You kept the music. Musicae keeps everything around it.
For people who still own their music: a native music system that knows the collection, not just the files.
The music colours Musicae. Choose a record.
Something doesn't add up. Musicae notices.
You type a sentence. It knows which year you mean.
Start anywhere. It knows what it started from.
You already have the music.
The problem is remembering what is in it.
Not missing. Out of sight.
See what you actually own.
Artists. Albums. Singles. Maxis. Compilations. Genres. Decades. Series. Tracks. These stay different things — nothing collapses into a generic “release”.
An album was an object before it became a thumbnail.
Music was never just an audio file.
In Musicae, the cover is shown at 120 millimetres — the size of the real thing, not whatever fits. The booklet — credits, artwork, lyrics, photographs — belongs to the album, and you can turn the case over and open it.
Sometimes you just want to look at it.
One key fills the window with whatever is playing: the case standing in its own light, worn where it has been handled, the paper ageing with the year on it. The same gesture as the case you just saw photographed — this time inside the software, with a record of yours.
1 / 5The case in its own light, the paper worn where it has been handled.
The context is already there when you arrive.
A folder of files knows a title and an artist. Everything around it Musicae gathers quietly from open music databases, once, and keeps in your library — so a record you open at midnight already has its story attached. The words arrive one line at a time, the line being sung and nothing else; when the timing is off by a second you can nudge it back.
One song. Several versions.
Original, radio edit, extended mix, remix, the cut on the compilation. Musicae keeps them together as one work — a large library stops looking like a pile of duplicates. Compilations stay compilations, and a series stays a series.
One line in the list, 10 files behind it, 6 versions among them — the same original on five different releases, then the mixes, the 7-inch, the dub. You see the work. The files stay where they are.
What the artist released, next to what you have.
A hint at what is missing — not a shop.
Your library knows when something doesn't add up.
Two discs on one release, ten years apart. Musicae finds it, says where the contradiction comes from, and proposes the correction — then stops and waits for you.
the rule every change runs under
It says this looks wrong, never I corrected it — 101 cases in this library, each one to read, accept or dismiss. When you accept one, the library is backed up first, the correction goes into your file, and the version before it is kept for seven days. Every change is an entry in a journal, and anything it could not write stands there with the reason. Nothing happens silently.
Start anywhere. It knows what it started from.
Every object in Musicae carries the same four actions. Two of them play what you are looking at. The other two make something new from it — and that is where the starting point matters, because a track, a sampler and a year tell the app very different things.
- The Real Thing (extended) — 2 Unlimited1994 · 6:18 · a long version, like yours
- Move It Up (KM 1972 mix) — Cappella1994 · the same dance floor
- Saturday Night (Nite mix) — Whigfield1994 · the same night out
Not the eleven other files of Mr. Vain you own: one version per work, so the list is other songs, not the same song eleven times.
Similarity is not enough. Context matters.
No cloud, and no machine guessing at your taste — the suggestions come out of your own collection. The same actions sit on a track, an album, an artist, a compilation, a series, a genre, a year, a decade, a phase of your life — and any view you filtered yourself.
Suggestions stay close to where you started, and they are there at once, on your Mac, with no network. When nothing is close enough, the list stays short — nothing found is an allowed answer.
Make a thought playable.
Start from a genre, from the years of your life, or from what the music came on. Each step narrows; stop at any of them — every stage plays, and where a song is filed twice the list says so. No playlist has to be built first.
Choose a step.
Search for music. Not filenames.
in this library: 69 songs
Type a sentence, in English or German, the way you would ask someone who knows your records. Every reading becomes a mark you can take off, and what Musicae does not understand, it tells you.
Every song you own knows how old you were.
Musicae does not say “you listened to this back then”. It says: this music came out when you were this age. Your name and birth year never leave the device.
Put a few things on the bench.
Create works like a counter in a record shop. You put ingredients down — an artist, a genre, a record, a single track, one of your own tapes, or a search you just ran — and a full tape is lying there at once. Everything on the bench counts the same. What you put down comes first; the suggestions fill the space between.
- an ingredient
- an artist, a genre, a record, a track, a mixtape, a search
- fit
- how well a track suits what is on the bench, in five steps
- strike one out
- the hole stays open and the next candidate is offered
- the tape
- 46, 60, 90 or 120 minutes, or any length you set
- also on the counter
- the language, radio edits or extended mixes, a window in your own life
- then
- it becomes a cassette with a label, and rides along to the phone
Suggest, don't decide. The order, the cuts and whether it survives the evening are yours.
The machine may reckon with the criteria you set. It may not read you.
The room holds what you put down — the ingredients, the window, the length of the tape — and nothing about you.
Take what matters with you.
The Mac is the archive: analysis, repair, curation. The phone takes a chosen part of it — and takes the understanding with it, not just the files. The same search, the same radio, the same booklets. What that screen knows about the song was worked out at home, not fetched from a server.
- the Mac
- archive, analysis, repair, curation
- the phone
- browse it, search it, open a booklet, start a radio. The records and the artists, not a queue.
- with nothing in range
- all of it still plays
- what travels back
- what you played, what you starred, what you told it never to suggest
- transfer
- compressed on the Mac, sent over your own network. No server to run, no cloud in between.
Fidelity is the default. Coloration is an action.
Every stage in the chain is off until you switch it on, and the chain shows which ones are working. The way from the file to the output is named: the device you chose, the rate it is set to, nothing of Musicae's in between. Each output keeps its own settings: switch to your headphones, and the chain you set for them comes back with them. Tracks mastered to run into each other still do; where you want a crossfade, it listens to both records first — optional, because not every record wants one.
Native, and you can tell.
Made only for the Mac. Each line is something the software does, and you would notice if it stopped. The full sheet is on the technical page.
A collection lives in four layers. Most software sees one.
It did not begin as a player.
Why Musicae existsOwn the music. Own the software.
Streaming manages access. Musicae takes care of your collection — so the software should feel like ownership, too.
What holds.
Personal without profiling.
Musicae asks open music databases about a title, an artist, an album — never about you. It never sends your library anywhere. If a source disappears, Musicae keeps working, with fewer pictures.
- your music files
- stay in their folders — Mac, external drive or NAS. Musicae has no vault. Music you import is copied into your own music folder, in plain artist and album folders, and the source goes to the Trash only once the copy is verified — or stays, if you say so.
- your library
- one file on your Mac. Copy it, back it up, move it.
- what you make
- corrections go into your files; cover, back and booklet into the album folder as plain images and a PDF; lists and mixtapes as M3U files · 1.0
- what Musicae learns
- what it works out from your music and what it fetches about it — all kept on your Mac
- your login
- none. Nothing to sign in to before you can play.
Made by someone with 25,581 songs.
Musicae is built by one person, Christian Denzau, for a collection that grew over decades of ripped and bought CDs — and that every player treated as a list of files. It started with one irritation: the software knew my files and nothing about my collection. Not the versions, not the compilations, not the year I was sixteen. The longer story.
What you have seen here runs today. Before the first release, one thing joins it: lists and mixtapes written out as M3U files. Musicae is built to last for years, and a second major version is already being planned — what goes into it will be shown when it is built, not before.
Not more music. More of the music you already have.
Musicae is in development.
Get notified when the first public version is ready.
No countdown. No waitlist ranking. One mail, from the person who builds it, when there is something to announce. What happens to the address.