16 Music Players for Linux

Linux came a long way concerning music players in the last couple of years and if in the past there were only few choices for users - XMMS has to be mentioned here - well, now there are so many players to choose from, and if most share the same features, each one provides an alternative by bringing a new feature or a different interface. This I can tell, can satisfy any user's taste. Without further ado, here are no less than 16 graphical music players for Linux.

Each player (except for the last two) have been reviewed before here at TuxArena and there is a link to the review after the application's name.

Amarok - full review
I don't think Amarok needs an introduction. Every long-time KDE user tested it at least once, and most of KDE users use it as their primary music player, not to mention it comes by default in distributions like Kubuntu, the KDE-based branch of Ubuntu. Amarok is a powerful, collection-oriented player, with an interface which, although loved by some and contested by others, looks very good and offers as much information as it could. It comes with dynamic playlist support, cover manager, Internet services, Last.fm integration, scripting support, Internet radio support, media devices support and much, much more.
Homepage


Amarok - one of the most popular and powerful music players on Linux


Rhythmbox - full review
Rhythmbox is the default audio player in Gnome and Ubuntu implicitly. Among the top features it comes with are the music library, sortable playlists, plugins, local file cover support, Last.fm integration, support for services like Jamendo or Magnatune. Another feature of Rhythmbox is the integration with Ubuntu One Music Store, the service provided by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu (I don't know if this is Ubuntu-specific only though).
Homepage


Rhythmbox is the default audio player in Gnome



Banshee - full review
Some would recommend Banshee as the first option for replacing Rhythmbox. Banshee integrates in Gnome and it comes with a full set of features, offering a media library, 10-band equalizer, Last.fm integration, cover fetching, playlist support, podcasts and a whole bunch of plugins . Banshee also offers a video library and support for playing movies and video formats. Its only problem seems to be stability though, I had some problems with random crashes and fetching local covers doesn't seem to work (Ubuntu 10.10 and Banshee 1.8.0).
Homepage


Banshee is a full-featured player which also includes video capabilities


Audacious - full review
This is the GTK2 replacement for the now deprecated XMMS. It comes with Winamp 2.x skin support, an interface which resembles the Winamp 2 look and feel, support for covers, an equalizer, and more. Version 2.4 offers two view modes available in the View menu: Gtk interface and the Winamp Classic interface (screenshots below).
Homepage


Audacious is a replacement for XMMS which offers two view modes: Gtk and Winamp Classic



Clementine - full review
For those who complain about the direction Amarok 2 took, Clementine can be a very good alternative to Amarok 1.4. Clementine's goal is a port of Amarok 1.4 to KDE4, and until now it's done a good job. Some of the many features of Amarok 1.4 are not yet implemented, but still Clementine offers sortable playlists, cover manager, equalizer, collection manager, file manager, Last.fm song submission. It still lacks support for scripts though.
Homepage #1
Homepage #2


Clementine aims to be the KDE4 port of Amarok 1.4 and does a pretty good job


Qmmp - full review
I was talking about Audacious being the GTK replacement of XMMS. Well, Qmmp is the Qt replacement for it, making it perfect for KDE users. It resembles the XMMS interface, supports Winamp 2.x skins, it allows plugins.
Homepage #1
Homepage #2


Qmmp - the KDE replacement of XMMS


Listen - full review
Listen is another player for Gnome, and it comes with a clean, well-organised interface as well as support for plugins, Last.fm integration, four display modes (small, normal, full and party mode), lyrics fetching, Wikipedia integration for artist and song info.
Homepage


Listen - typical player for Gnome, featuring a well-organised interface


Exaile - full review
Yet another GTK application, Exaile features music collection, lyrics fetching, file browser, radio support, sortable playlist, device manager, 10-band equalizer, queue, covers support. Exaile is also highly configurable via the Edit -> Preferences menu.
Homepage


Exaile is a feature-rich GTK player offering a good alternative to Rhythmbox or Banshee


Jajuk - full review
Well, when I reviewed Jajuk I was really impressed by this audio player. Jajuk is written in Java and it is a full-featured, top notch player with a neat and intuitive interface. Among the many features of Jajuk there are cover fetching, lyrics, file browser, lots of configuration options, statistics, cover manager, highly configurable interface. In my opinion, a must-try.
Homepage


