What's your favorite music player on Linux?
What's your favorite music player on Linux?
Mine is Strawberry since it has a ton of options and plays a ton of formats. It's also (distant) fork of Amarok 1.4 and integrates well with KDE Plasma. I'm curious what other people are using these days. What's your favorite player?
Agreed, with the exception of album covers. I like it all to look nice on my Hidizs when I'm on the go.
More of a gmpc kinda person. Unless there's a better GUI for mpd out there?
There's always mpdas for scrobbling
VLC
mpv
I also mostly use VLC these days. I also use it on android, with a copy of my flac library on my microSD there too.
dd if=/dev/urandom | aplaySo you like jazz?
Only free jazz
I was about to suggest of=/dev/dsp, but that devnode doesn't seem to be in use anymore
CMUS! I'm surprised more people aren't using this. It's very cool, ultra lightweight, and easy to use. Maybe I just like stuff that runs in the console.
cmus is great, it checks all my boxes, and is much easier to work with than mpd imo. The only downside for me is that I can't see any of the cover art :(
That is so true. I never thought about that.
There is no great/simple linux music player with proper cover display. Eliza was so wonky when I tried it months ago, the most simple functions didn't work properly (like sorting for release year etc.)
Also the hotkeys are terrible, I really really want to use it properly, but those shortcuts are horrid.
MPD + ncmpcpp, I hate both and I'm yet to find anything better.
mpd is the best music player on any system
I’ve started using Cantata as a graphical front end, though
I feel this. If you could right click to interact with the text objects, then this combo would basically feel like foobar2000 for linux. I'm old enough to have missed how great foobar2000 felt after WinAmp started to get bloated (back before I got my hands on some Linux ISOs), so MPD + ncmpcpp just felt so refreshingly stripped down and a little nostalgic. I just fucking hate having to memorize a bunch of non-intuitive hotkey combos to do anything. Probably the same reason I've never bothered to properly learn Vim.
I'm an Emacs graybeard, so complex keybindings don't scare me. My problem with ncmpcpp is twofold:
- It relies on MPD which is always a PITA to properly configure. Pulseaudio always managed to make it not work on a fresh system. Hopefully with Pipewire it'll be better.
- The config format make no sense whatsoever. Especially the one with keybindings. It's so cryptic I just stopped trying to understand it. Again, I'm an Emacs graybeard, to stress it as a point of reference.
When I'm using Windows, I still use foobar2000 for listening to radio streams.
vim
Mom: switch that off!
Kid: I can't!
Emacs
I tried several and I very much appreciate Quod Libet
That said I'm interested in trying others' suggestions 👌
VLC
DeaDBeeF Player, I like lightweight and simple music players.
My fave too as it's closest to foobar, critically with the tagging interface I prefer. Have you added any additional plugins to your install? I tried adding a few (music library, Discord Rich Presence) but must be the right sort of stupid not to understand the instructions. facepalm
VLC
yes, VLC for gui, cmus for cli.
nvlc/ vlc -I ncurses for cli.
As a bonus: also runs on my phone.
Tauon Music Box. I just point it at my Navidrome instance and hit shuffle usually.
I've been using Tauon for years now and I still love it.
I use this with my Jellyfin server, but holy shit has it been wonky. I hit shuffle on my entire library and there's albums it's never even played and other with more plays than other albums combined.
Rhythmbox. It was pre-installed on Ubuntu back when I was on Ubuntu, and I kinda just got used to it. Strawberry looks really cool though, I may have to give it a try
Rhythmbox is great and works well for editing tags for my 15,000 track library. I went to Lollypop for a while trying to get some more features but I ended up back at Rhythmbox.
Spotify 🫥
Dies by open-source crowd linching
Tarred and feathered.
With that said I do buy music for my Plex. 🥹
It's the one I use most, even though it sucks. I like that I can control it with my phone
Spotify (adblock) from the AUR 😈
No ads & you can still login to your account
Have you heard of spotube?
Spotifyd + spotifytui
Clementine
Development on Clementine has slowed down considerably compared to Strawberry
Yes but clementine still has features not yet in strawberry.
