Discussion on what music players you use

Posted by LRaccoon@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 59 comments

I’ve been on the hunt for a Linux music player that gives me a similar feel to Spotify, but for my own local music collection. I already have my songs locally, I’m not looking for streaming but something that's more feature-rich.

I have been using Quod Libet which is actually great but it lacks the polished UI and “modern-app” features like an album-cover view, shuffle with ease, built-in lyrics display, etc etc

I found Wora which had what I wanted, but it seems not actively maintained and has a few bugs that make it less stable.

What local-music players on Linux do you use or recommend?

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non-existing-person@reddit

mpd + ncmpcpp if I am feeling more consoly, or "Cantata" when I want GUI interface.

Strawberry is another great player I would recommend, but mpd just gives you unmatched control via terminal (well, mpd does to be precise) which does come in handy.

Strawberry can also play Tidal btw - with some very minor hacking.

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cathexis08@reddit

Mpd is the best. The fact that it's solely a (very full featured) backed means you can use whatever frontend you want (console, fancy pants gui, webapp) without losing functionality.

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LightBusterX@reddit

Cantata is very nice

I miss Amarok

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non-existing-person@reddit

Well, Strawberry/Clementine is just Amarok on steroids to be honest.

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LightBusterX@reddit

Strawberry/Clementine was Amarok 1.4, but Amarok 2/3 has been forgotten for a long time.

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non-existing-person@reddit

Amarok 2/3 do not exist. Period. ;D

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LightBusterX@reddit

As you do or don't, apparently.

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bp019337@reddit

This is the way. The look of ncmpcpp or even cmus will never go out of date. Want to go even more retro just use cool retro term for an eye watering yellow crt look!

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hermanfogknottle@reddit

VLC The most versatile media player around & it does a heap more than just play music.

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Wrong_Beginning_1499@reddit

Spotify 😀

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SomeOneOutThere-1234@reddit

I used to be covered by Elementary OS’ default music player, but they did a complete rewrite and it doesn’t suit me anymore.

I use GNOME’s music app currently

But since this post is up and people are gonna see this. I want something that has an interface like iTunes but I’ve so far seen nothing, does anyone know any other apps that l could try?

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dcherryholmes@reddit

On the desktop, jellyfin seems like a pretty decent music player. Good enough for me, anyway. On mobile you could still do jellyfin, but I also like Power Ampache 2.

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GregTheMadMonk@reddit

mpd + ncmpcpp

For playing random files not from the library, mpv or vlc

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LRaccoon@reddit (OP)

The only correct answer for real Arch users

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dcherryholmes@reddit

I tried to set up mpd + ncmpcpp and tbh it kicked my ass. I've always meant to go back and give it another go. TBH it shouldn't be *that* hard, so IDK why I got stupid all of the sudden.

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dell_hellper@reddit

Another crying baby.

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LRaccoon@reddit (OP)

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dell_hellper@reddit

If the default player plays music it's good enough.

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Cool-Arrival-2617@reddit

I use QMMP with old school Winamp 2 skins. It looks good to me and for my need it's feature complete.

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redrider65@reddit

Clementine. It's been updated, finally.

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Name-Not-Applicable@reddit

I have tried Stawberry, Rhythmbox, and others, and I keep coming back to VLC.

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Macdaddyaz_24@reddit

I use Cider since I came from Apple Music

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itouchdennis@reddit

Same

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TheBlackCarlo@reddit

Fooyin because it actually respects my folder structure. Also, at work I use Foobar2000, so discovering Fooyin was really nice.

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NoAcanthopterygii633@reddit

I use harmony music, its good

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pm_a_cup_of_tea@reddit

Mocp mpg123 for an individual file because I hate everything about this post, sorry*

*Its not personal I put in a foul move by reading a post where someone actually typed along the lines of "..like, i want program in C++" and that just destroyed me for the rest of the day

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ZuraJanaiUtsuroDa@reddit

Modern apps:

Gapless for local library.

Recordbox can display lyrics.

Amberol for single file opening or small playlists.

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MasterGeekMX@reddit

I mostly run GNOME Lollypop and KDE Elisa, depending on which desktop I'm using (I have Plasma on the desktop and GNOME on the laptop).