Written in Java, Jajuk is a feature-full player



Decibel Audio Player - full review
Decibel can be described in one word: minimalist. Written in GTK and aiming to stay simple and intuitive, Decibel can look too simple at first, but don't be confused by that. It still offers enough features one would expect from an audio player and most of Decibel's features are available via plugins (bundled by default in it), so go to Edit->Preferences if you want to take advantage of all the features. It has three view modes (full, playlist, mini), cover fetching support, Last.fm song submission, equalizer, library, Twitter status update plugin. The interface offers a playlist and a file manager, which shows folders in a tree-view mode. Adding music to the playlist may seem at little confusing at first, you can do that by selecting a folder in the combo box to the left of the main window.
Homepage


Decibel can be extended using the plugins included by default


Quod Libet - full review
Another player for Gnome with standard features and a clean, good-looking interface and support for Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, MP4, WAV and WMA formats. Quod Libet offers filters, a whole bunch of plugins (actually the plugins extend Quod Libet's functionality a lot, and there are a lot of them), several view modes.
Homepage


Quod Libet


Guayadeque - full review
I featured Guayadeque in my Linux applications with peculiar names article, and found out in the mean time that Guayadeque is a place in Canary Islands. Guayadeque brings nice features also taking a different approach regarding its interface. Features: radio, Last.fm integration, music library, lyrics, dynamic playlists, podcasts support, file browser, ratings. I think Guayadeque does a great job taking a different approach then most of the players out there.
Homepage


Taking a different approach, Guayadeque is a must try if tired of usual players


Foobnix - full review
Another player for Linux, Foobnix is written in Python and uses the GTK toolkit. It offers the usual equalizer, Last.fm song submission, an online search tool and enough configuration options. The current version in Ubuntu is a little buggy, but other than that Foobnix is a good audio player.
Homepage


Written in PyGTK, Foobnix offers enough features


Goggles Music Manager - full review
Goggles Music Manager is written using the FOX toolkit, a library for designing lightweight applications. It features AlbumArt support, tag editing, smart sorting, drag and drop support, Last.fm and Libre.fm song submission, SQLite database for the music collection, system tray integration.
Homepage


GMM is a lightweight music player written using FOX toolkit


JuK
It looks like most of the players in this review are written in GTK, and those for KDE are only Amarok, Clementine, and JuK. This player offers features like cover manager, history, crossfading or the tag editor. JuK is very good for those who want a lightweight audio player for KDE.
Homepage


JuK - a simple KDE player which has been around for years


DeaDBeeF
DeaDBeeF is a player coming with a compact interface and features like an equalizer, tray integration, plugins, global hotkeys. Among the notable plugins are the OSD or the AlbumArt plugin.
Homepage


DeaDBeeF offers a compact interface and an equalizer


Except for those, there are the client-server oriented ones, like XMMS2 and MPD (with clients such as Sonata or GMPC - for MPD and the ones listed here - for XMMS2), or text user interface players which can run in a terminal, like CMus (review here), mp3blaster or moc (review here).Source URL: https://ashesgarrett.blogspot.com/search/label/audio
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Goggles Music Manager - Overview and Installation in Ubuntu Maverick

Goggles Music Manager (or GMM for short) is a music player written using the FOX toolkit, with support for Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, MP4, ASF and Musepack. FOX is a fast toolkit for creating graphical interfaces (another application which I reviewed in the past which uses FOX is Xfe - review here - a file manager for Linux).

Note: If you don't want to read the review you can skip directly to the installation instructions below, which show how to compile and install GMM in the latest Ubuntu release, Maverick Meerkat.

Among the features Goggles comes with are:
- support for AlbumArt - embedded in file or separate image on disk
- tag editing - including support for multiple file editing
- smart sorting
- playlists support - including importing/exporting from/to XSPF, M3U, PLS, CSV
- drag and drop support - KDE and GNOME
- uses xine engine
- configurable user interface, including changing default icons
- Last.fm and Libre.fm support
- Replay gain support

Goggles uses SQLite database for the music collection, and it seems to be very fast when it comes to scanning a music collection, at least compared to most of the other existing players with support for music collection.

