What Music Player Do Yo Recommend For GNOME?

[k1dicarus]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a sleek, sexy music player, like Amarok, but for GNOME. I'm sure some of you will say, "then use Amarok.." but is that okay? Will it run alright you think? I tried Exaile and thought I had a winner, but it was way too glitchy for me. Let me know what you think my fellow Ubuntians.

Thanks!

[LaRoza]

Amarok will run fine. It may take a second longer to start, but it will run fine.

[graabein]

I love Quod Libet with the album list view and plugins for getting tags from musicbrainz and cover art off the net. Give it a spin.

[chris4585]

I love Quod Libet with the album list view and plugins for getting tags from musicbrainz and cover art off the net. Give it a spin.

i second this, i use nothing but quod libet for music libraries, but playing a single file at a time beep media player is what i use

not to mention its light and also fast! way faster than amarok with the features *i* need

quod libet <3

[billgoldberg]

Try exaile.

People call it "amarok for gnome".

I use it myself and like it.

[rheywood]

I personally use Amarok in GNOME and it works fine. I've got quite a large music collection, so the database is set up to use mySQL and it works great. There are no problems running it, it'll just require some KDE related items to work, and won't look like a native application as such. That doesn't bother me too much though. :)

[vishzilla]

1. Rhythmbox
2.Exaile
3. Amarok

In that order, according to me.

[gnome.youbuntoo]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a sleek, sexy music player, like Amarok, but for GNOME. I'm sure some of you will say, "then use Amarok.." but is that okay? Will it run alright you think? I tried Exaile and thought I had a winner, but it was way too glitchy for me. Let me know what you think my fellow Ubuntians.

Thanks!
Rhythmbox is for itunes lovers. music-quality wise, nothing beats VLC!!:D

[Techwiz]

Songbird!

[Eisenwinter]

Just use XMMS.

[adityakavoor]

Banshee

[tjajab]

I have quite a large music collection, and even Amarok with MySQL backend seems to have some trouble with this (takes forever to do any action). Though, I have the collection on a windows fake raid mount which I use dmraid to mount, maybe that could be a part of the problem. I plan to move the collection to some other format in time, but for now I will have to keep it on the windows array.

So, can anyone recommend the music player best capable of handling large music collections, preferrably even better than Amarok does?

[billgoldberg]

I have since switched to Banshee.

It is better than Exaile.

[init1]

VLC is my favorite.

[Unanimated]

VLC is my favorite.
I hate VLC - when I try to load 1.2 GB of music, it locks up. Every time.

I prefer Amarok, but you could try Exaile - I used it for about an hour because it wouldn't read my Amarok playlists and creating playlists was slow. You could try it, however.

[Phreaker]

I really like Banshee

[peakshysteria]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a sleek, sexy music player, like Amarok, but for GNOME. I'm sure some of you will say, "then use Amarok.." but is that okay? Will it run alright you think? I tried Exaile and thought I had a winner, but it was way too glitchy for me. Let me know what you think my fellow Ubuntians.

Thanks!

sleek, sexy music player means Songbird. My main player is Rhythmbox even though it's ugly as no other earthly thing. Songbird is very sexy. They're soon releasing version 1.0. I'm currently running the RC2 version. Very, very sexy.....

[init1]

I hate VLC - when I try to load 1.2 GB of music, it locks up. Every time.

I was able to load 16GB without any trouble.

[bobbocanfly]

Currently using Banshee and loving it, but it's beginning to feel a bit bloated and sluggish. Might try out something a bit lighter (Rhythmbox, Quod Libet) or go with an mpd solution (ncmpc or sonata)

[Changturkey]

Currently using Banshee and loving it, but it's beginning to feel a bit bloated and sluggish. Might try out something a bit lighter (Rhythmbox, Quod Libet) or go with an mpd solution (ncmpc or sonata)

Banshee does "feel" bloated.

[RiceMonster]

I've tried pretty much every music player, and I always go back to Amarok, but that's a KDE app, which is what makes me want to replace it. The two that have come closest to replacing it are Audacious and gmusicbrowser, so I recommend you try those. They're good.

[FuturePilot]

Banshee. It's simply awesome.

[mrgnash]

The same player I would recommend for any other DE: Banshee.

I'm using KDE4 at the moment, and Banshee, not Amarok, is my default music player :)

[barbedsaber]

I like banshee, because it handles portable players REALLY well, but I am very comfortable everything else I have tried, EXCEPT amarok. I am keeping an open mind, and amarok 2 is looking good so far.

[Simian Man]

I use Rhythymbox because it's the only one that handled my new iPod out of the box.

[chucky chuckaluck]

cplay is a nice terminal player that's pretty fast and pretty light.

[mrgnash]

cplay is a nice terminal player that's pretty fast and pretty light.

Nice one.

In principle, I like the idea of a terminal player, but I really need something that can read tag info and sort my tracks by artist, album, etc. Why? Because my music collection is a gargantuan mess and I'm not about to go through and organize/rename all my directories, much less the songs themselves.

[rudihawk]

Banshee is the way to go I reckon.