That's kind of the point.
Clementine originally forked from Amarok 1.4 because Amarok 2.0 changed too much.
I was using Clementine for a long time and switched to Strawberry about a year ago. Since they're related, migrating libraries from one to the other was also possible.
Still Clementine for me.
Quod Libet
Still awesome!
I don't really love any that I've tried so far, but I dislike Audacious the least. FLAC, Musepack, and ReplayGain support are requirements for my library.
The last one I loved was foobar2000 on Windows, which supplanted Winamp. Linux UIs mostly feel a bit clunky by comparison. When the window has focus I like to have spacebar for pause/play, arrows up/down for primary gain, and arrows left/right for seek.
YES, foobar2000!
I also gravitated towards Audacious, but I foobar2000 was 10/10. Might consider running it through Wine, since Audacious is not quite there unfortunately
I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that spotify sucks, they hate artists but love Joe Rogan. If you can't buy albums via bandcamp, Tidal offers quality and royalties far superior to Spottily. You can transfer your playlist in a few clicks and the price is almost identical (6 accounts for like $15/m).
One Swedish company for another. Joke aside, isn't the whole problem with royalties in the music scene still the issue that the record labels taking 90% of profits?
Thr issue with spotify I have is only one. Its pretty good at predicting new songs with radio that I may like and I usually use the radio feature as I dont like to repeat my own playlists over and over.
Tidal's algorythm is excellent for suggestions and the radio feature works well. I wasn't sure at first but after a few months of listening to my stuff, Tidal strated to get really good at suggestions. My only issue left is how picky the search engine is Any spelling mistake will get you no results, but I can live with that. I work in studio environnement so getting access to uncompressed master files is huge for me.
Tidal sucks for EDM. Trance and progressive in particular.
But didn't they had the issue with supporting MQA, which kinda was a scam? As far as I know they now switched to FLAC, but it still feels a bit weird.
Yeah MQA felt indeed bit of a weird for a lossy codec. FLAC is a real lossless format that's been around for a long time, I'm glad they now use it. I like the fact that Tidal can be set to different quality on wi-fi vs phone data. Anyway, Tidal is still a buisness with only profit as a goal, but they give 3 times more to artists. Best way to support artist will always be by going to shows and buying albums and merchs, but most people wants a streaming sevice so IMO Tidal is the best right now. One day maybe Funkwhale or another decentralized option will offer a real revenu model for artists.
Audacious
With the original Winamp skin.
I just have my music collection in Playlist and use Audacious to play them. All the music in the Playlist are saved in relative format so I can just copy the folders and keep the same Playlists
I ended up writing a perl script to generate a .m3u from a root music directory that shuffles all the subdirs so I can listen to full albums in random order instead of just tracks.
mpv --no-video --shuffle
I use CMUS because I mainly work within terminal, without a mouse, and the controls feel like Vim
- Cmus.
- mpg123 4 internet radios.
- FFplay | mpv.
- zxtune.
- Years ago: moc or deadbeef (because foobar2000).
mpd
Audacious with winamp skins, weening off windows' foobar2000 as an old favorite, jellyamp, amberol occasionally
Check out Deadbeef, it looks like it might be what foobar was on windows (at least partially).
There is no program I miss quite as much as winamp. It really kicked the lama's ass.
Audacious with a winamp skin. Nostalgic.
amberol
I love Strawberry!
Feishin, Audacious and Strawberry
Elisa for when i want my whole music library (it is a bit lacking in features tho), audacious w/ winamp classic skin (vibes) when im just playing files on my kde plasma box, and cmus on my qtile setup :3 also sicmuplayer on android cuz its the best
Yeah, put me down for Strawberry too. I used to use Rhythmbox up until mid 2023, I started to get into high res music and I got a tidal subscription, so switched to Strawberry.
Can Strawberry interface with iPods?
Yes
Since I‘m only listen to music on Apple Music, I use Cider.
About 2 years ago, I moved my music to Jellyfin and have been using their media players on every platform I use (iOS, FireTV, Ubuntu, and Windows). At this point my music library is close to 200 GB, kinda hard to store that much on every device I own.