Regarding the interface, it's plain and simple:


Goggles Music Manager in Ubuntu 10.10


It also supports a so-called Mini Player, which takes up very little desktop space:


System tray support is included too, and Goggles can be configured to show/hide the tray icon and close the application or just minimize it to tray when the main window close button is clicked.

Drag and drop from Nautilus will also work, and the user will be presented with an importing window for the new files to be added to the playlist.

Goggles successfully fetched all the local album covers, however showing them is disabled by default, so you have to set it in Preferences and restart the application.

The playlist can be sorted using various criteria, and the columns can be shown/hidden and rearranged in a different order.

The Preferences window allows to configure the Last.fm and Libre.fm accounts, although when switching from one another in the drop down list the account username and password seem to be lost so you will have to enter them again. Here you can also customise the tray icon, control buttons location (top or bottom), appearance and audio driver to use.


Installation in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

Follow these steps:

1. Download the source
Get the source code from the official Google Code page, here (direct link here). At the time of writing the version is 0.11.5, for which this tutorial was made.

2. Uncompress the package
Open up the Terminal and make sure the current working directory is the one where you saved the archive (use pwd and cd to view the current directory and to navigate to your downloads directory e.g. cd; cd Downloads) and uncompress the source tarball using the following command:

tar -xjf gogglesmm-0.11.5.tar.bz2

3. Install the needed dependencies
Type the following two commands:

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install libfox-1.6-dev libsqlite3-dev libghc6-curl-dev libtag1-dev libxine-dev libdbus-1-dev

The first command will install the tools needed to compile the application, while the second fetches and installs the development packages of various libraries needed by GMM.

4. Install GMM
Type the following commands:

./configure
make
sudo make install

This should be all. To run Goggles, just type gogglesmm in a terminal or press Alt+F2 and type gogglesmm in the run box that appears.

Alternate installation prefix
Alternately, you can specify an installation prefix and install as normal user:

./configure --prefix=/home/USER/usr
make
make install

In which case you will need to include /home/USER/usr (or the prefix of your choice and replacing USER with your username) in your $PATH, by editing the file ~/.bashrc and adding a line like this:

export PATH=/home/USER/usr:$PATH

Then issue:

. ~/.bashrcSource URL: https://ashesgarrett.blogspot.com/search/label/audio
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Clementine 0.5: New and Improved KDE4 Port of Amarok 1.4

Clementine is a port to KDE4 of one of the most beloved music players on Linux, Amarok 1.4. The latest release brings several new features, including iPod, MTP and USB mass storage disks support, queue manager, support for Wii Remote to control it, and numerous bug fixes to already existing features.


Clementine 0.5 in Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Beta


Clementine brings the same Amarok 1.4 interface to KDE4, looking good and very familiar. Here is how it looks like:

The main features of Clementine are:
- music library
- powerful playlist
- file browser
- Internet services
- iPod, MTP and USB mass storage disks support
- local cover or Internet cover fetching support
- cover manager
- queue manager
- 10-band equalizer
- customizable OSD (on-screen display)
- projectM vizualizations
- support for transcoding audio files
- 5 analyzers
- system tray integration

As I already mentioned, the interface resembles the one of Amarok 1.4, with the same widget styles and menus. To the left there are four tabs through which the user can access the music library, the file browser, the Internet services or the Devices. The main part of the window is occupied by the playlist itself, while the cover is displayed at the bottom left corner, with the option to show small or larger sizes of the cover.


The media library organizes the music by artists, albums and songs, and allows you to drag and drop any of these items to the playlist. The playlist shows by default the title, artist, album, song length and track number, but you can show as many columns as you want and sort the playlist using any of these.

Clementine also brings the well-known cover manager, which looks exactly like the one in Amarok 1.4:


Clementine cover manager


The playlist shuffle mode allows to shuffle by album too, not only by song, and the repeating mode allows to repeat the current song, album or the whole playlist.