[magnus0]

I use Banshee. It has great functionality

[BOBSONATOR]

another Bansheer! (when on gnome)

Im amarok-in it right now on KDEMOD

[madverb]

Just wondering what are the benefits of using Banshee over Rhythmbox.
I tend to use Rhythmbox because it is installed by default and I've never had any problems with it. Except for the whole reading APE tags instead of MP3 tags on mp3s.

[blakjesus]

Songbird!

+1

Other than that, i think Rhythmbox is pretty good.

[rudihawk]

Just wondering what are the benefits of using Banshee over Rhythmbox.
I tend to use Rhythmbox because it is installed by default and I've never had any problems with it. Except for the whole reading APE tags instead of MP3 tags on mp3s.

Banshee plays videos! It also supports embedded album art, not like rhythmbox's floppy excuse for album art. :lolflag:

[etnlIcarus]

Honestly not happy with any music player I've ever used. I just don't think anyone has devised an information management and abstraction system good enough for dealing with such large amounts of data as the average music collection.

There have been online projects like audioscrober and pandora which attempted to sort music by aesthetic qualities but 'similar artists' lists (which are uniformly laughable) have proved how difficult the task is for anyone who does crack the perfect media management system.

At the moment, I've settled on an unstable build of Exaile with a modified UI.

[mrgnash]

Honestly not happy with any music player I've ever used. I just don't think anyone has devised an information management and abstraction system good enough for dealing with such large amounts of data as the average music collection.

There have been online projects like audioscrober and pandora which attempted to sort music by aesthetic qualities but 'similar artists' lists (which are uniformly laughable) have proved how difficult the task is for anyone who does crack the perfect media management system.

At the moment, I've settled on an unstable build of Exaile with a modified UI.

Audioscrobbler does not "sort music by aesthetic qualities". Okay?

Also, I don't know how big your music collection is but mine is edging toward the 60gb mark, and Banshee, Rhythmbox, and Amarok all seem to handle that volume of data just fine.

[etnlIcarus]

Audioscrobbler does not "sort music by aesthetic qualities". Okay? From your patronising response, I can only assume you take your audioscrobber seriously. And judging from the description, I fail to see how it doesn't do what I just described.

Also, I don't know how big your music collection is but mine is edging toward the 60gb mark, and Banshee, Rhythmbox, and Amarok all seem to handle that volume of data just fine. Well good for you. I, on the other hand, find constructing playlists from massive spreadsheets cumbersome - especially with the limited tools provided by most players. It's also a far more mentally intensive process than should be required to listen to some music. The whole leisure aspect of listening to music gets lost when you're basically doing office work.

[rudihawk]

From your patronising response, I can only assume you take your audioscrobber seriously. And judging from the description, I fail to see how it doesn't do what I just described.
Well good for you. I, on the other hand, find constructing playlists from massive spreadsheets cumbersome - especially with the limited tools provided by most players. It's also a far more mentally intensive process than should be required to listen to some music. The whole leisure aspect of listening to music gets lost when you're basically doing office work.

I don't suppose you've ever heard of a "smart-playlist" before?
Banshee does them quite well... then its not so hard to construct a decentish playlist.

[etnlIcarus]

I don't suppose you've ever heard of a "smart-playlist" before?
Banshee does them quite well... then its not so hard to construct a decentish playlist.

If you're talking about the traditional smart playlist, they're a sure-fire way to never play most of the music in your collection and a very easy way to get bored with the music you did happen to rate beforehand.

If you're talking about dynamic playlists, I'm not a fan of those, either. They usually just rely on genre tags and mangle your playlists with really inappropriate songs.

Ultimately, though, that's besides the point. The focus needs to be on reducing the sheer volume of information you have to deal with and providing more elastic control over your library.

Off the top of my head, a simple example of my meaning: a list-view library, sorted along a particular column (eg Artist). Why does the artist field have to constantly repeat every line? Why not consolidate the field to a single title, with a parenthesis at either end, both reducing the clutter of text and providing an easy visual queue for group-selecting just one artist's songs/albums (reducing the risk of accidentally selecting the wrong title).

Edit: I suppose a picture would prevent misunderstanding. MSPaint, ahoy.

http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/184/exampleux8.th.png (http://img386.imageshack.us/my.php?image=exampleux8.png)http://img386.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)

Expanding on the above, secondary sorting (eg album) could simultaneously be expressed the same way, further improving readability, while creating a horizontal tree-like view.

[buck2825]

ok I read this thread because this is what i'm looking for

right now I use nothing. that being said I have a massive 250GB library with nearly 50,000 songs of which I have dulicates and mutiple versons (as much as i like Dave Matthews, he kills my library with all the live work I have) of the same songs. i was using itunes but that works as well as economic resession, it take so long to get anything done that you just don't bother, hell it takes 5 minute to start Itunes and even then the song skips because my 2.8 ghz proccessor is pegged. winamp is better but some of its features still suck it up with this size of library. i have been looking hard at ampache. it loads quick because it is a web page, stable because it is built on mySQL and stream any pc that can log into the server.

