What do you think the best Music Player is?

[humphreybc]

This isn't really a question per se, but more of a "guide" thingy for new users to have a look at regarding what people think is the best music player. I know when I first installed Ubuntu it took me about 3 or 4 music players to finally get to one that I liked the most! I do suppose it's each to their own, but I'd like to see what other people think!

Post the name of the music player, and the pros and cons in your opinion. I'll start!

Exaile

Pros: Very fast and responsive, my media buttons work straight off the bat, good plugin support, has a neat blacklist feature so you can delete songs from your playlist and they'll never get added back into the playlist again and it has an "entire library" playlist by default.

Cons: Not skinnable, doesn't have an option to rip/write CDs, can't really change the layout much.

It's my favourite player out of the ones I have tried so far!

[iKonaK]

Unfortunately there is no "best music player" each one has his fair share of "flaws"...

[arrancaru]

Amarok
Pros: plugin system, keyboard control, great features
Cons: consume resources a bit

[humphreybc]

Yes but what do you use and why?

[Maverick1385]

Songbird

Pros: plug-ins, themes, connectivity, simple design fits well with my theme.
Cons: no ipod touch/iphone support (yet), consumes a little bit of resources but not as much as amarok, they say its still buggy but haven't experienced any problems yet.

i tried amarok but i find the KDE 4 UI to be space consuming, clunky and didn't like the overall experience.

[billgoldberg]

That's hard to say.

I now use Rhythmbox (the one that's installed by default).

I used to prefer Banshee, Beep (and it's spin off), Exaile, MPD with Sonata, Listen, Gmusicbrowser, ...

When I just want to play one song, I open up Nautilus and it opens with Totem.

When I'm going to listen to multiple songs I use Rhythmbox.

[gn2]

I use Amarok, seems the best at managing my music collection.

[jjgomera]

gmusicbrowser

pros: light, customizable, powerful player and library manager
cons: dont suport playlist, and mp3 player

[balaknair]

Amarok 1.4
Does the best job at managing my collection.

I tried Amarok 2, but though the new UI looked better than that of 1.4, numerous small bugs and crashes(like when enqueing numerous tracks), fewer Scripts available + poorer support in Gnome(like the Gnome Multimedia keys script in 1.4) and inability to configure the layout pushed me back to 1.4.

Pros: the best at managing music collections, especially with MySQL for large collections(of all players on any OS), availability of plugins and scripts(sort of like Firefox and its addons). UI not pretty but very functional, excellent playlist management

Cons: Additional resources used when running under Gnome, poor visual integration with Gnome(looks out of place), some stuff like playlist to CD burning doesn't work under Gnome, no playlist tabs.

[logos34]

Amarok 1.4
Does the best job at managing my collection.

I tried Amarok 2, but though the new UI looked better than that of 1.4, numerous small bugs and crashes(like when enqueing numerous tracks), fewer Scripts available + poorer support in Gnome(like the Gnome Multimedia keys script in 1.4) and inability to configure the layout pushed me back to 1.4.

Pros: the best at managing music collections, especially with MySQL for large collections(of all players on any OS), availability of plugins and scripts(sort of like Firefox and its addons). UI not pretty but very functional, excellent playlist management

Cons: Additional resources used when running under Gnome, poor visual integration with Gnome(looks out of place), some stuff like playlist to CD burning doesn't work under Gnome, no playlist tabs.

+1

Although I don't mind the slight cosmetic difference of amarok in gnome, or the fact that it's a bit bloated (considering all it does)...But it does have some glaring insufficiencies, like certain keyboard shortcuts, the ability to toggle sidebar views, etc...it's really annoying that the devs have never added that functionality or extra options to menubar, some stuff you can only do with right-click of mouse. My pet peeve is the broken xine cddb fetch for CD Audio, but that is apparently a xine problem.

[ALIENDUDE5300]

Functionality wise, Songbird is probably the best. It is constantly being developed, and it supports add ons to enhance functionality. This is only an opinion of course, but you might want to check it out. If you are looking for a lightweight player that supports almost all formats, is cross-platform, fast, and doesn't have a bulky interface, then I suggest using VLC.

[cptrohn]

Functionality wise, Songbird is probably the best. It is constantly being developed, and it supports add ons to enhance functionality. This is only an opinion of course, but you might want to check it out. If you are looking for a lightweight player that supports almost all formats, is cross-platform, fast, and doesn't have a bulky interface, then I suggest using VLC.

Is songbird available in the repositories? I tried to look for it earlier there and the search came back with nothing through synaptic.. (it is supposed to have the best support for the Sansa Fuse)

[snova]

Is songbird available in the repositories? I tried to look for it earlier there and the search came back with nothing through synaptic.. (it is supposed to have the best support for the Sansa Fuse)

No, it isn't.

Its home page is here: http://getsongbird.com/

The download link is hard to miss; download and unpack it wherever you like. Run it from inside the directory, it doesn't install anywhere.

[supersonicdarky]

MPD

+: few resources, multitude of frontends (including cli ones - perfect for me), runs as a daemon so it continues playing when there is no X/it crashes, can be controlled remotely, no useless features (lyrics, cover art, etc)
-: none

if you want scrobbling support get something like scmpc or mpdscribble

[bapoumba]

Moved to Recurring Discussions.

[leonardo_neo]

I use Rhythmbox the default player.

Pros: Light weight, plugin has lyrics finder support,finds thumbnails, easy to find songs, almost good quality of sound.

Cons: I don't find any graphic equalizer :( . Sound processing could have been better than the default setting. Anyway I am happy with this player.

[Simian Man]

Rhythymbox.

Pros: All of the features it has work well.
Cons: Not a whole lot of features.

No other music player I have tried has the Pro I listed above. I am hoping Banshee will get there soon.

[Robert505189]

I have been very pleased with just the default Rythmbox

[RedRat]

I have Rhythmbox, Songbird, and Amarok installed. Any one of these seems to be ok.

When I first installed and began using Amarok, I kind of found it to be a bit painful. Its menu bar is a bit odd, but now after using it, I find it quite useful in that you can edit the meta labels of your music. It organizes your music collection by Artist and then album then songs. This is the way I tend to approach what I listen to. I am running Amarok 1.4.9.1 under Gnome and it seems to work fine. I like it also because I can listen to internet radio via Shoutcast broadcasts. There is supposed to be a newer version of Amarok, but it is not yet in the synaptic package manager and from what I have read here and elsewhere, the interface is tricky and buggy. Hopefully that will improve.

Now Songbird does much the same thing and has a sligtly snazzier interface. I have not yet tried it on editing the meta labels of songs. But it works ok, you might want to give it a try.

I have tried Rhythmbox but I listen to Shoutcast more frequently than my local music and have yet to find out how to do Shoutcast. Since Amarok and Songbird do Shoutcast stations, I would tend to stick with them. Frankly, in the end, I don't find Rhythmbox all that useful, but then that is me.

[Primefalcon]

I'd have to say I like VLC