Clementine implements the projectM music visualizer, which features tons of visualizations, and which allows to change the framerate and quality (the highest settings would allow 60 fps using 1024x1024 resolution). In addition to these, Clementine offers control buttons in the visualization window too:


Clementine features projectM visualizations


Regarding Internet services, Clementine offers Last.fm integration and song submission, SomaFM and Magnatune support, and custom radio streams.


The Preferences window allows configuration of cross-fading, replay gain, tray icon, global keyboard shortcuts (also, running in GNOME will allow to use GNOME's shortcuts), OSD (which can be configured to show a Clementine OSD or a specific desktop environment OSD), Wii Remote, Last.fm account, Magnatune account and music library directories.


On-Screen Display and Preferences


Conclusion
If you are unsatisfied with the direction Amarok 2.x took and can't live without Amarok 1.4, then you have two choice. Either stay with it, or try Clementine, which has the advantage that it integrates good with the desktop. Although it still lacks several features (lyrics support, Wikipedia integration or smart playlists come to my mind just now), Clementine is almost the perfect replacement for Amarok 1.4 on KDE4. And even though it may not offer everything now, keep an open eye on it because it will surely implement new features in versions to come.

Homepage #1
Homepage #2
Homepage #3Source URL: https://ashesgarrett.blogspot.com/search/label/audio
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Very Nice Music Player for GNOME: Decibel Audio Player

Decibel is a music player built in GTK which takes a different approach when it comes to the way features are implemented, and that is, Decibel uses only plug-ins which can be enabled or disabled on demand. This makes it either a pretty featured player, or a very simple and basic one, depending on which plug-ins you need enabled.


Decibel integrates well in GNOME and follows its HIG


The first thing I liked after opening Decibel was its slogan, which goes "...And Music for All" (Metallica anyone?)

The interface is clean and simple, and according to the official website, it follows the GNOME HIG (human interface guidelines). To the left there is a tree view listing files and folders which can be be added to the playlist. It also includes three view modes, full mode (shows everything), playlist mode (shows only the playlist), and mini mode (shows only control buttons, cover - if enabled, artist, title and album).


The Mini Mode


Although Decibel may seem simple at first, this is because all the plug-ins (except the File Explorer) are disabled by default. You can turn Decibel into a pretty powerful player by turning these on. Here is a list of the plug-ins (which can be accessed via the Edit->Preferences menu item) bundled with Decibel:

- Audio CD: plays audio discs
- AudioScrobbler: submit music you listen to Last.fm
- Covers: show album covers
- Desktop Notification: it is an OSD (on-screen display) to show when the track changes


Desktop Notification


- Equalizer: 10-band equalizer (no presets at the moment)
- File Explorer - browse through files and folders and add them to the playlist
- Instant Messenger Status: allows to set what you're listening to in your status message, with a configurable message (e.g. ♫ {artist} - {album} ♫); I tested it with Pidgin and it works, for Empathy it didn't seem to work though
- Library: organizes music by tags
- ReplayGain: normalize volume
- Status File: generates a text file with the current status
- Status Icon: system tray integration (not configurable)
- Twitter: update the status of your Twitter account


Plug-ins and the equalizer


To install Decibel in Ubuntu, type sudo apt-get install decibel-audio-player in a terminal.


Decibel is very nice, and its strong point is definitely its modularity, allowing you to turn it from a basic player into a more complex one.Source URL: https://ashesgarrett.blogspot.com/search/label/audio
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Yet Another Music Player for Linux: Foobnix

When it comes to music players, Linux evolved heavily during the last three or four years, and new players are announced on a regular basis. I remember that in 2006, when I was starting up with Linux, there were only a few applications to choose from, like Amarok, Rhythmbox, Listen or XMMS, and a few more less popular and not so full-featured. But times have changed and now the Linux platform benefits from players of all kinds: there are replacements for XMMS for both GNOME and KDE (Audacious and Qmmp), collection-oriented players like Amarok, Banshee, Exaile or Rhythmbox. There are less-known players like Quod Libet, Guayadeque or Jajuk, or the client-server oriented ones like MPD. And the ones I just listed are only the ones which came to my mind at the moment. Some would say having so many players for a single task is a bad thing, but I say it's not. Having enough options to choose from is a great advantage. If you don't like one style, try the next player, if you don't like its approach either, try the next one, and so on.

