Xfce Forum

Mellowbob

Member

Registered: 2011-10-16

Posts: 286

State of music players

I've been wasting a bunch of my time the last few days trying to find an "ideal" music player. I don't understand why no one is catering to my needs

Here's what I want it to do:

1. Play a random selection of the music on my computer in a random fashion.

2. Let me find a song in the library by title, artist, etc. Not in the play list, but the library.

3. Have a tray icon or notification "thing" which permits the following:

      - display the current track when my mouse hovers on it. I don't want the distraction of having to open a menu like the sound indicator, bring up the play application, etc and then min. that just to see the name/artist of the track

     - single click on the icon should pause/start the player

    - of course, the player should minimize into the icon when I want

So, with that in mind, here are my results:

Banshee: Does just about everything I want. It's huge and bloated. And, with the latest Ubuntu 15.04 there is a 2 minute delay when it starts up (something to do with data base updates/reads).

Rhythmbox: again, pretty big. The icon doesn't display the current track and to stop/start you need to right click and then select your option

Exaile: Got it running but never figured out how to play any tunes.

Gmusicbrowser: Crashed doing the initial read of my libs.

Goggles Music: Close. Doesn't save options so it needs to be reconfigured each time. Tried to update to a current version but it needs foxlib 1.7 and that's still in beta and won't compile on my machine.

Amarok, Clementine, and others: Either they don't have a panel icon at all or their are other things missing. Sorry, I should have keep a journal of what I like/didn't like.

So, for now I'm stuck with banshee. Probably not a bad thing, but it seems like a lot of overkill just to play some background music.

demosthenese

Member

From: Liverpool, UK

Registered: 2009-05-04

Posts: 71

Re: State of music players

Quodlibet?

Needs the tray icon plugin for some of what you want, and play/pause is on the right click menu.

Mellowbob

Member

Registered: 2011-10-16

Posts: 286

Re: State of music players

Quodlibet?

Needs the tray icon plugin for some of what you want, and play/pause is on the right click menu.

Yet another interesting option.

I wonder if there is something wrong with my installation or settings. I can't seem to get the tool tip showing the song name. However, if I log in as a different user it does work properly.

So, how to enable tool tips for audio players? On my system they do appear for other apps (like the PLACES, Menu, App icons. Just not for music players.

MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: State of music players

MediaMonkey under Wine, lol? IDK if it could produce a panel icon in linux, though.

Regards,
MDM

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Mellowbob

Member

Registered: 2011-10-16

Posts: 286

Re: State of music players

Okay, got the tool tip issue figured out. Sort of

If I have the notification area moved to the left side of the panel I don't get tool tips. If it is on the right, they work just fine. Does this make any sense?

ungutknut

Member

Registered: 2014-04-12

Posts: 52

Re: State of music players

In my opinion clementine is the "best" media-library-based music player for linux. It should be able to do everything you requested except:

     - single click on the icon should pause/start the player

...which I'm not sure about. Never had a player that does that on default. But there's definitely a keyboard-shortcut for play/pause that should do the trick.

I'm also not sure about that one:

      - display the current track when my mouse hovers on it. I don't want the distraction of having to open a menu like the sound indicator, bring up the play application, etc and then min. that just to see the name/artist of the track

If I remember right clementine can show the current track title in it's minimized title in the taskbar. It's some time ago I used it last time - now I'm stuck with audacious. I never got used to that medialibrary-thingy.

Imerion

Member

Registered: 2015-04-04

Posts: 24

Re: State of music players

Finding a music player that works the way you want can really be hard. I wanted one that let me browse by folder structure instead of tags and such, and there ain't many that does that.
But I found one which I really like. This one : https://github.com/pragha-music-player/pragha
I think it does all you need, only did a quick check of your list. Plugins need to be activated for some of the functions.

sixsixfive

Member

From: behind you

Registered: 2012-04-08

Posts: 579

Website

Re: State of music players

deadbeef, nothing comes close > http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net , it also has many plugins: https://github.com/Alexey-Yakovenko/dea … ki/Plugins

Last edited by sixsixfive (2015-05-22 20:19:55)

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Jerry3904

Member

Registered: 2013-11-09

Posts: 853

Re: State of music players

+1
That's what I use too, focuses on music playing and ignores ribbons and bells.

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Mellowbob

Member

Registered: 2011-10-16

Posts: 286

Re: State of music players

Still looking for the perfect player

I tried Clementine. Seems to work fine, expect for the indicator which on xfce4 nests inside the "indicator" icon. This is fine, it displays. But, the options like "scroll to change volume" and "click to pause" don't work. However, if I login to Mate, the indicator works just fine.

What's going on?

oneindelijk

Member

Registered: 2017-10-27

Posts: 1

Re: State of music players

What about mpd ?

It has a ton of alternative frontends for every platform and they can even run simultanously.

(For example I use gmpc to show me which songs are playing and in the background I wrote a little script that uses the commandline player 'mpc' to queue new songs if the playlist is 'drying up', amongst other things)

On the tablet I use M.AL.P with has a very nice full screen album art option and on my phone I use MPDroid (because it has a widget and I rating option)

There is also a MPDRIIS interface to make MPD interact with the global media controls from most window managers

https://www.musicpd.org/

PS: The start/stop functionality on the tray icon for gmpc, is done by clicking with the middle mouse button

Edit:
The only thing it does not, is playing a random song from your library
I fixed this with a little script (python or bash)
I'm willing to share this script (but it is not of 'public' scripting quality ;-)  ) or help anyone out writing one

Last edited by oneindelijk (2017-10-27 16:01:51)