Finding a good music player for Linux is not an easy task. A few big
name projects, like Amarok and Songbird, have come and gone throughout
the years, but none of them have been stable enough to match the staying
power of
iTunes,
Winamp, or any of the
other music players available to non-Linux users.
Fortunately, the issue isn’t one of availability; there are
dozens of music players out there in Linux land. The problem is
finding the ones that are modern, feature-rich, performance-friendly, and easy to use.
I’ve done a bit of searching. Here are my findings.
Not to be confused with Audacity, which is a
well-known audio editor,
Audacious is an audio
player which has no relation to the former except for the fact that they’re both free, both open source, and both excellent.
This
wonderful program actually got its start back in 2011 but was often
overlooked in favor of big name alternatives in the past. Those giants
have since fallen asleep and Audacious is the perfect tool to fill the
vacuum that was left behind.
Audacious is marked by low resource usage and a minimal interface. It’s not
ugly
by any means, but if you’re used to the kind of visual flash offered by
modern media players, you may feel underwhelmed by this program’s
simplicity.
It comes with plenty of advanced actions that are all tied to
keyboard shortcuts, making it easy to do whatever you want without much
effort at all. There’s also a surprising amount of customization
available, considering just how simple it tries to be. As for the
interface, it can be toggled between GTK Classic and Winamp.
But
the best aspect of this music player has to be its plugin system, which
allows for extensibility through third-party code. The community of
Audacious developers isn’t all that big yet, but if you’re interested in
hopping along, check out their
plugin development forum.
The
way we use the web has changed so much in the past few years. Isn’t it
about time that the way we manage our music has caught up? That’s the
exact line of thinking that sparked – and continues to drive – the
development of
Tomahawk, a music player for the modern generation.
Music has recently shifted
away from local playlists and shifted
towards streamed services, which are popularly known as
Internet radio.
And if you’re like me, you don’t just stick to one or two of them; you
listen to this one or that one depending on your mood, whether that
means Soundcloud, Google Music, Spotify, Rdio, etc.
And
that’s exactly why Tomahawk is so awesome. Not only does it manage and
play local music files like any traditional music player would, it also
incorporates some of the more popular streaming services available
today, thus allowing you to enjoy
all of your music in
one place.
The
ability to connect to these various streaming sites is due to
Tomahawk’s plugin system, so you can toggle those features on or off at
will. Tomahawk will also watch your indicated music directories for any
changes and update your library automatically.
As far as the
interface, you’re either going to love it or hate it. It feels very
modern, but modern in a way that’s reminiscent of the Modern style
that’s been used by Windows since the Zune days. In general, though, the
layout is very simple, easy to navigate, and the aesthetics are quite
pleasing.
Do not be put off by this program’s strange name! I almost overlooked
DeaDBeeF
because of its unconventional name but I’m glad I didn’t. Truly I wish
for it to be rebranded because it’s such an awesome program and it’d be a
shame if it never gained traction due to something as trivial as a
name.
Long story short: if you prefer
something lightweight like Foobar2000, you’ll probably
love this one.
DeaDBeeF
is not meant to be a music library manager. Rather, much like stanard
Foobar2000 affair, you just create separate playlists that you fill up
with whichever music files you want for said playlists. That’s about as
simple as it could be.
However, if the out-of-the-box
functionality is too basic for you, you can always expand on it through
plugins. DeaDBeeF comes with a lot of built-in plugins that are disabled
by default, such as a LastFM scrobbler, a global hotkey manager, and
even an alternative interface.
The only downside was that
DeaDBeeF did not integrate into my native desktop environment, so I
couldn’t control it using the volume panel. It wasn’t a big deal for me,
but it may or may not prove irritating for you, so beware.
Nuvola Player
is a bit of an outlier on this list. It completely foregoes the idea of
local music storage and focuses entirely on cloud-based music
streaming. In that sense, it’s like Tomahawk but more specialized.
The
goal, as described by the developers, is to provide Linux users with a
native application that interfaces with as many streaming services as
possible in order to make the user experience as clean and
straightforward as possible.
At
first glance Nuvola feels like an extremely basic web browser that
loads each service – e.g. Pandora, Rdio, Google Music, etc. – as an
actual webpage. Indeed, my first thought was, “Why the heck would I use
this when I can just load it in my already-open browser?”
As it
turns out, because Nuvola ties in with the operating system, it can be
controlled directly through the desktop environment when you want to
skip songs or change volume. It also has native popup notifications on
track change. It’s a very niche program, but a useful one if that niche
describes you.
Out of the box, Nuvola supports Amazon Cloud
Player, Bandcamp, Deezer, 8tracks, Google Play Music, Grooveshark,
Grooveshark Mobile, Hype Machine, Jango, Logitech Media Server, Pandora,
Rdio, Spotify, and This Is My Jam.
Which Music Player is Your Favorite?
In
a past life, back when I was enamored with Foobar2000’s minimalism, I
would have fallen for DeaDBeeF and its surprising similarities. These
days, however, I need a little bit of eye candy in addition to
functionality because I’m looking for a balanced user experience, which
is why I think
Tomahawk is the best.
Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-linux-music-players-that-deserve-your-attention-now/
Other honorable mentions:
Banshee
Gmusic browser