Strawberry is also great if you are on windows as well. I support it in general, whether you use it on Windows or Linux. I've been using it whenever I want to listen to my music on my windows machine. Definitely gonna be using it with my next Linux machine (that isn't my absolute dogshit laptop). Before learning about Strawberry, I was just using Foobar2000 or VLC, which both just don't feel anywhere near as good to me than Strawberry.
Yep. I used Winamp (and still do to an extent) but wanted to find a FOSS alternative that I can start slowly leaning into so it's painless when I migrate to Linux next year. So far, Strawberry is the only one I've found that I enjoy using on a daily basis.
Clementine. I sometimes use the Navidrome web UI too.
Lollypop. Simple interface that shows me album art. I can't always remember band names or artist names but I know what the damn album cover looks like 👍
Agreed.
The feature I like the most in Lollypop is the party mode. It lets the user select various music genres from your library and it plays songs that match the selected options
I must try that. Thanks 👍
When I used Ubuntu, I liked Rhythmbox. I tried Clementine and I also liked it. Nowadays, I use Strawberry on MX Linux. It is similar to Clementine.
Its similar to Clementine because it is a fork of Clementine. https://wiki.strawberrymusicplayer.org/wiki/Differences_from_Clementine
mpd + ncmpcpp
I just use mpv
Nothing honestly. Couldn't find a music player that doesn't look like a file manager, has good search and queue features and doesn't make strong assumptions about how music is organized. Tried to run Musicolet through waydroid but it doesn't support Nvidia gpus
Have you tried Lollypop?
It assumes music is organized by albums. No options to view by folder or track.
For the most part I use
ncmpcppwithmpd, but sometimes whenever I just want to listen to a single file I usempv --no-videoinstead....lightweight media server Super fast indexing. Smooth web client. Also supports the subsonic api. I've been using the web client locally for some years now. I can also access my library on the go with substreamer on Android which is great. https://github.com/epoupon/lms
I simply play music using mpv.
My distro came with Rhythmbox and I've pretty much just stuck with it. It does podcasts and radio which I appreciate and I can also edit track metadata in it. For playing music from my file browser I use MPV because it's fast.
Strawberry.
Our desktops are almost identical, lol.
Strawberry [clementine fork]
Clementine
I stream from my Navidrome server, Supersonic is great.
+1 for navidrome running on my nas
I use the navidrome server and web player on my Linux os and my phone.
You use supersonic to connect to navidrome as the front end? Any advantage?
No one really. I've tried a bunch but never found one that felt just right. Clementine is the one that gets the closest.
I really wish MusicBee had a Linux port, it's the only thing I miss from Windows.
Clementine
If you liked Clementine, check out Strawberry. Clementine hasn't been updated since 2016. Strawberry is a fork of the Clementine code base and essentially picks up where Clementine left off.
I love MusicBee. Was browsing through this post to see if anyone recommended anything that is similar to it, but still nothing.
Man, I miss MusicBee, it was a beast. I wish it was on Linux.
How do you get dark mode in Strawberry under KDE? I remember trying to follow some guides and not having much luck. But that was a long time ago at this point. Does this "just work" now?
Should just work with the defaults but check these settings:
Thanks! I checked and actually, dark mode was already on. Huh. I guess I haven't tried since...I don't even know. Maybe I didn't have qt6 installed last time?
VLC when I'm listening to local files,
ncspotfor Spotify.Probably a tie between audacious, strawberry, and qmmp
Rythmbox. Syncs to my iPod Classic.
I wish RhythmBox can sync with my iPhone so I don’t need to rely on expensive or semi working MP3 Player app on App Store to listen to music
Strawberry+1
MPD + Cantata
For the most part I just lump all my music into one playlist regardless of album or genre, but day to day I also use several different computers, and I find MPD to be the best for syncing configurations across all of them. Cantata also allows me to see album artwork and track information really easily and has good touchscreen support compared to terminal-based MPD clients.+1 for Cantata! Although it's not maintained, there's really nothing missing from it. It's complete as it is! Plays anything and you can also have your podcasts and web radio stations in it.