Considering that over time I reviewed probably over 80% of the players available out there, it's time to get in touch with a new one, namely, Foobnix.

Foobnix is a pretty basic player written in GTK which takes a somewhat different approach organizing the music collection. That is, it organizes the music found in the selected directories in a tree structure. Take a look at the screenshot below:


The screenshot shows the usual Foobnix interface, having the playlist on the right side and the music organized in a tree-like structure to the left. Another thing to notice is the simple and clean organization of the widgets, especially how the menu bar and the control buttons are organized on a single level, at the top of the player window.


Here are some of the features which come with Foobnix:
- tree-like music list
- online music search panel
- lyrics fetching
- album cover fetching
- info panel
- Last.fm song submission
- tray integration, clicking the tray icon shows the user control buttons, including previous and next track
- global hotkeys support
- online radios support


Lyrics and info panels


Foobnix looks pretty good. I think the widget spacing needs a little more attention though, because having the lyrics or info panel enabled will put the top of them over the title of the currently playing song, but other than that, it's a very clean and pretty intuitive interface. Also, the option to change the disc cover size in the Preferences window doesn't seem to work.

Regarding features, it currently can't compare with players which offer all the bells and whistles, but it looks promising if development continues.

The only big problem I encountered with Foobnix was regarding several application freezes when performing certain actions, like using the online music search function. Right-clicking the tray icon will show the control buttons, but to make it go away you have to press the OK button, which is not quite a feature. Let's hope these coding problems will be soon solved.

All in all, it's not necessarily a 'must-try' application, and it has a fair share of bugs, but it can fit enough users who will like how the music is organized, or the clean, plain interface.Source URL: https://ashesgarrett.blogspot.com/search/label/audio
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Banshee 1.7.5 Review in Ubuntu Maverick Beta

Being actively developed, feature-rich, providing access to several useful Internet services and with a pretty decent media library, Banshee has a pretty fair share of users, and it is definitely a powerful music player not to be ignored.


Although Banshee includes support for both audio and video files, and comes with a video library too, its well-known and popular for its music playing capabilities rather than video playback.


Banshee 1.7.5 in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Beta


The version I'm going to talk about is 1.7.5 (for some reason I couldn't get 1.7.6 to compile in Ubuntu 10.10 Beta - if you can help, I'd be grateful), released on September 1, 2010, which ships in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Beta.

Banshee improved a lot since the last time I reviewed it, which was over an year ago, back when the version was 1.6 beta. For those who never tried it, here are the main features:

- music library
- support for podcasts
- Internet radio support
- smart playlists
- integrated access to Amazon MP3 store
- Last.fm song submission and Last.fm radio (since the Last.fm radio service became paid a while ago, you will need to have a subscriber account for the radio to work)
- fast access to Miro guide, a website which allows to search and download videos
- cover fetching from the Internet
- system tray support, with a nice mouse-over info report and the ability to control Banshee by right-clicking the tray icon (this includes rating the currently playing song, play next or previous, pause, repeat or shuffle)
- built using GTK2, so it blends well into the GNOME browser


Just a mention about the Amazon MP3 store: it looks like by default either the geo IP detection is not working properly or Germany is selected. To change this, go to Edit->Preferences, click the Source Specific tab in the window that appears, select the Amazon MP3 Store entry in the Source list box, and then select the desired country:


Banshee allows the user to configure several aspects, like gapless playback (to get rid of the short gap on track change), collection organization, services, and enable/disable various extensions. Which are actually quite impressing: Banshee includes Wikipedia extension, Audio CD extension, Internet radio, Podcasts, iPod support, Last.fm, Mini Mode and Notification, these to only list a few. The Mini Mode is quite a delight actually, for those who need just a small window, so it doesn't take up to the whole desktop space:


Banshee in Mini Mode


Smart playlists, the 5-star rating system and the tag editor are another pluses for this great player.

