Funkwhale: you can share your music library but you need a server.
“The state of Linux music players” but no mention of Audacious or Deadbeef? For shame.
I’ve used VLC in WIndows forever, but it started giving me glitchy behavior in Ubuntu. Tried to upgrade to see if it was an old version/Snap thing, got frustrated with it not working. So I went through all the lists of Linux players, tried most of them. I like Audacious. It’s not perfect, but it works well, and I can deal with some of the minor things that are more preferences than problems. That’s all I wanted.
Yeah, I did not expect them to do that title justice, because how in the hell could anyone try 200 music players, but how did they get down to 7 and somehow skip some of the most popular players…? Did all of those somehow look broken on their setup? 🫠
Deadbeef comes the closest to what I want in a music player. If I could get rid of the playlist display at the bottom and edit tags, it would be perfect.
No mention of VLC?
Ive been using vlc so long I forgot there was anything else…
No disrespect. VLC was my go to on windows (Microsoft free these days). But with so many better options on Linux, I find it to be kinda mid compared to say:
But to each their own! 🫡
This is weirdly timely, considering I installed Feishin last week in my never-ending quest to find a music player that’s as familiar and useful to me as iTunes.
Initially I was put off at having to also install Navidrome just to be able to listen to the music I alredy have available to me, but ultimately it’s ok. And yeah, Feishin is nice. Perhaps a little ‘busy’, but compared to Strawberry it’s minimal, stripped down application. I know everyone seems to love Strawberry, but I hate it. I shouldn’t have to make a playlist in order to be able to listen to an album. Just let me press play on the sodding album!
Anyway, yeah +1 for Feishin here.
For iTunes based music player there is also rhythmbox which is standalone (no subsonic server needed). It’s what i used until i ultimately switched to navidrome + supersonic. I’ll check out feishin since that didn’t come up in my initial search last year. Ive liked supersonic though. It has a decent, simple UI and you can play albums by clicking on them
Edit: ok feishin seems pretty cool. I might stick with this
I only listen to albums (I have zero playlists) and I just double click on an album in Strawberry to listen to it.
For my mpd + ncmpcpp folks I would highly recommend RMPC. It’s more of a modern take on TUI players (and actually supports displaying album covers!)
That does look neat, album covers are definitely a feature that’s sorely missing from ncmpcpp!
Cue sheets are important.
What are cue sheets?
.cue files are there to inform your player about where songs/chapters start in a record. It’s mostly for situation where you have ripped CDs as singular files and not tracks. It’s a frequent occurence in lossless torrents (.flac, .alac, .wav, audiocd territory) and the reasoning behind that may be that it keeps the most exact copy of a CD without any user-side interference, and .cue files are text files laying alongside your cd rip (and probably a log of ripping). Such interference may also be seen as unwanted in some cases, e.g. when the record is mastered that way one track seemlessly flows into another, so any way to cut between them is arguable.
Ah, neat that makes sense, thanks for explaining!
I always used CUE splitting software to separate tracks.
I’ve done that for export to portable devices and for use in video editing, but other than that I keep them intact to keep seeding the original file without producing duplicates.
I need lidarr to support them
Lollypop is actually a GTK3 app (it looks pretty dated on my mostly GKT4 GNOME setup) and it’s imo still the best GNOME music app. I’m honestly suprised they say Lollypop’s UX sucks but then praise RecordBox’s because I can’t stand RecordBox (why make me double click to play a song* and don’t get me started on the Artist+Album view). Also surprised Gapless didn’t get mentioned here, I think this is actually pretty decent though its queue system could use work.
*The dev says this choice is so you can select songs and instead you should use the little play button next on the right side of all playable entries.
Feishin, SuperSonic, cmus, and kew are the only ones I really like with kew being my personal favourite.
I don’t need much from my music player as I just like to hit shuffle on all my songs (6000+) and kew just does that.
I’ve also started thinking about doing streaming music again as I currently have a month trial with Qobuz and I really like it. Thankfully lastnight I was FINALLY able to find a linux Qobuz player, QBZ, that works very well as I’m not a fan of the Qobuz webplayer.
I feel stuck between players that feel old and aged like Strawberry, and yet more electron apps like feishin. I’ve been using Supersonic, but I’d like to see more variety
wait spin a docker container with navidrome and another docker with aonsoku web player and call it done or use any subsonic compatible clients. And this work anywhere!
Quod Libet’s my player of choice
Doesn’t even mention deadbeef lmao
What a nice article. I use Kodi as my music player, or rather my multimedia center. My PC is hooked up to a 7.1 surround amplifier and my TV and I basically run Kodi all day.
Perhaps it would be more power efficient to use something else if I’m only playing music, though. I used to use MPD.
Really missing smth like musicbee :(