I agree with Strawberry. I'd love if Music Bee ever got a linux port or equivalent though
Amarok 1.4 from TDE
Rhythmbox
Just mpv for me. Simplest and most versatile option
Going to ask here, anyone know a music player that is similar to AIMP? It has no native support, unfortunately.
I'm also curious if anyone has any recommendations on this. I've used it for so many years that it's hard to switch to anything else! I've just been running it through Lutris on my main computer.
Dopamine 3 is the closest to AIMP as far I know. I also use it on Windows.
if I'm using gui on my laptop, then amberol
if I'm using my headless server, then you can't get anything better than mpd
Seconding this. MPD + ncmpcpp + an MPRIS plugin. With the latter I can control the music playback through global keyboard shortcuts and the system tray UI if necessary.
Sayonara
sayonara is very useful for those who have a large offline library
- plus i like the visual ascetic of viewing my library by album covers
Clementine
strawberry-qt5 from AUR
I use Lollypop, I think it is pretty neat and pretty, it also recommends me an album of the day
mpd + Emacs frontend. There are dozens of us
used to be a rhythmbox guy but I've been using audacious for a few years now
Tori. Play music in your terminal. Built in rust and has great performance, and low trace on memory impact.
I've always just used audacious. It's been good. That said, I recently installed plex amp and the more I used it, the more I like it!
Quod Libet is my current favorite. It gives me a lot of the features and layout I used in Foobar2000 in Windows and isn't gigantic.
I like G4Music, beautiful and straightforward
Rhythmbox and Strawberry are the best, IMO. Rhythmbox has a lower impact on system resources but Strawberry is ideal for people with extensive music collections that you store offline like I do.
Elisa, better thank strawberry imo
mpdevil! It's got a nice GTK4/Adwaita UI, integrates with mpd, and gets out of your way.
Mpd and Cantata. Deadbeef for playing from a directory or for conversation. I haven't found anything as good as cantata but I have to admit that I miss the monolithic and do everything of musicbee.
Lollypop and Deadbeef
Tauon Music Box available on Flathub. You look for albums by typing on your keyboard. Once you see the result which says "Artist", hit enter. It creates a playlist which shows all the albums of that playlist. The next time you want to listen to that artist, start typing and select "[Artist name] playlist". This concept differs from a traditional concept of playlists, because it doesn't actually create playlists you can use or export. I just like the UI, although the play controls are bit weird, they don't quite work the way you'd expect them to. It's a new project but worth keeping an eye on.
Tidal app from AUR and MPD.
Amberol for its simplicity and esthetics
Tauon Music Box is minimalist and is also probably the best open source Spotify player.
Sometimes I'll just run Spotifyd and control it with my phone.
I settled with Navidrome. It solves 2 use cases for me. Due to being web based it can be used by any PC or mobile device with access to my server. Additionally it supports subsonic which allows me to use a native android app (ultrasonic) and have music on the go. I don't use services like Spotify.
Sayonara.
Mpd has always served me well. I use ncccmmmmppp (however its spelled) to manage playlists and such. For album artwork I run sxiv pointed at file in /tmp/. I forget how that part works, actually. I have a grid layout on a second monitor, so I just square up the mpd client and sxiv. Doesn't look too bad.
Semi-related, but as a project I ripped out the pressure/impact pads of an old midi keyboard for use as prev/(pause/unpause)/next buttons, so if the song sucks I can literally punch my desk to skip it.
ncccmmmmppp (however its spelled)
Thanks fish shell for suggesting me the right name with just “nc” ’cause I can’t remember it either
I use Sonixd as the frontend to my Navidrome server, and it's the bees knees.
I wish MediMonkey was on Linux...
Ncmcpp, MPV with scripts
I used to use Strawberry, but my collection has grown enough that I can't just sync it everywhere, so I use Jellyfin now. I still use Strawberry's library management to move files into
album artist/album/00 - track.extthough. Someday I'll dig into id3v2 to just write a script instead.If you want to continue to use Strawberry, you could stream your music with a subsonic server, Strawberry supports that.