In short I would like to make a motion to redefine the request of this thread.

What do you recommend and why be exact and clear

let me start


itunes (vmware winxp to use in ubuntu)
pros - visually pleasing, apple device compatable
cons - data is stored in a proprietary formated XML file that is slow to load, file and folder structure is a joke

winamp (with wine)
pros - light wight, quick to load application, add-ons, id3 tag editing

cons - does not manage files and folders, album art, apple devices untested




also on the thought of building a usable manager myself. sql in general has the ablility to inbead the file as binary table data.

[zekopeko]

well either try amarok 2 since that will come out any day/week in final form since that baby has an embedded DB or try banshee 1.4 since that uses sqlite(sqlite should be enough since tracker uses it for storing indexes and i know mine are with like over 150k files).
i would really like to hear your xp when using those 2 on such a large collection.

oh and if you are using GNOME for your desktop environment then perhaps you could try qgtkstyle to make amarok fit better in GNOME (if it can since i believe it has a lot of custom widgets)

[Magneto]

amarok - i have 50,000+ tracks and that's what works best for me.

[loopeando]

Quod Libet all the way

Btw, does anybody know how to enable gapless playback in Quod Libet?

[Magneto]

ok I read this thread because this is what i'm looking for

right now I use nothing. that being said I have a massive 250GB library with nearly 50,000 songs of which I have dulicates and mutiple versons (as much as i like Dave Matthews, he kills my library with all the live work I have) of the same songs. i was using itunes but that works as well as economic resession, it take so long to get anything done that you just don't bother, hell it takes 5 minute to start Itunes and even then the song skips because my 2.8 ghz proccessor is pegged. winamp is better but some of its features still suck it up with this size of library. i have been looking hard at ampache. it loads quick because it is a web page, stable because it is built on mySQL and stream any pc that can log into the server.

In short I would like to make a motion to redefine the request of this thread.

What do you recommend and why be exact and clear

let me start


itunes (vmware winxp to use in ubuntu)
pros - visually pleasing, apple device compatable
cons - data is stored in a proprietary formated XML file that is slow to load, file and folder structure is a joke

winamp (with wine)
pros - light wight, quick to load application, add-ons, id3 tag editing

cons - does not manage files and folders, album art, apple devices untested




also on the thought of building a usable manager myself. sql in general has the ablility to inbead the file as binary table data.
for windows use MediaMonkey - waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay faster than anything else with much better features - I have 400gb or more of music- probably close to 600 and more than 500k tracks and it smokes. No need to install sql either. I used to use Helium in windows but it totally sucks compared to MM. MM has great tagging features too.

For linux use Amarok. With a huge library there really hasn't been anything else as good with managing it all. Amarok> Itunes.
Just fired up Amarok on a new install. 30% of the collection done after 3 minutes on a core2duo 4gb ram system.

[nelio2k]

Mozilla's songbird is coming up strong with many, many add-ons. It's not in the repository yet, I believe, but check it out... www.getsongbird.com

[treesurf]

It's been a while since I tried Banshee. I just installed Banshee 1.4 and so far I'm liking it pretty well. Definitely better than Rhythmbox.

[Luke has no name]

I use Exaile mostly, but Winamp is the best music player I've ever used in my life, and I wait for a Linux project to emulate its style and media library interface. Nothing does at the moment, it's sad.

EDIT: Songbird looks like it might be it!!! Props to k1dicarus for the recommendation. Now if I can find a play queue window I'll be in heaven..

[PhoenixMaster00]

Mozilla's songbird is coming up strong with many, many add-ons. It's not in the repository yet, I believe, but check it out... www.getsongbird.com

that looks very nice but when i saw a picture with a cover flow i almost thought i was looking at itunes...

Anyways at the moment i just set Rhythmbox since it does a good job of managing my music files but i may have to consider some options after reading this thread

[Vaganzza]

I use Helium Music Manager with Windows XP. Unfortunately it isn't possible to run Helium with Ubuntu...

[mrgnash]

Cmus if you want something light, Banshee if you don't mind something heavier.

[RiceMonster]

mpd + Sonata

[Dark Hornet]

Rhythmbox...although my needs are simple. It works great in managing my 5,000+ music library, and syncing with my ipod.

Good luck!

[shiva.n]

One day old mpd + Sonata user. Very pleased with the setup. Now only if I can change Sonata skin and the ugly notifications.

With rtorrent and mpd doing everything I want of them without being in my face, I am a very happy CLI camper.

[RiceMonster]

Now only if I can change Sonata skin and the ugly notifications.

That has to be done through your GTK theme.

[etnlIcarus]

http://pragha.wikispaces.com/

Fork of Consonance.

[shiva.n]

Ahh yes. Installed gtk-theme-switch2. Now to find a nice theme might take sometime. Stopped gnome-settings-daemon...one more dependancy overcome on Gnome.

Thank you for the pointed finger

[MrJoeyUK]

I'm a big fan of Exaile... it opens much faster than Amarok which I used previously, and overall it just feels alot smoother.