of its speed is because it's playing local files and not streaming them from the web. It can even play CDs if you still have a CD drive. And if you run into a codec that it doesn't work with right away, there's a good chance that you can get it to work through one of the many plugins available on MusicBee's website. The customization options are impressive And you can get an old-school visualizer MusicBee has an enthusiastic community that has created a wide number of different add-ons to enhance its basic functionality. You can customize the skins, the visualizer, and quite a bit more, giving it even more of an old-school, nostalgic appeal. Beyond that, though, there are plugins for nearly any application you can imagine. There's even a "Bee Wrapped" option, for those who want a yearly review of their most-played songs and artists. From a more utilitarian standpoint, you can find plugins that let you link to Last.fm, enhance codec compatibility, and much more. I particularly like the plugins that show the album art alongside lyrics. There is a variety to choose from, but it's a great way to sit back and explore artists who might not be the easiest to understand. MusicBee is fantastic, but switching from Spotify means losing a few major benefits It's hard to beat Spotify's suggestion algorithm As I said earlier, MusicBee is best used in conjunction with Spotify, not as a replacement. It's a fantastic player for any local music files, but you won't be streaming artists on it anytime soon. That's one of the biggest trade-offs. While it's significantly faster and a delightful throwback to an earlier era, MusicBee relies entirely on the files you already have. Spotify gives you access to a nearly infinite amount of music (a rough estimate says it would take more than 1,000 years of non-stop listening to hear every track on Spotify). Despite the faults of its desktop app, Spotify's algorithm is phenomenal at surfacing music similar to what you already listen to and enjoy. I can't count the number of artists I've discovered as a result. And let's be honest: there are very few times I'm truly offline, and though Spotify uses several times more resources than MusicBee, it's not exactly dragging my system down. My main gripe would be the desktop app's speed, but I can always listen on my phone. That said, MusicBee does have a "Music Explorer" option that lets you find other albums by the same artist and, in some cases, gives you the option to buy the album on iTunes. MusicBee is wonderful, and great for local-first listening, but I'm not sure it's strictly necessary I'm going to keep using MusicBee because I'm primarily fueled by nostalgia, but it's undeniably a niche app. The vast majority of people stream music through Spotify, Apple Music, or another service. Only the most diehard audiophiles keep a collection of tunes stored on their PCs, but that group will be happy to know MusicBee exists. And as for me, I'll keep happily listening to music with a custom visualizer running front and center on my display. MusicBee MusicBee makes it easy to manage, find, and play music files on your computer. MusicBee also supports podcasts, web radio stations and SoundCloud integration.