For me it was the other way round: I was using Nextcloud music and searched for a music player on Linux that could stream my .flac-collection via subsonic. That is how I found Strawberry.
Quodlibet
Clementine. Strawberry is getting there but still doesn't have as many features.
Edit: huh, I didn't expect a downvote on Lemmy for my opinion. Is reddit leaking through? Weird.
Yeah I miss the visualizations in clementine, and project M doesn't seem to work for me on my system w strawberry. It loads but it doesn't seem like it's responding to playing music.
Depending on how it's packaged, the visualizations might be missing. I noticed that too.
Considering that I'm using Emby (selfhost), it's able to manage my music collection too and I can play the music from the web player exposed by it.
Plexamp all the way, easily the sexiest music player I've found so far. All my music is FLAC pulled from Deezer, and since I've got a very large list of artists tracked, it's super easy to discover new music with the radio and sonic analysis features. It's also got a last.fm integration, which gives me more data than Spotify would about my listening habits.
The only feature I'm really missing in it is collaborative playlists. I can share playlists out to anyone on my Plex server, but they can't add or remove songs.
Couldn't find any that works for me. At the moment I just play my music in mpv from terminal.
I just really love mplayer
Feishin for me and occasionally strawberry
I use apple music. On linux I use Ciderwhich is amazing. Super clean interface and lots of nobs to turn in order to make everything sound and behave the way I like. If you like apple music or are looking for a streaming solution cider is awesome.
navidrome + ultrasonic
Mostly CMUS. Clementine on rare occasions.
Schism Tracker
Spotifyd
Is there a winamp clone?
Audacious with Winamp classic skin
qmmp
Foobar2000 has been here for YEAAAARS, and I don't think there is a good enough equivalent for linux, and by that I mean playlist tabs, global shortcuts, etc
It's the best. Thankfully it still works just fine under Wine, even if I haven't really bothered to use it there lately.
I have to say Supersonic.
It's a Subsonic player that integrate with my Airsonic instance in Docker.
It requires a backend like Airsonic, Navidrome etc. It's not a stand alone player.
I just use Navidrome's web client. It does everything I need. DSub on Android.
Dolphin + mpv for me so I can see the album covers and metadata and see whats available, if I have a specific song in mind, then ill just use the terminal and mpv.
I usually listen to music on YouTube when I'm using a computer. When I play my own music, it's from my Plex server with plexamp with a phone. I rarely use the plexamp desktop app.
On Windows, I like Plexamp since I can keep all my music on a Plex server and access it whereever. There's a Linux version but I haven't tried it on Linux yet.
cmus is my favorite, elisa is my second favorite.
i use foobar because i can't live without dolby headphone
MOC
Firefox (invidious). Its free, no ads, and I dont have to store files locally.
I used to use Amarok, but now I have a subscription to Youtube Music. It gives me a lot of flexibility on running it in a browser or on Android without worrying about syncing.
I really like Elisa.
I mostly use it to listen to music that's not in my Jellyfin library yet but it does that beautifully.
Plex or Plexamp with Tidal integration.
Aqualung—does the small set of things I need it to, and is content to operate on files and directories rather than force the creation of a "music library" that doesn't in any way match how I categorize my music (although if you actually want a music library, it can do that). Only issue is that it's still GTK2, which may become a problem within the next few years.
mocp
Spotify-wayland on hyprland. And I also definetly dont have SpotX-bash, a great spotify adblocker installed!
Haven't used it in a while but Amberol is simple (all I need) and gorgeous (which I care about).
On Android its NewPipe. No ads, free, I can create playlists, and I dont have to store anything local.
Try RiMusic on F-Droid. FOSS front-end to YT Music, like having Premium without a subscription. Aside from some crashing and offline downloads issues, it's great.
Foobar2000, which is a Windows application but available as a snap using wine.
I really want to use DeaDBeeF because it is Linux native and has similar customization features (I like big album art, for example), but sadly its library management leaves a lot to be desired compared to Foobar's. I don't want to have to generate a playlist every time I want to listen to an album, nor do I want to have to clear that playlist when I'm done.
I haven't found any other player with even remotely similar customization available.
