There are many music players on PC, but not all of them can stream content to Chromecast devices. And this opportunity will not be superfluous for owners of the media players of the same name from Google, smart speakers and third-party TV boxes.
If the entire digital media library is stored on a computer, the free and open source Music Caster program will come in handy, which allows you to transfer music to the aforementioned devices. We look at the features that distinguish this software from analogues.
Streaming to Chromecast
To start streaming audio content to a Chromecast-enabled device, right-click on the program’s tray icon. Next, hover over the Select Device line and select the desired device from the pop-up menu. If it’s not there, click the Refresh Devices button just above and check the list of devices again.
After selecting a device for playback, you can go to the player itself and control the music.
Simple but powerful
The program looks quite ascetic, but in practice it has a lot of useful features.
The player itself is always on the right (or left, if selected in the settings) and displays only basic elements – the cover, control buttons, volume and duration sliders. Playlist management is divided into several tabs. Among them is the section with settings. There you can specify the directories in which the application should search for music. All found tracks are available in the Library tab.
The queue is controlled in the first tab Queue – tracks are moved and removed there using special elements. You can add to the queue not only individual files, but also entire folders. There is a button for this.
An interesting feature of the player is streaming music via a link. The function allows you to listen to tracks from popular services without manual downloading and even works with Spotify and YouTube. It can be found in the URL tab – there is a special field for the link. True, the technology is not brought to the ideal, and sometimes the text is not inserted. The user is given a choice: include the detected audio immediately, add to the beginning or end of the queue.
Work with playlists is quite flexible. You can add tracks from the library to them, or immediately by link. A selection in one click is added to the queue or played. It’s not very convenient to change the order of songs in playlists – no dragging with the mouse, just clicking on the buttons on the right, some of which are unintuitive, despite the icons. Saved selections open in a drop-down list, that is, they are not visible. But all the important functions for creating and managing playlists are here, so there are no special complaints about the implementation.
Among other useful features, I would like to note the automatic search and download of cover art on the Internet, as well as the ability to add and edit metadata. A shutdown timer can also come in handy, which, depending on the desire, only stops the music or sends the computer to sleep.
There are some omissions in the player. For example, you can’t see detailed information about a track inside the program – you have to use the standard system tools for it.
Also, Music Caster cannot be opened in full screen. Because of this, in standard mode, some album names do not fit completely.
However, Music Caster copes with the task of broadcasting music. In addition, the application is under active development, and its creator often updates the program by posting the latest versions on GitHub. Perhaps the project will acquire new features in the future.
Source: Trash Box
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