Again, it seems to me that fetching local covers doesn't work properly (or maybe it is not a feature at all?) I tried to open a video file, play it, pause it after a while and then hit the play button ago. At this point instead of continuing the video Banshee started to play the song that was playing before opening the video. In my sole opinion (and this is not only Banshee-specific), having a single button for play/pause is not the best idea. I also bumped into a balloon message reading "Please move your music to /home/embryo/Music" and changing the music directory in the preferences didn't make it go away. I think this is a little inappropriate, since I like my music where it is (and that is not /home/embryo/Music). This has also been reported as a bug on for Maverick here.

Other than that: I found Banshee's usability far greater than some other audio players. Believe me or not, over 50% of the music players for Linux that I tested didn't have a keyboard shortcut to focus the track search field. Banshee uses Alt+S for this.



Playing a video


To conclude, Banshee's state is currently as it has always been in the past two years or so: a very good player, pretty stable now, with a lot of features, which can be a the perfect replacement for other GNOME collection-oriented players, like Rhythmbox.Source URL: https://ashesgarrett.blogspot.com/search/label/audio
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Tutorial: Install Clementine Music Player in Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Beta

Clementine is a KDE4 port of the beloved music player Amarok 1.4. Although Clementine still needs work done in order to reach Amarok's functionality - like support for scripts, or for example I couldn't get it to add a whole music directory to the playlist - is there a way to do it? - it comes with pretty decent features up to now:

- equalizer
- Last.fm song submission, love/ban buttons
- music library
- file browser
- radio support
- cover manager


Installing Clementine in Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Beta
We will use the packages in the Clementine PPA in order to install it on Maverick. Fire up a terminal and type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:riccetn/clementine

This command will add the Clementine PPA repository inside your /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory.


Notice that the current version in the PPA is 0.3. If you already have an older version of Clementine installed on your system, it is best to remove it first:

sudo apt-get remove --purge clementine

Now update the packages list:

sudo apt-get update

And finally, install Clementine by typing:

sudo apt-get install clementine

And you're done! To start it up, press Alt+F2 and type clementine followed by Enter.


Cover manager


Clementine Homepage
Clementine at Google Code
Clementine PPA at Launchpad.netSource URL: https://ashesgarrett.blogspot.com/search/label/audio
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Pretty Damn Good Audio Player: Guayadeque

Yesterday I put up an article about peculiar application names in Linux, and Guayadeque was on that list. But how about seeing what this application has to offer as a music player, besides a pretty funny spelling.


Guayadeque 0.2.7 in Ubuntu 10.10 Beta


Guayadeque is built using the wxWidgets toolkit, a popular C++ library designed for writing graphical applications, and is included in the Ubuntu Maverick repositories. Let me list some of the major features Guayadeque offers:

- 10-band equalizer, including presets
- sortable playlists with column attributes which can be added or removed
- music library, which show artists, albums with covers and labels
- static and dynamic playlists
- support for online radios
- Last.fm integration and song submission
- lyrics support
- podcast support
- album browser with covers and various album information
- file browser
- crossfade effect
- fullscreen mode


Last.fm integration


Guayadeque comes with an interface mainly divided in two parts: the left one contains the now playing widget, and the right side, taking most of the space, which is divided in tabs, each tab containing one of the following items: library, radio, Last.fm, lyrics, playlists, podcasts, browser, files. This tab approach makes the interface look pretty clean and uncluttered.


Album browser


Guayadeque also allows you to change the size of its interface widgets and then save the layout as a local file, so you can create several such files and load them depending on your current preference.

Scanning the music collection took around three minutes and a half for a collection of 6000+ FLAC and Ogg Vorbis files on my Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz, using Guayadeque 0.2.7 in Ubuntu 10.10 Beta. Not very slow, nor fast, just around the middle.


Lyrics tab


Although there is a huge number of audio players for Linux to choose from, only a few of them are full-featured, embedding all their features in a fashion that will please the audiophile who wants to have access to all the information regarding his music collection, and also pleasing the user who only wants to get music out of his PC as fast as possible and without any hassle. Guayadeque may be just the right player for this, being a very nice surprise, even though not many people heard about it.Source URL: https://ashesgarrett.blogspot.com/search/label/audio
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