When comparing Swinsian vs Musique, the Slant community recommends Swinsian for most people. In the question“What are the best music players for OSX ?” Swinsian is ranked 8th while Musique is ranked 10th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Works well with huge libraries
Pro .flac support
Pro Very light for the OS
Pro Album art fetching
Pro Smart playlists
Pro Good value for money, paying is common sense
Spotify and others are music on the street and a sore for the eyes.
Pro Clear interface with lists and words!
Pro Playlist view customisation
Pro DSD/DFF file support
Pro Last.fm scrobbling
Pro Can add lyrics
Pro Watches any folders
Pro Can handle very large local music libraries
Pro Minimal UI
The UI for Musique is pretty minimal. By not throwing every option in the book into the application, the developers are able to keep the interface clear of any clutter.
Pro Consistent queue simplifies what's playing next
There is a queue on the right side of the player, which shows you what is coming up next. This makes it easy to add a new song or remove a song before it plays to be sure that you/your guests stay in the groove. You can also slowly transition to different genres, not to mention plan ahead and adapt as you need to.
Cons
Con Stuck on Intel SOC
Needs Rosetta to work on Apple silicon.
Con Expensive
Con No ReplayGain support
Con No dark mode (yet)
Con Cannot export to mp3 devices
Con Inexplicably refuses to play some files
Swinsian won't play ~1/3 of my flacs. Their support says "works for us". Tried rebuilding library etc, nothing worked. Eventually gave up and stopped using it.
Con No differentation between Album Artist / Track Artist
Albums are sorted via "Album Artist" but each deviating "Track Artist" creates a new album handle. Very bad when you have album tracks where the filename consists of the typical "Artist #1 feat. Artist #2" setting as each of these files creates another album entry.
Con Doesn't resume from last close
Musique won't resume from the last time the app was closed. If you had a great music queue all set up, unfortunately it won't stay there if you close the app.
Con Linux controls don't work
The Linux next/previous buttons don't do anything - you will need to open Musique in order to do anything with it (other than change the volume).