Musearc was one of the earliest MPEG Audio (layers 2 and 3) players. Its most remarkable features were playlist support (actually, it originated the PLS playlist format!) and displaying detailed information about the tracks being played. Besides, it can play tracks directly from the Internet through HTTP streaming.

ID3v1 tags can be visualized (in the playlist editor) but not modified. Interestingly, it can also read ancillary track data stored in 4DOS/4NT descript.ion files.

On the bad side, it had no equalizer, no support for any format other than MP3 and MP2 (not even WAV!), and bad VBR support.

It did not meet much success, probably because it was a quite expensive player (registration cost 30 dollars) competing against alternatives that were free, featureful and prettier. Then again, considering its age (appearing before even DOSamp) and with competition only from WinPlay3 in the early years - which was not freeware at the time either -, that could explain the price tag and lack of features.

Development stopped in early 2000. A mirror of the web page can be seen at the Internet Archive.


Date: 2000-02-02
Version: 4.9.99.3 beta
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Win32
Download: musearc499.zip - 300kB

Date: 1997-04-01
Version: 4.4.97.3 beta
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Win32
Download: musearc.zip - 226kB