Versitile, intutive, well-supported music player for Linux?

September 14, 2015 6:46 AM

I have a huge pile of digital music in a wide variety of formats (FLAC, WAV, AIFF, MP3, M4A, etc.) and am looking for a Linux music player. I've got some specific - and maybe pipedreamish- requirements:

1. That this thing be able to play a wide range of file formats.

2. That the interface be reasonably intuitive.

3. That it not be something that is going to dry up and blow away, but has a reasonably solid user base / development community / etc.

4. That allows me to export playlists, etc. for recycling in another player if it does go away.

I'm currently using Rhythmbox, and it isn't cutting it.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated - I'd like to be able to organize this stuff and listen to it easily once and for all.

posted by ryanshepard to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

i use mpd and ncmpcpp / mpdroid. mpd is a "music server" - it's the thing that actually plays the music (mpd supports all those formats, afaik). it also manages playlists, which can be "exported" (they're just m3u files in a directory, again afaik).

because mpd is a server, you need a client program to interact with it. the client is the "user interface". there are various clients. i use ncmpcpp from computers, but you probably won't like it - it's an curses style (text) interface. on android i use mpdroid which is pretty, but not very flexible. so i don't really have a client that i can recommend (but as i said, several others do exist).

mpd has been around for years, is widely used and actively supported. the clients are perhaps less durable, but i've been using ncmpcpp for years too.
posted by andrewcooke at 6:59 AM on September 14, 2015

I have been using Clementine for years (since a couple years after Amarok 2.0 came out, so maybe 5 years?). I love it.

It looks like it still has commits going on its github page so that's good. I'm would think it allows exporting playlists, but I'm not sure, I have never used that feature.

I've been using its organization features for moving loads of files around for the last year or so and have been quite happy with it.
posted by DJWeezy at 7:19 AM on September 14, 2015

I use Banshee, which is the default music player on Linux Mint. For that reason, it seems pretty unlikely to dry up and blow away.

From the FAQ, on file formats:

Does Banshee support audio/video format X (mp3, aac, mpeg, etc)?
Banshee uses GStreamer for audio and video decoding (playing) and encoding (ripping, format conversions). Whatever codecs you have installed for GStreamer, Banshee will be able to use (with a small number of exceptions)

I find the interface easy to use. It allows exporting of playlists. It also scrobbles to last.fm, if that's your bag. I would recommend it.
posted by daisyk at 8:18 AM on September 14, 2015

I'm not sure if it meets your "intuitive" requirement, but I believe that VLC meets all of your other requirements. It plays pretty much all formats; it has a solid developer base; it can export playlists. Don't be put off that it started as a video player.
posted by clawsoon at 8:27 AM on September 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

I use foobar + wine, the Windows version doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon and it meets all other requirements.
posted by Bangaioh at 8:38 AM on September 14, 2015

Audacious works great for me (and my wife's) desktops. Excellent GNOME3 integration too with this extension.
posted by Poldo at 9:08 AM on September 14, 2015

Linux certainly has a wide range of music players that can meet your needs. Certainly take your time playing around with the top picks here.

I would say that there are some excellent choices here, and I would like to add Exaile to the list. It seems to tick all the boxes for you. I like the very straightforward UI compared to some other players.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 11:30 AM on September 14, 2015

I've used Quod Libet for years. One thing I like about it is being able to show only album artists in the browser instead of all track artists, so albums with guests or featured artists don't clutter up the list.

I'm not sure if you can export playlists, but they're stored in simple text files with a filename on each line, so they should be pretty simple to import.
posted by floomp at 12:19 PM on September 14, 2015