I like my music players to work as jukeboxes: see my album arts as a grid, then selecting one album and playing start to finish. I don't do playlists, whatever scrobbing is, or any of that.

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rabbit_in_a_bun@reddit

mpv. I like having only a single tool for the job and in Gentoo I set it to build only with the formats I use.

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CrossyAtom46@reddit

I use harmonoid and plex web

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figmentcharm@reddit

Honestly at this point I use cmus, which is a CLI music player. It's great! Really easy to navigate once you learn the syntax.

For GUI apps I use Strawberry which I really like except it's either hard or impossible to convince it to go to dark mode when running in gnome.

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amadeusp81@reddit

I also use Quod Libet. I am hoping that Euphonica might be my next music player: https://github.com/htkhiem/euphonica.

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LRaccoon@reddit (OP)

Looks like it has great potential

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amadeusp81@reddit

Yeah, I think so too!

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gnerfed@reddit

Honestly, I just play music via emby.

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FengLengshun@reddit

I just use Haruna. Since my Foobar2000/iTunes/Realtime Player days, I'm used to keeping all my music organized. So it's not a big deal to just drag and drop playlists or songs into a normal player.

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sublime_369@reddit

Basic 'play from clicking file or folder' player -> Audacious.

Full on music manager and player -> Strawberry.

Best sound reproduction for AY and SID chip tunes -> DeadBeef.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

I tried strawberry but i didn't like it as much as quodlibet.

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theblu3j@reddit

kew and fooyin kew for simplicity, open up folder of songs, hit play, hit shuffle fooyin for anything more advanced, like if I wanted to play a specific genre, or only one or multiple artist(s), from the enormous folder of songs.

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Tempus_Nemini@reddit

Cmus is enough for me

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tripanossoma_cruzes@reddit

Been using cmus for more than a decade.

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Odd-Possession-4276@reddit

Lyrion + Material Skin + Electron wrapper.

Looks great, very flexible in terms of features, being a single place to control multiple endpoints can be very convenient.

Slimserver → Logitech Media Server → Lyrion Music Server is a huge success story for FOSS as a foundation for commercial products by itself. It survived the original business' acquisition, being neglected by the parent company for about a decade, and transitioned to being community-maintained and not relying on an auxiliary cloud service.

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julianoniem@reddit

MUSIC APPS:

sayonara
lollypop
Fooyin (best foobar clone)
quod libet

SYSTEM WIDE EQUALIZER:

JamesDSP (JDSP4Linux)
EasyEffects (buggy compared to JamrsDSP)

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PixelmancerGames@reddit

I just use Rhythmbox. Works fine. I tried Lollipop and Clementine.... Strawberry. Rhythmbox is better, imo.

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i-got-shadowbanned@reddit

i started using musicpod recently, it can do local audio, podcasts, and radio all in one and i like it a lot.

https://flathub.org/en/apps/org.feichtmeier.Musicpod

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No-Goat6405@reddit

Excelente !!

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Optimal-Procedure885@reddit

Lyrion, hands down better than anything that’s been mentioned thus far.

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alastortenebris@reddit

Fooyin and Audacious

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C0rn3j@reddit

Tauon Music Box - https://github.com/Taiko2k/Tauon

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J-Christian-B@reddit

For me, the best multimedia player is: Music Bee

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randye@reddit

Audacious is one of great first things I install. It’s simple, and the search function works exactly like I want it to. It looks more modern than a lot of the others listed here, or you can make it look just like Winamp and use skins.

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krumpfwylg@reddit

I have been using Quod Libet which is actually great but it lacks the polished UI and “modern-app” features like an album-cover view, shuffle with ease, built-in lyrics display,

Quodlibet has plugins for album cover, lyrics, and shuffle options. But they might not be activated by default, check the list (in menu File --> Plugins)

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beefcat_@reddit

I run foobar2000 in Wine on both Linux and macOS. I simply haven't found a native player for either OS that gives me the same functionality and degree of customization. It also runs spectacularly well with Wine, needing only a couple Winetricks to really smooth it out.

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elementrick@reddit

Dopamine

Modern, feature-rich and actively maintained

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LRaccoon@reddit (OP)

I might go with this one, thank you

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